Pastorale refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood.
54-492: In Baroque music , a pastorale is a movement of a melody in thirds over a drone bass, recalling the Christmas music of pifferari , players of the traditional Italian bagpipe ( zampogna ) and reed pipe ( piffero ). Pastorales are generally in 6/8 or 9/8 or 12/8 metre, at a moderate tempo. They resemble a slowed-down version of a tarantella , encompassing many of the same rhythms and melodic phrases. Common examples include
108-459: A basso continuo group (comprising chord-playing instrumentalists such as harpsichordists and lute players improvising chords from a figured bass part) while a group of bass instruments— viol , cello , double bass —played the bassline . A characteristic Baroque form was the dance suite . While the pieces in a dance suite were inspired by actual dance music, dance suites were designed purely for listening, not for accompanying dancers. During
162-437: A lute player who would play the bassline and improvise the chords and several bass instruments (e.g., bass viola , cello , double bass ) which would play the bassline. With the writing of the operas L'Orfeo and L'incoronazione di Poppea among others, Monteverdi brought considerable attention to this new genre. This Venetian style was taken handily to Germany by Heinrich Schütz , whose diverse style also evolved into
216-472: A court style composer is Jean-Baptiste Lully . He purchased patents from the monarchy to be the sole composer of operas for the French king and to prevent others from having operas staged. He completed 15 lyric tragedies and left unfinished Achille et Polyxène . Lully was an early example of a conductor ; he would beat the time with a large staff to keep his ensembles together. Musically, he did not establish
270-593: A music master to Princess Maria Barbara, who had married into the Spanish royal house. She later became Queen of Spain. Scarlatti remained in Spain for the remaining 25 years of his life and had five children there. After his wife died in 1739, he married a Spaniard, Anastasia Maxarti Ximenes. Among his compositions during his time in Madrid were most of the 555 keyboard sonatas for which he is best known. Scarlatti befriended
324-407: A solo singing accompanied by a kithara (an ancient strummed string instrument). The early realizations of these ideas, including Jacopo Peri 's Dafne and L'Euridice , marked the beginning of opera, which was a catalyst for Baroque music. Concerning music theory, the more widespread use of figured bass (also known as thorough bass ) represents the developing importance of harmony as
378-463: A technical term from scholastic logic. The term "baroque" is generally used by music historians to describe a broad range of styles from a wide geographic region, mostly in Europe, composed over a period of about 150 years. Though it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music, in an anonymous, satirical review of
432-566: A tool for expression and communication. The etymology of baroque is likely via the French baroque (which originally meant a pearl of irregular shape), and from the Portuguese barroco ("irregular pearl"); also related are the Spanish barrueco and the Italian barocco . The term is of uncertain ultimate origin, but possibly from Latin verrūca ("wart") or possibly from Baroco ,
486-462: A wide range of styles and moods is one of the hallmarks of Scarlatti's work. Another stylistic trait of this composer is the ability to mix “different forms or levels of discourse”. Other distinctive attributes of his music are: Kirkpatrick produced an edition of the sonatas in 1953, and the numbering from this edition—the Kk. or K. number—is now nearly always used. Previously, the numbering commonly used
540-530: Is Antonio Vivaldi , who later composed hundreds of works based on the principles in Corelli's trio sonatas and concerti. In contrast to these composers, Dieterich Buxtehude was not a creature of court but instead was church musician, holding the posts of organist and Werkmeister at the Marienkirche at Lübeck. His duties as Werkmeister involved acting as the secretary, treasurer, and business manager of
594-429: Is another. The Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman 's song collection Fredman's Epistles contain several pastorales, including Liksom en Herdinna, högtids klädd (Like a Shepherdess, Solemnly Dressed), which begins with a near- paraphrase of the start of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux 's French guide to the construction of pastoral verse. Pastorales are still played in the regions of Southern Italy where
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#1732773345845648-482: Is designated with a historical plaque, and his descendants still live in Madrid. He was buried at a convent there, but his grave no longer exists. Minor planet 6480 Scarlatti is named in his honour. Only a small number of Scarlatti's compositions were published during his lifetime. Scarlatti himself seems to have overseen the publication in 1738 of the most famous collection, his 30 Esercizi (Exercises). They were well received throughout Europe and were championed by
702-514: Is often labelled the Age of Absolutism , personified by Louis XIV of France. The style of palace, and the court system of manners and arts he fostered became the model for the rest of Europe. The realities of rising church and state patronage created the demand for organized public music, as the increasing availability of instruments created the demand for chamber music , which is music for a small ensemble of instrumentalists. One pre-eminent example of
756-572: The Encyclopédie : "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, and loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, and the movement limited. It appears that term comes from the word 'baroco' used by logicians". Rousseau was referring to the philosophical term baroco , in use since the 13th century to describe a type of elaborate and, for some, unnecessarily complicated academic argument. The systematic application by historians of
