# (again) a Baroque thread, what make a music sounds Baroque?



## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

if you guys can tell again in more simple but direct answer: what make a piece/music sounds Baroque? talking strickly only in musical context, minus all the background timeline and philosophy context.

and for example, how Vivaldi's Summer III Presto (aka. Storm) can be categorized as Baroque while Beethoven's Minuet in G is a Romantic?

if possible....


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

No Beethoven is Romantic. Beethoven was a CLASSICAL composer.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

jurianbai said:


> if you guys can tell again in more simple but direct answer: what make a piece/music sounds Baroque? talking strickly only in musical context, minus all the background timeline and philosophy context.
> 
> and for example, how Vivaldi's Summer III Presto (aka. Storm) can be categorized as Baroque while Beethoven's Minuet in G is a Romantic?
> 
> if possible....


The key word in your question was what made a piece _sound_ Baroque. Well, probably several things but I guess the most common element of them all is the basso continuo line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figured_bass


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## Pieck (Jan 12, 2011)

IV V I coda


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## Guest (Apr 5, 2011)

Give a listen to a bunch of baroque music.

Then you'll know.

And after you have listened to enough baroque and classical to distinguish them clearly, give the overture to Gluck's _Orfeo ed Euridice_ a listen!


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Counterpoint, focus on separate voices, square tempo/lack of rubato, dance forms, A415 or lower, lots of ornamentation like trills and shakes, lots of semiquavers, minor improvisation allowed, severe lack of distorted electric guitar, diatonic tonality as opposed to earlier church modes of the Renaissance or the chromaticism/atonality of the Romantic/Modern era, lots of cadences, lack of the Amen break and Roland TB-303, and as HC said basso continuo.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Pieck said:


> IV V I coda


This is a principle that applies to music in general in order to properly establish tonalities, and so will be found through the Common Practice Era, and even modern tonal music.


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## Pieck (Jan 12, 2011)

emiellucifuge said:


> This is a principle that applies to music in general in order to properly establish tonalities, and so will be found through the Common Practice Era, and even modern tonal music.


Couple of days ago I listened to Vivaldi's VCs and every phrase ends with the solo violin playing the dominant -> leading tone -> tonic.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Yes, Haydn does it too,
Mozart a little less, Beethoven even less.
Brahms a little lesser.
Shostakovich ocasionally...
Boulez never


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

emiellucifuge said:


> This is a principle that applies to music in general in order to properly establish tonalities, and so will be found through the Common Practice Era, and even modern tonal music.


Actually in Classisim a ii V7 I is more common.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

the harmonization, counterpoint played on Basso continuo, that is basic sound of Baroque. for that solo piece, is we can define on how a _melody_ is Baroque? if we say the melody will be predicable , following the scale only some diminished / 7th as accent? but how can the Baroqist stand for long period (about 100 year?? ) with this setup, the composer himself must be bored of listening the same mindset of music.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

That's why the music evolved into Classicism but even the best of later periods (Mozart, Brahms etc.) found the Baroque counterpoint worth rejuvenating.


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## 1648 (Mar 4, 2011)

If fear there is no simple, direct answer to this, as "Baroque" is quite the blanket term already, commonly applied to everything from Monteverdi and Schütz to Bach and Rameau.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

I have been thinking about this question since it was posted a few days ago. I see similar questions in other forums. The main problem is one cannot DESCRIBE music - can't put it into words. One can write reams and reams of words ABOUT a piece of music, but it is only by LISTENING to it that you can really 'get' it. I think that's a good thing.

Even if it were possible to _describe_ music better, I still think this would be an almost impossible task. The characteristics that make Baroque music sound Baroque are those of STYLE. One can't verbalise this. For every 'description' of baroque characteristic, I could find a piece from any other period that could fit that description. It is only by repeated listening that one can fully grasp what makes Baroque music sound the way it does. And as 1648 has correctly stated, the loose term Baroque (not invented until the 1920s, remember) covers 150 years of music from composers as diverse in time, nationality and style as Biber, Schütz, Charpentier, Lully, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Couperin, Vivaldi and Bach. They ALL sound different from each other ....


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Rasa said:


> Actually in Classisim a ii V7 I is more common.


True that though both are fundamentally the same


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

emiellucifuge said:


> True that though both are fundamentally the same


Harmonically related, but not stylistically: Baroque - Classicist


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## Il Seraglio (Sep 14, 2009)

I don't think I could put it half as eloquently as Argus (disagree about lack of rubato though), but I think it's a very easy period to recognise in terms of style, despite the massive variety between the music of France, Italy and Germany. However, the lines between baroque and classical blur somewhat when you get to composers such as Hasse, who sounds about halfway between the music of Handel and Cimarosa. 

