# Baroque and Romantic Music



## AntonioVitali (Jun 17, 2013)

I am trying to explain the difference between Baroque and Romantic music to non-musicians. I can identify things like ornaments and that Romantic music is very emotional. I can also identify different chord patterns and the presence/absence of key changes. How would you describe the difference between Baroque and Romantic music?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Horizontal v Vertical.

Think about it -Baroque is (basically) counterpoint -two or more melodies running (almost) in parallel (or in canon or whatever). When you move into classical, you are more concerned with the harmonies, by the time you get to the Romantics you're (almost) looking at melodies supported by chords. So in Baroque you look horizontally to follow the melody, in Romantic you look vertically to spot the chords and the harmony changes.

There are other differences e.g. limited time signatures but ornamentation is not entirely useful - even Chopin went in for trills.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

The importance of modulation is also a huge factor. In the Baroque era, key centers usually shift gradually and without much attendant fanfare. To a listener accustomed to later music, such changes might not seem like modulations at all.

In the Romantic era, modulations are an extremely important matter of structure (this was inherited from the Classical era) and they are emphasized. Additionally, the modulations can be to very remote key areas in tonal terms (ie via the circle of fifths).


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2013)

School assignment alert!!


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> The importance of modulation is also a huge factor. In the Baroque era, key centers usually shift gradually and without much attendant fanfare. To a listener accustomed to later music, such changes might not seem like modulations at all.


Agreed. There are bits of Bach which get sufficiently chromatic that the key is shifting subtly over several measures e.g. Invention 6 measures 28 through 41. Far more effective than the Romantic emphasis!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Agreed. There are bits of Bach which get sufficiently chromatic that the key is shifting subtly over several measures e.g. Invention 6 measures 28 through 41. Far more effective than the Romantic emphasis!


Hmm...I think I'll have to disagree with that one, although I love Bach to no end.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

Romantic music is much longer some pieces are like 40-55 minutes.Schubert symphony 9 lasts like 45 minutes,Elgar symphony 1 lasts 51 minutes & TCHAIKOVSKY symphonies 1,5 &6 last like 45 minutes.Romantic music also uses larger orchestras.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

AntonioVitali said:


> I am trying to explain the difference between Baroque and Romantic music to non-musicians. I can identify things like ...Romantic music is very emotional.


Baroque musicians also viewed their music as emotional (they even had a philosophical theory for it--_Affektenlehre_), so if you're going to use emotions as one of the features distinguishing Baroque from Romantic, you'll either have to specify that is us today rather than musicians back then who perceive one period as more emotional than the other, or you'll have to try to get a handle on the difference between Baroque and Romantic approaches to emotion.


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## Guest (Jun 23, 2013)

As a non-musician, I feel qualified to attempt an answer...

Baroque music sounds like it was written for courtly audiences. It tends to be very structured and restrained, and based on lots of dance rhythms and similar forms.

Romantic music sounds like it was written for a broader emerging middle class market. It is generally less structured and more focused on melodies and emotional expression.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

Baroque music is also much shorter like some music are like 5 minutes with small orchestras with string instruments.There are standards like 3 & 4 movement works.Not only that certain parts of it has themes of religions in them like BACH.Concertos & opera & dances are used here also.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

Instrumentation is huge. Baroque music will often have a harpsichord with strings and a few winds. Romantic music will have more instruments and a fuller orchestration. Form is also a good distinction. Things like gigues, allemandes, and courantes will be baroque while sonata form is more romantic.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

There are certain parts of the baroque era that carry over to the romantic era such as concertos,sonatas & string quartets.The symphony is also a big part in the romantic era that differs from the baroque era.


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## playpiano (Jul 13, 2013)

The romantic period was after the Baroque and composers played with much more emotion and the range in dynamics increased.


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## jim prideaux (May 30, 2013)

This represents an essentially personal perspective and comes with the usual caveats but I have little theoretical understanding (although music has been the great concern of my life) whilst my formal education and indeed employment has concerned the study of History.

Romantic music reflected a greater concern with the individual emotional response to circumstances and environment. As the 19th century evolved the intellectual challenges initially unleashed by the French Revolution and continued by the Industrial Revolution, the rise of liberalism and nationalism saw a greater opportunity for those with the necessary talents and abilities to express their perceptions with increasing disregard for existent orthodoxies. The constraints of classicism were already diminishing- Beethoven's symphonies represent a clear manifestation of this and I would argue that the symphonies of Schubert and Schumann represent a continuation of this process. I believe that the symphonies of Mahler which are very much concerned with the experience and 'inner life' of an individual constitute the apotheosis of this process-it is no coincidence that he worked in a circumstance that also gave encouragement to the initial work of Freud. This development was very much mirrored in other areas of culture-poetry and painting for example 'content became more significant than form'. The baroque existed in an environment that whilst often concerned with ornament and suffused with individual genius still revered the natural order and the notion of natural balance-a reflection of a world still in thrall to religion, the contemplation of the divine and acceptance of the limitations of man.
Discussion to continue?


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Ideational superstructure reflective of a pre-industrial v. industrial infrastructure? Ancien Regime class-structure v. post A.R. with its nascent middle-class; money being the substance of an increasingly open society allowing the individual to embrace a concept of "self", perhaps?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

We really are doing this guy's homework?

Hey, kid, let me help you. These note-head guys, you can't trust them. The difference between Baroque and Romantic music is unicorns. In the Baroque era, they still had unicorns, and guys like Bach rode them back and forth to work. Now the unicorn has a really unique gait, which makes it hard to develop a melody while you're riding it, and also unicorns like to hum back to you whatever you hum, only with a delay of a few seconds.

So guys like Bach would ride their unicorns around, especially back and forth to work, and with the unicorns' help they'd come up with fugues and stuff like that, and whenever a fugue was really good their unicorns would turn pink or sky blue, and everyone liked that, so that's how they made music. There's even a statue of Bach riding his unicorn in Budapest, his home town, where they loved his operas.

But then in the classical era they drove unicorns extinct using their horns to make piano benches, so the composer just sat around all day humming. They'd hum a melody, and then hum it again, lots of humming, same thing over and over again, until they got bored of it and started humming variations of it. Pretty soon the music seemed to be developing. At the end, they'd rehum the first bit again, more or less, and say they were done with the movement - though, with no one riding unicorns, the terminology of "movement" was debated.

The debate still rages about whether the death of all those unicorns was a worthwhile sacrifice for the music of Haydn and Beethoven, and there is a conspiracy theory that Mozart's wig was one quarter unicorn on its mother's side, but scholars have denounced that - the first recorded instance of anyone saying so was during the filming of _Amadeus_, though supposedly it has a history of oral transmission going back to César Franck himself.


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