Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Period

Keyboard Music in the Late Seventeenth Century
  1. Music for Organ
    1. Most organ music for Protestant churches served as a prelude to something else.
    2. Toccatas
      1. Succession of contrapuntal and free sections
      2. Improvisational style achieved through uncertain harmonic flow and quick shifts of direction
      3. Slow-paced sections with pedal-points for contrast
      4. Virtuosic displays for both manual keyboard and pedals
      5. Example: NAWM 71, Praeludium by Buxtehude
        1. Buxtehude's toccatas often included several sections of imitative counter point.
        2. Free sections precede each imitative section.
      6. Pieces such as NAWM 71 could be titled Toccata or Prelude, or similar names.
    3. Fugues
      1. These were composed both as independent pieces and as sections within preludes or toccatas.
      2. By the end of the seventeenth century the fugue virtually replaced the ricercare.
      3. Components of a fugue
        1. In the exposition, a theme is stated in the tonic and is answered in the dominant, followed by each of the voices alternating subject and answer.
        2. Episodes, in which the subject does not appear, come between statements of the subject, and often modulate to a new key.
        3. A final statement of the subject occurs in the tonic, often intensified by a pedal point, quick entrances of the subject (stretto) or elongated statements of the subject (augmentation).
  2. Organ Music Based on the Lutheran Chorale
    1. Organ chorales were harmonizations with some counterpoint in the accompaniment.
    2. Chorale variation, or chorale partita
      1. Used the chorale as a cantus firmus in long notes
      2. Emerged early in the seventeenth century with Sweelinck and Scheidt's works
      3. Example: NAWM 72, Danket dem Herrn . . . by Buxtehude uses the chorale is a cantus firmus, appearing in a different voice in each variation.
    3. Chorale fantasias use fragments of the chorale melody as motives to be developed in counterpoint and with ornamentation.
    4. Chorale prelude
      1. A short piece in which the entire melody is presented just once in recognizable form (used after ca. 1650)
      2. May have originated as introduction for congregation or choir.
      3. Developed into an independent form.
  3. Harpsichord and Clavichord Music (most Baroque music did not specify which of these was to be used)
    1. Theme and variations popular, usually on original songlike themes (arias)
    2. Suites in France
      1. Amorphous collections, produced by the clavecinists
      2. Example: Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729), known as a singer, harpsichordist, and composer
      3. Example: François Couperin (1668–1733), who published twenty-seven collections of clavecin pieces, which he called orders (NAWM 73)
    3. Suite movements in Germany were standard by ca. 1700.
      1. Allemande (German) Example: NAWM 64, Lamentation by Froberger
      2. Courante (French), CHWM, ex. 11.2 by Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre
      3. Sarabande (Spanish, from Mexico)
      4. Gigue (Anglo-Irish)
    4. François Couperin's ordres, NAWM 73 (1730)
      1. Couperin's ordres contained as many as twenty dance pieces each.
      2. Movements contain fanciful titles, such as NAWM 73's La Visionaire (The Dreamer) and La Misterieuse (The Mysterious One).
        1. La Visionaire is a French overture in a whimsical character.
        2. La Misterieuse is an allemande with steady sixteenth-note motion in binary dance form.
      3. Chaconne and passacaglia also sometimes included in his suites (CHWM, ex. 11.5)
        1. Chaconne, in stately triple rhythm
        2. "Chaconne" and "passacaglia" used interchangeably
      4. Couperin wrote a treatise, L'Art de toucher le clavecin (The Art of Playing the Clavecin, 1716) which specifies how to play agreements and how to interpret notational symbols.
  4. Ensemble Sonatas
    1. Background
      1. Before 1630 the term sonata meant an instrumental section within a vocal work.
      2. See Chapter 9 for the sonata's roots in the canzona.
    2. Basic features
      1. Several contrasting sections or movements contrasting in both tempo and texture
      2. Scoring for two to four solo instruments with basso continuo
      3. Sonata da chiesa (church sonata) used dance movements with abstract titles.
      4. Sonata da camera (chamber sonata) was a suite of stylized dances, with the opening movement sometimes in another form.
      5. After 1670 the most common instrumentation was for two treble instruments (usually violins) and basso continuo composed of cello or bass and a harpsichord or organ (triosonata).
    3. Solo Sonatas
      1. For solo violin, flute, or viola da gamba with continuo
      2. Gained popularity after 1700
    4. Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713)
      1. Background
        1. He studied in Bologna, an important center of instrumental music.
        2. He worked for most of his life in Rome.
        3. He published four collections of trio sonatas (1681–95), a collection of solo sonatas, and a collection of concerti grossi.
        4. He composed no vocal music.
      2. Style
        1. His style is modeled on vocal music, and lacks virtuosic displays.
        2. The two violins are equal.
        3. Tonal organization is achieved through sequences with logical and straightforward modulations and almost no chromaticism.
        4. In his later solo sonatas he put one movement of major-key sonatas in the relative minor and the slow movements of concerti grossi in contrasting keys.
      3. Church sonatas
        1. Four movements, often in slow-fast-slowfast order
        2. First movement usually contrapuntal and majestic in character
        3. The second movement (Allegro)
          1. Most similar in style to the canzona
          2. Imitative
          3. Subject modified after the exposition
        4. The third movement often resembles an aria in triple meter.
        5. The last movement is usually a carefree dance in binary form.
      4. Chamber sonatas
        1. Usually begin with a prelude
        2. Two or three dances in normal suite order
        3. Final gigue or gavotte
        4. First two movements sometimes serious, resembling movements of his church sonatas and the French overture
    5. NAWM 75, Trio Sonata Op. 3, No. 2 demonstrates aspects of Corelli's style.
      1. Typical slow-fast-slow-fast sonata da chiesa
      2. First movement (Grave) uses suspensions and walking bass.
      3. Second movement: fugal
      4. Third movement: a slow sarabande-like movement, with the violins in a dialogue.
      5. Final movement: fugal uses a subject in the second half that is an inversion of the subject from the first half.
    6. Performance practice
      1. Performers throughout the Baroque era embellished on the written work in several ways.
      2. Ornaments
        1. Originally only improvised, later written down
        2. Intended to help the performer move the affections
        3. Small melodic formulas, such as trills and turns, notated by special symbols (see CHWM, figure 11.5).
        4. Longer embellishments, such as scales and arpeggios
      3. Performers were free to omit or substitute movements.
    7. Ensemble Sonatas Outside Italy
      1. Henry Purcell composed trio sonatas and sonatas for larger combinations of instruments.
      2. In France the earliest important trio sonatas were by François Couperin and combined the styles of French keyboardists with Italian trio sonata.
  5. Works for Larger Ensembles
    1. Italy
      1. In Venice, sonatas, canzonas, and other genres were composed for three or more melody instruments with basso continuo. Many of these resembled opera overtures.
      2. Bolognese composers in the late seventeenth century wrote for large groups of instruments using trio sonata and concerto styles.
    2. Germany
      1. Orchestral suites were popular in Germany.
      2. Associations of performers, collegia musica, in many German towns played and sang together for their own pleasure.
      3. Town bands (Stadtpfeifer) performed for the public.
      4. Tower sonatas (Turmsonaten) were played on wind instruments from towers.
    3. Orchestral music
      1. Instrumental music could be performed by orchestras or one instrument to a part until the late seventeenth century.
      2. Opera houses maintained orchestras.
      3. In French opera, ballets were always instrumental, leading the Paris orchestra to a high level of achievement that inspired orchestras in other countries.
    4. Orchestral suites flourished in Germany from ca. 1690–1740.
      1. They were sometimes called overtures because they were introduced by a pair of movements in the form of a French overture.
      2. Georg Muffat's Florilegium (1695 and 1698), a collection of suites, included an essay on French bowing and agréments.
      3. Many German composers composed orchestral suites, including J.S. Bach.

