Musical Forms In The Baroque Era

Musical Forms In The Baroque Era

Allemande

Allemande is one of the most popular instrumental dance forms in Baroque music.

Cantata

Cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir.

Concerto

Concerto is a musical composition usually composed in three parts or movements, in which (usually) one solo instrument (for instance, a piano, violin,cello or flue) is accompanied by an orchestra.

Early Baroque Concerto

The term "concerto" was initially used to denote works involving voices and instruments in which the instruments had independent parts—as opposed to the Renaissance common practice in which the instruments that accompanied voices only doubled the voice parts.

Late Baroque Concerto

The concerto began to take its modern shape in the late Baroque period. Starting from a form called Concerto grosso introduced by Arcangelo Corelli, it evolved into the form we understand today as performance of a soloist with/against an orchestra.

Classical Concerto

The concerti of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach are perhaps the best links between those of the Baroque period and those of Mozart. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach keyboard concerti contain some brilliant soloistic writing. Some of them have movements that run into one another without a break, and there are frequent cross-movement thematic references. 

Romantic Concerto

In the romantic era, the concerto largely narrowed to three genres: the violin concerto, the cello concerto and the piano concerto. Virtually no major composer wrote concertos for wind instruments.

Concerto Grosso

The concerto grosso (Italian for big concert(o), plural concerti grossi) is a form of Baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno). This is in contrast to the concerto which features a single solo instrument with the melody line, accompanied by the orchestra.

Fugue

A fugue is a compositional technique (in classical music) in two or more voices, built on a subject (theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and recurs frequently in the course of the composition.

Gavotte


Gavotte originated as a French folk dance.It is notated in 4/4 or 2/2 time and is of moderate tempo. The distinctive rhythmic feature of the 18th-century French court gavotte is that phrases begin in the middle of the bar; that is, in either 4/4 or 2/2 time, the phrases begin on the third quarter note(crotchet) of the bar, creating a half-measure (half-bar) upbeat.

On the contrary, the music for the earlier court gavotte, first described by Thoinot Arbeau in 1589, invariably began on the downbeat of a duple measure, and the various folk gavottes found in mid-20th century Brittany were danced to music in 4/4, 2/4, 9/8, and 5/8 time.

Gigue

The gigue is a lively Baroque Dance originating from the British jig. It was imported into France in the mid-17th century and usually appears at the end of a suite. The gigue was probably never a court dance, but it was danced by nobility on social occasions and several court composers wrote gigues.

Minuet

A minuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. 

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theater, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece—though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form. In an oratorio there is generally little or no interaction between the characters, and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology, including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for performance in the church. 

Partita

Partita was originally the name for a single-instrumental piece of music (16th and 17th centuries), but Johann Kuhnau,Thomaskantor,and later German composers (notably Johann Sebatian Bach) used it for collections of musical pieces, as a synonym for suite.

Passacaglia

The passacaglia  is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple time.

Prelude

A prelude  is a short piece of music, the form of which may vary from piece to piece.The prelude can be thought of as a preface. It may stand on its own or introduce another work. While, during the Baroque era, for example, it may have served as an introduction to succeeding movements of a work that were usually longer and more complex, it may also have been a stand alone piece of work during the Romantic era. It generally features a small number of rhythmic and melodic motifs that recur through the piece. Stylistically, the prelude is improvisatory in nature. The prelude can also refer to an overture, particularly to those seen in an opera or an oratorio.

Sarabande

In music, the sarabande  is a dance in triple time. The second and third beats of each measure are often tied, giving the dance a distinctive rhythm of quarter notes and eighth notes in alternation.

Sinfonia

Sinfonia is the Italian word for symphony. In English it most commonly refers to a 17th- or 18th-century orchestral piece used as an introduction, interlude, or postlude to an opera, oratorio, cantata, or suite. It has also sometimes been used for other types of music.

Sonata

In the Baroque, the term "sonata" was applied to a variety of works for solo instrument such as keyboard or violin, and for groups of instruments.In the transition from the Baroque to the Classical period, the term sonata underwent a change in usage, coming to mean a chamber-music genre for either a solo instrument (usually a keyboard), or a solo melody instrument with piano.