Incidentally, I consider Handel and his contemporaries as being far closer to the style of 18th century classical composers Cimarosa, Haydn and even Gluck than 17th century baroque composers such as Lully, Charpentier or Monteverdi, whose exotic sense of tonality is not so far removed from Renaissance music.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

Delicious Manager said:


> I have been thinking about this question since it was posted a few days ago. I see similar questions in other forums. The main problem is one cannot DESCRIBE music - can't put it into words. One can write reams and reams of words ABOUT a piece of music, but it is only by LISTENING to it that you can really 'get' it. I think that's a good thing.
> 
> Even if it were possible to _describe_ music better, I still think this would be an almost impossible task. The characteristics that make Baroque music sound Baroque are those of STYLE. One can't verbalise this. For every 'description' of baroque characteristic, I could find a piece from any other period that could fit that description. It is only by repeated listening that one can fully grasp what makes Baroque music sound the way it does. And as 1648 has correctly stated, the loose term Baroque (not invented until the 1920s, remember) covers 150 years of music from composers as diverse in time, nationality and style as Biber, Schütz, Charpentier, Lully, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Couperin, Vivaldi and Bach. They ALL sound different from each other ....


I afraid this is also what I am thinking and what triggered my question.
In visual art, you should have something really ornamental, something big in scale, something outside the proportion of that Renaissance / Gothic measurement (outside the Golden ratio proportions) and yet..... something simpler than that also. In design and visual art, this is somehow quite straightforward rules.

some can add polyphony into what made it sound Baroque. And then there are many anomalies.


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## AntonioVitali (Jun 17, 2013)

Baroque music sounds very "upright" and "formal". It consistently followed counterpoint rules resulting a choreographed sound with very little emotional expression that is seen more in the Romantic Era.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

AntonioVitali said:


> Baroque music sounds very "upright" and "formal". It consistently followed counterpoint rules resulting a choreographed sound with very little emotional expression that is seen more in the Romantic Era.


Nope. That's only performance. Listen to some of Bach's dance tunes well played or this on authentic instruments yet:






Listen also to some of the religious works.

I love this Mattheson (1740) quote about Handel (in 1703):

"He composed at that time long, long arias, and almost endless cantatas, which had still not yet the right skill or the right taste, albeit a perfect harmony; he was, however, soon fashioned in quite another form by the high school of opera."

In other words, rules + skill / experience = great music + great emotion. Don't forget things like Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Dido's Lament:






It is also included in many classical music textbooks on account of its exemplary use of ground bass.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

Why don't you just read about the musical qualities? Here's the wikipedia article which is fairly thorough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music
I don't think anyone has mentioned form yet though.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

jurianbai said:


> if you guys can tell again in more simple but direct answer: what make a piece/music sounds Baroque? talking strickly only in musical context, minus all the background timeline and philosophy context.
> 
> and for example, how Vivaldi's Summer III Presto (aka. Storm) can be categorized as Baroque while Beethoven's Minuet in G is a Romantic?
> 
> if possible....


I am at a loss for an answer but to say that the music is different and in Baroque the singers stutter--not really but I don't know how to describe it. Staccato singing maybe?


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

jurianbai said:


> if you guys can tell again in more simple but direct answer: what make a piece/music sounds Baroque? talking strickly only in musical context, minus all the background timeline and philosophy context.
> 
> and for example, how Vivaldi's Summer III Presto (aka. Storm) can be categorized as Baroque while Beethoven's Minuet in G is a Romantic?
> 
> if possible....


First and foremost would be sequencing. The "classical" composers eschewed sequencing. Mozart only "discovered" sequencing after renewing his study of Bach very late in his life. It begins to show up in his last works. The second would be the manner of modulation; and that was tied in with melodic invention. Baroque composers always had an eye toward counterpoint, canonic and fugual subjects. Even if they didn't necessary use every species of counterpoint with a given subject, the influence was still there. When writing fugues, for example, certain subjects don't easily lend themselves to fugal counterpoint. This habit, though, often made their themes more consistently triadic than what you might find in later music. There's also the dominant ABA (Da Capo) form, very different from the Sonata forms it evolved into. King Frederick the Great detested Baroque music because to him, it all smacked of the church-which he despised in equal measure. (And yet Frederick confessed that one of his most cherished memories was the visit by JS Bach-Frederick was sensible enough to comprehend Bach's greatness.) What Frederick meant by music of the Church was not figured base (because all of his court composers still composed their sonatas using figured base) but counterpoint. He did not want any counterpoint whatsoever. There was to a predominant melody and accompaniment. There was to be none of the learnèd art. Hope that helps a little?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

vtpoet said:


> Mozart only "discovered" sequencing after renewing his study of Bach very late in his life. It begins to show up in his last works.


Can you say more about this?


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

-basso continuo-


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Purcell's King Arthur is a typical sound (great piece BTW) for the sake of an example, it's usually heavier in sound than later styles, but not as much as Medieval music; at least IMO.


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