The Baroque Period Defined

The title word Baroque is italian for bizare, though exuberant is more appropriate, as music in the baroque period is characterized with energy and livelyhood. The term baroque originated in the 1860's to decribe the highly decorative style of the public and religous buildings in the 17th and 18th century. A major theme underlying music at the time was exploration of form. At the time, there was still much to be dicscovered: New harmonic lines and harmonic progressions, combinations of instruments, and new forms in music such as fugue,canon, and variations in a bassline, popular tunes, and chorales. As the 1600's progreesed, these musical forms took definite shape, and the period from 1700 to 1750's can be viewed as highly "Baroque". Also important was the circumstances under which a composer worked. Take Vivaldi, for example.Though he wrote many fine, complex concertos, many of his pieces were meant merely as a five finger exercise for his students. Vivaldi spent most of his working life employed by Ospedale della Pieta.Often called an orphange, the Osepedale, was actually ahome for the female offspring of noblemen.The Osepedale was thus endowed by Numerous "anonymous" fathers. the young chicks were well looked after, their musical standards the highest. Indeed, many of Vivaldi's finest pieces were excerises he would play with his talented women.In the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the different styles and forms of the baroque period were combined to perfection. Johann Sebastian Bach came from a musical family stretching back through many generations, and the Bachs were well-known throughout their "home ground" of Thuringia in what is now southeast Germany. Many of them were church and court musicians, and one or two were instrument makers. During Bach's life time, his son would recall " No musician of any consequence visiting Lepzip would ever fail to visit my father." Lepzig was a important, universal musical city. Musicians from all over the world would come to stay at his apartments in the Thomas school building, where they would make music togeher. In his death he left a tremendous legacy.