Go forBaroqueAbout tonight’s Music

Baroque music is a style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 – 1750. This era followed the Renaissance, and was followed in turn by the Classical era. The word “baroque” comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning misshapen pear, a negative description of the ornate and heavily ornamented music of this period. Later, the name came to apply also to the architecture of the same period.

Baroque music forms a major portion of the “classical music” canon. Composers of the Baroque era include Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Pachelbel, and Henry Purcell, to name a few.

The Baroque period saw the creation of “tonality.” During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes in musical notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera, cantata, oratorio, concerto, and sonata as musical genres. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist of the period. He enriched established German music styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organization, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach’s compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Mass in B minor, the Well-Tempered Clavier, two Passions (St. Matthew and St. John), keyboard works, and more than 300 cantatas, of which nearly 100 cantatas have been lost to posterity. His music is revered for its intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty.

Bach’s abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognized as a great composer until a revival

of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the main composers of the Baroque period, and as one of the greatest composers of all time

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678 – 1741), nicknamed il Prete Rosso (“The Red Priest”) because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer born in Venice, Catholic priest, and virtuoso violinist. Recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe. Vivaldi is known mainly for composing instrumental concertos, especially for the violin, as well as sacred choral works and over forty operas. His best known work is a series of violin concertos known as the Four Seasons.

Many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pieta, a home for abandoned children where Vivaldi had been employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had some success with stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua, and Vienna.

Though Vivaldi’s music was well received during his lifetime, it later declined in popularity until its vigorous revival in the first half of the 20th century. Today, Vivaldi ranks among the most popular and widely recorded of Baroque composers, second only to Johan Sebastian Bach.

The Sonata in B minor for flute or recorder and harpsichord (BWV 1030) by Johann Sebastian Bach is the greatest and most difficult of Bach’s flute works. Its historical significance, technical demands, and timeless beauty, bring it to the forefront of his compositions and takes the rightful place as a staple in the solo flute literature.

Although most of his flute sonatas pose questions of authenticity, the B minor sonata BWV 1030 is undoubtedly one of Bach’s own. A sonata in three movements (Andante, Largo e dolce, and Presto), the B minor is one of two (the other being BWV 1032) in which the harpsichord part is fully

composed. This differs from the past style of continuo, which left the keyboard player plenty of room for his/her own ornamentation. Given this, the harpsichordist acts as an equal partner to the solo flute and shares the melodic material.

With the Sonata in G minor (BWV 1029), Bach takes us to the world of the concerto, with an initial Vivace of exceptional contrapuntal wealth and rhythmic variety. The theme itself proposes very soloistic rhythmic articulations. In its economy of means, the ample Adagio in B flat major, where the two voices linger over the black notes of the harpsichord’s bass line, is a touching moment of great beauty. Bach then closes this sonata with a driving concerto finale Allegro, lightly seasoned with a charming small cantabile motif which reappears several times during the course of the piece.

To say that Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto No. 8 in D minor (BWV 1059) is incomplete doesn’t really begin to explain the real state of affairs. Just nine bars of the piece – the first nine bars – have survived. Because of Bach’s practice of re-using and reshaping his own material, however, it is possible to reconstruct at least the first movement of the concerto with reasonable accuracy, and several such reconstructions do exist. Like nearly all of Bach’s harpsichord concertos, this piece

is an adaptation of a concerto written for another instrument, in this case oboe. That work is completely lost. Before he ever got around to making the harpsichord version, however, Bach adapted the first movement of the oboe concerto for use as the opening sinfonia of one of his cantatas. We know this because the surviving nine bars of the harpsichord version are the identical opening of the cantata’s opening sinfonia. As that sinfonia has an obbligato organ part, it is not an impossible task to fashion a rough cut of the first movement of the Harpsichord Concerto No. 8 in D minor.

Concerto in C major for Flautino, Strings, and Continuo (RV. 443) by Antonio Vivaldi.

Vivaldi’s flautino was a recorder, probably the high-pitched sopranino recorder. The piccolo, which is the equivalent member of the family of transverse flutes, only came into existence around 1730. Nonetheless, the music fits perfectly on the modern piccolo and has been widely appropriated to that instrument’s repertory. The concerto opens in triple time with an orchestral passage, the piccolo doubling the melody. This passage will return to punctuate the piccolo’s solo sections, in which the instrument is put through paces of extreme virtuosity (notably rapid rolled chords and wide jumps of intervals) while the orchestra recedes to the role of accompanist.

Vivaldi’s second movements often display his most memorable work. This concerto stands as a case in point. Where the outer movements dazzle through virtuosity, this central largo, lyrical and rather mournful, achieves genuine poignancy. Technical demands return in the finale, as the piccolo’s solo interludes again focus on quick figuration, including a couple of pages of almost unbelievably rapid triplets.

Go forBaroque About tonight’s Music (continued)

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