810-465: The Chapel Royal of Naples in 1701 and briefly worked under his father, who was then the chapel's maestro di cappella . In 1703 he revised Carlo Francesco Pollarolo 's opera Irene for performance at Naples. Soon after, his father sent him to Venice . After this, nothing is known of his life until 1709, when he went to Rome and entered the service of the exiled Polish queen Marie Casimire . It
864-689: The Classical style . Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti , he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas . He spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. Scarlatti was born in Naples , Kingdom of Naples , then belonging to the Spanish Empire . He was born in 1685, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel . He
918-529: The Renaissance period , and was followed in turn by the Classical period after a short transition (the galant style ). The Baroque period is divided into three major phases: early, middle, and late. Overlapping in time, they are conventionally dated from 1580 to 1650, from 1630 to 1700, and from 1680 to 1750. Baroque music forms a major portion of the " classical music " canon , and is widely studied, performed, and listened to. The term " baroque " comes from
972-498: The Western classical music practice. For instance, Italian composers switched to the galant style around 1730, while German composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach largely continued to write in the baroque style up to 1750. The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in
1026-420: The castrato singer Farinelli , a fellow Neapolitan also enjoying royal patronage in Madrid. Musicologist and harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick , who published a biography of Scarlatti in 1953, commented that Farinelli's correspondence provides "most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself to our day". Scarlatti died in Madrid at the age of 71. His residence at 35 Calle de Leganitos
1080-468: The concerto grosso . Whereas Lully was ensconced at court, Corelli was one of the first composers to publish widely and have his music performed all over Europe. As with Lully's stylization and organization of the opera, the concerto grosso is built on strong contrasts—sections alternate between those played by the full orchestra, and those played by a smaller group. Fast sections and slow sections were juxtaposed against each other. Numbered among his students
1134-511: The zampogna continues to thrive. The pastorale can be played by a solo zampogna player, sometimes also accompanied by the piffero (also commonly called a ciaramella, pipita, or bifera), which is a primitive key-less, double-reed, oboe-type instrument. Baroque music Baroque music ( UK : / b ə ˈ r ɒ k / or US : / b ə ˈ r oʊ k / ) refers to the period or dominant style of Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750. The Baroque style followed
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#17327733458451188-523: The Baroque era to its climax, the High Baroque. Italy: France: Italy: Proliferation: France: Germany: Bohemia : Poland : Galant music : Bach's elder sons and pupils : Mannheim school : A characteristic of the Baroque form was the dance suite . Some dance suites by Bach are called partitas , although this term is also used for other collections of pieces. While
1242-755: The Portuguese word barroco , meaning " misshapen pearl ". The works of Antonio Vivaldi , George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach are considered the pinnacle of the Baroque period. Other key composers of the Baroque era include Claudio Monteverdi , Domenico Scarlatti , Alessandro Scarlatti , Alessandro Stradella , Tomaso Albinoni , Johann Pachelbel , Henry Purcell , Georg Philipp Telemann , Jean-Baptiste Lully , Jean-Philippe Rameau , Marc-Antoine Charpentier , Arcangelo Corelli , François Couperin , Johann Hermann Schein , Heinrich Schütz , Samuel Scheidt , Dieterich Buxtehude , Gaspar Sanz , José de Nebra , Antonio Soler , Carlos Seixas , Adam Jarzębski and others, with Giovanni Battista Pergolesi being
1296-597: The Renaissance, notably Carlo Gesualdo ; However, the use of harmony directed towards tonality (a focus on a musical key that becomes the "home note" of a piece), rather than modality , marks the shift from the Renaissance into the Baroque period. This led to the idea that certain sequences of chords, rather than just notes, could provide a sense of closure at the end of a piece —one of the fundamental ideas that became known as tonality . By incorporating these new aspects of composition, Claudio Monteverdi furthered
1350-600: The Venetian Francesco Cavalli , who was principally an opera composer. Later important practitioners of this style include Antonio Cesti , Giovanni Legrenzi , and Alessandro Stradella , who additionally originated the concerto grosso style in his Sonate di viole. Arcangelo Corelli is remembered as influential for his achievements on the other side of musical technique—as a violinist who organized violin technique and pedagogy—and in purely instrumental music, particularly his advocacy and development of
1404-497: The adaptation of theories based on the plastic arts and literature to music. All of these efforts resulted in appreciable disagreement about time boundaries of the period, especially concerning when it began. In English the term acquired currency only in the 1940s, in the writings of Bukofzer and Paul Henry Lang . As late as 1960, there was still considerable dispute in academic circles, particularly in France and Britain, whether it
1458-403: The arts, especially music and drama . In reference to music, they based their ideals on a perception of Classical (especially ancient Greek ) musical drama that valued discourse and oration. Accordingly, they rejected their contemporaries' use of polyphony (multiple, independent melodic lines) and instrumental music, and discussed such ancient Greek music devices as monody , which consisted of
