Page 90 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

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Music historians agree, with unusual unanimity, that Baroque music first appeared in Italy in the early seventeenth century. Around 1600, the established equal-voice choral polyphony of the Renaissance receded in importance as a new, more flamboyant style gained popularity. Eventually, the new style was given a new name: Baroque.
Baroque is the term used to describe the arts generally during the period 1600–1750. It derives from the Portuguese word barroco, referring to a pearl of irregular shape then used in jewelry and fine decorations. Critics applied the term baroque to indicate excessive ornamentation in the visual arts and a rough, bold instrumental sound in music. Thus, originally, baroque had a negative connotation: it signified distortion, excess, and extravagance. Only during the twentieth century, with a new-found appreciation of the painting of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and the music of J. S. Bach (1685–1750), among others, has the term baroque come to assume a positive meaning in Western cultural history.
Baroque Architecture and Music
What strikes us most when standing before a monument of Ba- roque design, such as the basilica of Saint Peter in Rome or the palace of Versailles outside of Paris, is that everything is con- structed on the grandest scale. The plazas, buildings, colon- nades, gardens, and fountains are all massive. Look at the nine- ty-foot-high altar canopy inside Saint Peter’s (see Figure 5.1), designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), and see how it dwarfs the people barely visible below. Outside the basilica, a circle of colonnades forms a courtyard large enough to en- compass several football fields. Or consider the French king’s palace of Versailles, constructed during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), so monumental in scope that it formed a small in- dependent city, home to several thousand court functionaries (see Figure 5.13).
The music composed for performance in such vast expanses could be equally grandiose. While at first the Baroque orchestra was small, under King Louis XIV it occasionally swelled to more than eighty players. Similarly, choral works for Baroque churches sometimes required twenty-four, forty-eight, or even fifty-three separate lines or parts. These compositions for massive choral forces epitomize the grand or “colossal” Baroque.
Once the exteriors of the large Baroque palaces and churches were built, the artists of the time hastened to fill these expanses with abundant, perhaps even excessive, decoration. It was as if the architect had created a large vacuum, and into it raced the painter, sculptor, and carver to fill the void. Examine again the interior of Saint Peter’s and notice the ornamentation on the ceiling, as well as the elaborate twists and turns of Bernini’s canopy. Or
Figure 5.1
The high altar at Saint Peter’s
Basilica, Rome, with baldachin by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Standing
more than ninety feet high, this
canopy is marked by twisted
columns and curving shapes,
color, and movement, all typical
of Baroque art. consider the church of Our Lady of Victory in Rome, where Bernini also worked
68 chapter five baroque art and music
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Craig Wright
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