Baroque Music: Operas, Oratorios, Suites, and Dances
Context
The Baroque period ran from the end of the 16th century, about 1597, the date of the first performance of an opera, to the second half of the 18th century, 1750, Bach’s death, 1759, Handel’s death.
Composers working in the Baroque era needed a patron, someone wealthy to pay for their music.
Composers often wrote music specifically for their patrons, mainly for royal events (operas, concertos), church services (mass, oratorio), and dances (suites).
Most Important Genres
Opera
Opera started in Italy as a musical form and grew into the favorite Western classical musical genre. Opera is an art form that combines a text (libretto) and a musical score. It includes solo sung parts (arias and recitatives), choruses, a full orchestra, and sometimes dance. It is acted out, so it includes scenery and costumes.
An opera tells us a story. Opera seria, the most prestigious form of Italian opera, is about historical or mythological topics: Orfeo by Monteverdi, Giulio Cesare by Handel. Opera buffa (Italian comic opera) is about everyday situations and was very popular in the 18th century (Mozart).
Oratorio
Oratorio is a musical genre born about the same time as opera. At first, it was very similar to operas: it had arias, choruses, and recitatives, and it incorporated an orchestra.
The main differences were that an oratorio was based on a sacred story, making it appropriate for performance in churches. Composers took their stories from the Bible or from the lives of saints. Later, oratorio developed as a musical presentation without acting.
Handel was a German-born Baroque composer who wrote oratorios with texts from the Bible. Messiah, an oratorio about Jesus’s life, is one of the most famous examples. The very well-known Hallelujah chorus part is part of Handel’s Messiah.
Suite
The suite is one of the most popular types of composition for dance. It is made up of at least four contrasting dances. Composers usually linked them by putting them in the same key or the minor key: D major and D minor.
By the 1750s, the suite became old-fashioned, and few composers wrote suites at that time because the symphony and concerto were more fashionable styles.
Suites were played for general listening and to celebrate big occasions.
Many famous Baroque composers wrote suites for orchestra. Bach produced multiple suites for cello, violin, flute, and other instruments, as well as keyboard. Bach’s Four Orchestral Suites and Handel’s Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks are considered the most famous suites.
The Dances
The most popular four dances in a Baroque suite are:
- Minuet: An elegant dance in triple meter, usually ¾. It is performed at a medium tempo. It was slow, ceremonious, and graceful.
- Sarabande: A slow and serious dance also in triple meter, but it sounds very different. The dance has a distinctive rhythm of quarter and half notes in alternation.
- Gavotte: A fairly quick dance in duple meter, usually 2/2. When present in the Baroque suite, the gavotte is often played after the sarabande and before the gigue, along with other optional dances such as the minuet. The gavotte remained popular until the French Revolution.
- Gigue: The liveliest dance, usually in 6/8, and came at the end of the suite. They were danced by couples in formal ballet style and became very popular in aristocratic circles of Europe.
Baroque Orchestra
Some suites are played by solo harpsichord, others by a Baroque orchestra that were smaller than modern orchestras.
- Main sections (strings): violins, violas, cellos, and double bass.
- Bass line and harmony parts: harpsichord. This is called basso continuo.
- Other instruments, like the flute, oboe, bassoon, horn, trumpet, and timpani, were added to the orchestra depending on the occasion or the patron’s cash flow/money.