Graham School of General Studies · The University of Chicago John Gibbons 708-393-9729 Music of the Baroque Era [email protected]
Course Description : When the Baroque movement took a musical turn, the result was an astonishing expansion of forms and techniques for composers, and a new range of virtuoso possibilities for performers. We will study Baroque instrumental styles and genres (sonatas, concertos, and virtuoso keyboard works), the sacred choral repertoire (cantatas and oratorios), and the birth of opera. We will study composers such as Monteverdi, Gluck, Bach, Scarlatti, Handel, Vivaldi and Purcell. Modern performance practice topics such as the rebirth of the countertenor and the question of historical authenticity will also be discussed.
Syllabus
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Week 1: • Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) • Girolamo Frescobaldi (baptized mid-September 1583 – March 1, 1643): Keyboard works • Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): Operas
Week 2 • Keyboard music of Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667) and Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) • Jean-Baptiste de Lully (1632-1687): His opera Atys • Giacomo Carissimi (baptized April 18, 1605 – January 12, 1674): Jephtha
Week 3 • Keyboard music of François Couperin (1668-1733) and Rameau (1683-1764) • Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767): The Last Judgment • Henry Purcell (1659-1695): English Opera
Week 4: Concerti grossi • Archangelo Corelli (1653-1736) • Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
Week 5: George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) • An overview of his life and career • Concerti grossi, op. 6 • Israel in Egypt
Week 6: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Part 1 • An overview of his life • Secular instrumental works
Week 7: Bach, Part 2: The Great Choral Works
Week 8: Transition • Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) – his keyboard sonatas • Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714 – 1788) • Johann Christian Bach (1735 – 1782)
Recommended Readings • The New Grove French Baroque Masters by James R. Anthony, H. Wiley Hitchcock, Edward Higginbottom, Graham Sadler
• Music in the Baroque Era - From Monteverdi to Bach by Manfred F. Bukofzer
• A History of Baroque Music: Music in the Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Centuries by George J. Buelow
• History of Western Music , 6th Edition, by Donald J. Grout and Claude V. Palisca
• The Musical Dialogue by Nicholaus Harnoncourt
• Handel , Revised Edition by Christopher Hogwood
• The Art of Fugue: Bach Fugues for Keyboard 1715-1750 by Joseph Kerman
• The Bach Reader by Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel
• Baroque Music by Claude V. Palisca
• Bundle: Music in Western Civilization + Anthology for Music in Western Civilization, Volume I: Antiquity through the Baroque by by Timothy J. Roden, Craig Wright, and Bryan R. Simms
• Dramma Per Musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century by Reinhard Strohm
• Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician by Christoph Wolff