The word ‘Baroque’ is derived from the Portuguese barrocco, a term for a misshapen pearl, and it was still with this sense of something twisted that it was first applied – to the period between about 1600 and 1750 – in the nineteenth century. In 1768, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote: ‘a Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, charged with modulations and dissonances; melody is harsh and little ...
Broadly speaking, empiricism, from the Greek empeiria (‘experience’), is a philosophical tradition that accepts as fact only what can be verified by observation, or experience, through the use of the five senses. Galileo Galilei’s support of Copernican theory was a result of his observation of the planet Venus through a telescope. His insistence that what he saw was more authoritative than the traditional teachings of the church brought down on ...
Many of the famous German Baroque organs are what is known as Werkprinzip (‘department principle’) organs, built up of several separate ‘departments’ (i.e. a manual or pedal keyboard and its chest), all linked into the single console at which the organist plays. This method of construction means that organs can be tailored to specific requirements and added to over the years. Often it is obvious from the instrument’s appearance that ...
The Italian city of Cremona has been celebrated since the sixteenth century for the manufacture of stringed instruments. The first famous family of makers there was the Amati. Andrea Amati (c. 1505–80) founded a dynasty that included his sons Antonio (c. 1538–95) and Girolamo (1561–1630). But it is the latter’s son Nicolo (1596–1684) who is usually regarded as the most outstanding of the Amatis. His instruments tend to be rather ...
During the early seventeenth century a remarkable dynasty of musicians emerged, culminating in the genius of J. S. Bach. His musical forebears are too numerous to consider individually, but a handful of them were sufficiently accomplished and imaginative as composers to deserve a mention. Their music is increasingly finding a place in present-day concert programming. Their multifarious gifts and musical versatility embraced singing, playing, teaching, composing and instrument-building. Their skills became ...
In the early Baroque bow, the horsehair (which strokes the string and produces the sound) was fastened at the hand end, known as the ‘heel’, by an immovable ‘nut’ or ‘frog’, a kind of clip. During the seventeenth century, makers developed a frog in which the mechanism for attaching the horse hair could be released and then clipped back into a different notched position. This kind of ratchet system was ...
From the late sixteenth century, castratos were engaged as singers by the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Although castration had been forbidden by Pope Gregory XIII, some children who had suffered mutilation were trained as castrato singers. Their voices were found to be much stronger, and their vocal ranges wider, than those of falsettists, whom they gradually replaced in the papal chapel. Initially castratos were engaged solely as church musicians, but ...
The term ‘counterpoint’ is derived from the Latin contra punctum (‘[note] against note’). It is generally understood to refer to a technique of composition in which continuous lines move (horizontally) against each other, as opposed to chordal writing, in which the sound can be thought of in vertical blocks. Strictly speaking, these two types of writing are called polyphony (‘many sounds’) and homophony (‘same sound’); chordal considerations are not absent ...
The bassoon, constructed in three parts, started being made in the mid-seventeenth century, perhaps in France in imitation of the flute and oboe. Built with three keys by the Denners of Nuremberg, the new instrument allowed greater virtuosity in the player than the one-piece curtal and dulcian, which began to decline in favour of the bassoon at the end of the seventeenth century. The playing position of the hands settled ...
Not to be confused with the modern valved brass-band cornet, which is a kind of small trumpet, the cornett (with that extra final ‘t’) was made of two carved, lightly curved pieces of European hardwood (such as pear) bound together and wrapped in leather. The instrument is further unusual in that it has an octagonal finish. To the body was added a mouthpiece, made variously of ivory, bone or silver. The ...
Already a successful instrument in the Renaissance, the Middle Ages and indeed earlier, the flute has a long continuous history. The Renaissance flute was made of wood in one or sometimes two pieces, with a cylindrical bore and six finger holes. Its distinguishing feature was that it was not blown into directly like the recorder: the player held it sideways to the mouth (the ‘traverse’ position) and blew across a ...
The oboe was developed in the mid-seventeenth century and the credit is usually given to Jean Hotteterre (c. 1605–90/2), a shawm player at the court of Louis XIV. Its immediate predecessor was the shawm and the oboe took over the French name for smaller shawms, hautbois or ‘loud woodwind instrument’. The distribution of the finger holes and the bore was changed, the instrument was shortened and it was made in three ...
Unlike all other instruments, the organ can actually form part of the building in which it performs and its effect on church architecture has been matched only by that of the choir. While the internal workings of the organ have changed little over the centuries, one thing that has changed is the organ case. Every instrument needs to be put away in a case or bag and the organ is ...
Developed to accompany the violin, the viola is tuned a fifth below it (losing the violin’s top E string, it acquires instead a bottom C string) and plays alto to the violin’s soprano. The viola was made as a slightly bigger violin, to be played in the same way. It has been argued that if the makers had worked out the same size-to-pitch relationship for the viola as the violin, they ...
The basic construction of the violin, with its waisted or figure-of-eight body (with a hard-wood back, usually maple, and a softer front, usually spruce), was established early in the sixteenth century. The strings (tuned, from the top downwards, as E, A, D and G) run from a peg box, where tension can be adjusted by turning the pegs, and along a fingerboard. Here the player’s left hand alters the length of ...
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