Baroque Instrumental Music

Higher

Keyboard Instruments

Harpsichord

• Played a key role throughout the baroque period.

• It played in both ensemble music and solo pieces.

Keyboard Instruments

Organ

• Another prominent instrument in this era.

• Played using one or more manuals and a pedal board.

• It uses wind moving through metal or wood pipes to create sound

Basso Continuo

• Most Distinguishing features

• Continually played throughout music

• Bass line – Cello, or bassoon

• Chord playing instrument – harpsichord, organ or lute

• Improvise chords

• Filling out Harmonies

Concerto Grosso

• Italian for big concert

• Musical material is passed between 2 sections

• Concertino (soloist group)

• Ripieno (full orchestra)

This contrast of small group to large group and one thematic group against another is very characteristic of Baroque ideology — similar to terraced dynamics where the idea is significant contrast

Concerto Grosso

Trumpet

Recorder

Violin

Oboe

Strings

Continuo

Concertino

Ripieno

Ritornello

• A recurring passage

• Always played by tutti (full orchestra)

• Often heard in different keys

• Most common in solo concerto

Tutti

Solo

Tutti

Solo

Tutti

Suite

• A collection of pieces of music – dances

• Instrumental or Orchestral

• Usually in the same key

Fugue

• Contrapuntal piece

• Based on a theme (Subject)

• Subject is imitated throughout piece

• Exposition exposes Subject

• Subject is played in Dominant (Answer)

• Episode is music between playings of Subject

To fully understand

Fugue we will need to do more

work on this.

Mnemonic

• Eskimos

• Smile

• Constantly

• Riding

• Their

• Inflatable

• Sharks

• Down

• Every

• Tunnel

Passacaglia

• Based on variations over a ground bass

• 3/4 time

• Usually in a minor key

Chaconne

• Based on variations over a short chord progression

• Usually in a major key

Chorale Prelude

• Based on a Chorale melody

• Organ

• May contain Theme and Variation

• Homophonic

Chorale Prelude Continued… • Example: Look at A, this is the melody of the

Chorale ‘Wachet Auf’

• Now look at B, this is built up from the idea given in the original Chorale and is now a piece for organ – A Chorale Prelude. PLAY

Overture

• Signalled opening of Opera and Oratorio

• Orchestral work

Ornaments

Listen

Acciaccatura

• A crushed dissonant note of the shortest possible duration played before or after the main note or chord and immediately released.

Appoggiatura

• A musical ornament (chiefly from the 18 century) of an auxiliary note falling or rising to a harmonised note. There are two possible ways of writing this as you can see from the examples below.

Trill

• Rapid and repeated movement between two adjacent notes

Turn

• Four notes which turn round the main note with the note itself, the note above the note itself, the note below.

Mordent

• An ornament or grace note consisting of a single rapid alternation of the principal note, a note a semitone lower and the note itself.

• There is also an inverted mordent. The principal note, a note a semitone higher and the note itself.

Texture

Contrapuntal – is the term used to describe the texture of much

Baroque music. ‘contra’ means against, and you will find the

various parts of the music moving ‘against’ each other.

Contrapuntal music has two or more melodies played at the

same time. They will however, still harmonise.

Polyphonic – means many sounds and is another way of

describing music which has more than one melody which fit

together.

Homophonic – is the opposite of polyphonic.

Homophonic music has one main tune, which is accompanied

by bass and harmony parts.