# Do you like early baroque? If you do, what are the musics that you adore very much?



## atsizat (Sep 14, 2015)

For me, there is no music from early baroque that I can like or adore. I am looking for the musics of early baroque but I couldn't like any music so far. It was like there was no good job before Bach and Vivaldi. If there are musics that you adore very much, you can share it and I will check them. So far I couldn't like any music from early baroque.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda is an inspirational work for me. Broke new ground when it was written by the great Claudio Monteverdi. Innovative in both the dramatic use of unforeseen instrumental techniques as well as very early homophony as recitative. Word painting abounds. It's also rather concise as far as storytelling goes; the whole thing is over in about 20 minutes.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda is an inspirational work for me. Broke new ground when it was written by the great Claudio Monteverdi. Innovative in both the dramatic use of unforeseen instrumental techniques as well as very early homophony as recitative. Word painting abounds. It's also rather concise as far as storytelling goes; the whole thing is over in about 20 minutes.


Love it because it's so angry and agressive and war like.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Purcell for starters, also Lawes  for the English. Lully and Francois Couperin for the French. Buxtehude and Biber for the Germans.

If you go back a bit, try Sweelinck or Bull.

I think you'll find yourself spoiled for choice in the seventeenth century. All the links are to our own composer guestbooks.


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

Love the music around of Florentine Camerata, monody with light accompaniment, works by Vincenzo Galilei, Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini (also his daughter Francesca) and Cavalieri.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I'm not sure what you mean by "early" baroque - I suppose "early" means Monteverdi really, but if you're just saying "before Bach and Vivaldi" then some obvious names from 17th-century include Biber, Buxtehude, Charpentier, Corelli, Monteverdi, Lully, Pandolfi, Purcell, and Schütz. If you can't find anything to like in their work, then yeah, I guess you don't like pre-Bach music.

Aside from those, some of my particular favourites from the 17th century are:
Merula: Hor ch'e tempo di morire
Schmelzer: Lamento sopra la morte Ferdinandi III
Johann Christoph Bach: Lamento (Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte in meinem Haupte)


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Off the top of my head:

J. H. Schein's various "Banchetto Musicale" suites keep me excited, as does much of Heinrich Schütz's works. Give this latter one a chance. It starts slow and builds. Absolutely beautiful (for me).

It could also be you're just not into early baroque. No need to force it. There's plenty in late baroque to explore. I like the early baroque partly because of all the Picardy thirds, a carry over from the Renaissance where a piece or phrase is in minor mode but the phrase ends/resolves on a major chord. It's as if the composers just couldn't end a phrase in minor, but the effect is scintillating to me.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Weston said:


> It's as if the composers just couldn't end a phrase in minor, but the effect is scintillating to me.


Minor chords were until the 18th century considered incapable of being a resolution. Until sometime in the 15th century, major chords were also considered incapable of being a resolution...


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Heinrich Scheidemann, an important influence on Buxtehude and Bach. I believe all of his organ works have been recorded on Naxos. He is still unjustly obscure.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Heinrich Scheidemann, an important influence on Buxtehude and Bach. I believe all of his organ works have been recorded on Naxos. He is still unjustly obscure.


I like the Naxos CDs by Julia Brown and Peter van Dijk. There's a recording of a magnificat by Leonhardt which is very special for me, as is Foccroulle's CD. Peter Dirkson made an attractive harpsichord recording too.


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