Baroque Period of Music

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The Baroque period was an era that took place between 1600-1725. It follows the Renaissance era that was from 1400 to 1600. In Baroque music, representation of extreme affections called for a richer vocabulary. Opera is one of the foremost innovations of the Baroque era which allowed the realization of extreme affections in music. It represents melodic freedom. In early Baroque era, no tonal direction existed, but experiments in pre-tonal harmony led to the creation of tonality. The philosophy of Baroque music is that music represents the emotions and affections of real. It excites the listener’s emotions. Music must express emotions and it must move the listener. It gives the listener feeling of the music. Baroque music has unique specific style and character and it is an idiomatic form. Composers began to write music specifically for a particular medium, such as the violin or the solo voice, rather than music with interchangeable. Before 1600, as the church had been the centre of music, vocal music had been dominating, and the instrumental music had been written for any instrument. Many of the well known musician from the first part of the baroque period hail from Italy, including Monteverdi, Corelli and Vivaldi. By the mid eighteenth century, our focus shifts to the German composers Bach and Handel.) Many of the forms identified with baroque music originated in Italy, including the cantata, concerto, sonata, oratorio and opera. After being ignored for decades, baroque music has become increasingly popular over the last fifty years. As part of this new interest, scholars and musicians have spent countless hours trying to figure out how the music might have sounded to 17th and 18th century audiences. While we will never be able to recreate a performance precisely, their work has unearthed several major differences between baroque and modern

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