 

  1. Concerto
    1. Appeared in the 1680s and 1690s
    2. Combined several favorite traits of instrumental music
      1. Concertato medium
      2. Texture combining firm bass with a florid treble line
      3. Major-minor tonal organization
      4. Longer work made from several small movements
    3. Types of concerto
      1. Concerto grosso contrasts a small group of soloists (concertino) against a large ensemble (concerto grosso).
      2. Solo concerto contrasts a single instrument (usually violin) against a large ensemble.
      3. Instrumentation
        1. Stringed instruments usually played the solo role(s).
        2. The orchestra (designated as ripieno or tutti) usually consisted of strings (violin I, violin II, viola, cello, bass viol) and basso continuo.
    4. Corelli's concertos
      1. Corelli's concerti grossi are among the earliest examples of the genre.
      2. The style is often similar to sonatas, with the larger group echoing the smaller group and otherwise punctuating the work.
    5. Concertos in Germany
      1. See vignette, CHWM, by Georg Muffat on turning a sonata into a concerto.
      2. Composers continued to compose the concerto grosso in sonata forms.
    6. The solo concerto
      1. Giuseppe Torelli of Bologna (1658–1709) composed solo concertos at the turn of the century (e.g., Opus 8, 1709).
      2. Torelli's concerti usually have three movements, fast-slow-fast.
      3. Allegro movements begin with a ritornello in the full orchestra, which alternates with solo episodes containing new material in new keys, and returns in the tonic key at the end of the movement (see CHWM, p. 254).
      4. Other composers followed Torelli's model, including Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1750) and Antonio Vivaldi (Chapter 12).

 

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