1512-478: The bass by bassoons. Trumpets and kettledrums were frequently added for heroic scenes. The middle Baroque period in Italy is defined by the emergence of the vocal styles of cantata , oratorio , and opera during the 1630s, and a new concept of melody and harmony that elevated the status of the music to one of equality with the words, which formerly had been regarded as pre-eminent. The florid, coloratura monody of
1566-713: The church, while his position as organist included playing for all the main services, sometimes in collaboration with other instrumentalists or vocalists, who were also paid by the church. Entirely outside of his official church duties, he organised and directed a concert series known as the Abendmusiken , which included performances of sacred dramatic works regarded by his contemporaries as the equivalent of operas. France: The work of George Frideric Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach and their contemporaries, including Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi , Tomaso Albinoni , Jean-Philippe Rameau, Georg Philipp Telemann, and others advanced
1620-431: The earliest pianofortes . (There are four for the organ and a few for small instrumental groups). Some display harmonic audacity in their use of discords, and unconventional modulations to remote keys . Though Scarlatti wrote over 500 sonatas, there is a wide variety in his works. Some are deeply serious, others are light and almost humorous. Some sound like courtly dances, others like street songs. This ability to cover
1674-446: The early Baroque gave way to a simpler, more polished melodic style. These melodies were built from short, cadentially delimited ideas often based on stylized dance patterns drawn from the sarabande or the courante . The harmonies, too, might be simpler than in the early Baroque monody, to show expression in a lighter manner on the string and crescendos and diminuendos on longer notes. The accompanying bass lines were more integrated with
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1728-518: The exact composition dates for these surviving sonatas are not known, Kirkpatrick concluded that they might all have been composed late in Scarlatti's career (after 1735), with most of them possibly written after the composer's 67th birthday. Aside from his many sonatas, Scarlatti composed several operas, cantatas, and liturgical pieces. Well-known works include the Stabat Mater of 1715, and
1782-1123: The foremost English writer on music of the eighteenth century, Charles Burney . Burney wrote that the harpsichordist Joseph Kelway was "head of the Scarlatti sect", a group of English musicians that championed Scarlatti as early as 1739, also including Thomas Roseingrave . The many sonatas unpublished during Scarlatti's lifetime have appeared in print irregularly in the past two and a half centuries. He has attracted notable admirers, including Béla Bartók , Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli , Pieter-Jan Belder , Johann Sebastian Bach , Muzio Clementi , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Ludwig van Beethoven , Carl Czerny , Franz Liszt , Johannes Brahms , Frédéric Chopin , Claude Debussy , Emil Gilels , Francis Poulenc , Olivier Messiaen , Enrique Granados , Marc-André Hamelin , Vladimir Horowitz , Ivo Pogorelić , Scott Ross (the first performer to record all 555 sonatas), Heinrich Schenker , András Schiff and Dmitri Shostakovich . Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in binary form , and some in early sonata form , and mostly written for harpsichord or
1836-450: The keyboard player what intervals are to be played above each bass note. The keyboard player would improvise a chord voicing for each bass note. Composers began concerning themselves with harmonic progressions , and also employed the tritone , perceived as an unstable interval, to create dissonance (it was used in the dominant seventh chord and the diminished chord ). An interest in harmony had also existed among certain composers in
1890-580: The last movement of Corelli 's Christmas Concerto (Op.6, No.8), the third movement of Vivaldi 's Spring concerto from The Four Seasons , the Pifa movement of Handel 's Messiah , the first movements of Bach 's Pastorale (BWV 590) for organ, and the Sinfonia that opens part II of his Christmas Oratorio as an introduction to the angelic announcement to the shepherds. Scarlatti wrote some examples in his keyboard sonatas, and many other composers in
1944-433: The linear underpinnings of polyphony. Harmony is the result of counterpoint , and figured bass is a visual representation of those harmonies commonly employed in musical performance. With figured bass, numbers, accidentals or symbols were placed above the bassline that was read by keyboard instrument players such as harpsichord players or pipe organists (or lutenists ). The numbers, accidentals or symbols indicated to
1998-568: The melody, producing a contrapuntal equivalence of the parts that later led to the device of an initial bass anticipation of the aria melody. This harmonic simplification also led to a new formal device of the differentiation of recitative (a more spoken part of opera) and aria (a part of opera that used sung melodies). The most important innovators of this style were the Romans Luigi Rossi and Giacomo Carissimi , who were primarily composers of cantatas and oratorios, respectively, and
2052-401: The mixed vocal/instrumental forms of opera , cantata and oratorio and the instrumental forms of the solo concerto and sonata as musical genres. Dense, complex polyphonic music, in which multiple independent melody lines were performed simultaneously (a popular example of this is the fugue ), was an important part of many Baroque choral and instrumental works. Overall, Baroque music was
2106-561: The most prominent Baroque composer of sacred music. The Baroque saw the formalization of common-practice tonality , an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key ; this type of harmony has continued to be used extensively in Western classical and popular music . During the Baroque era, professional musicians were expected to be accomplished improvisers of both solo melodic lines and accompaniment parts. Baroque concerts were typically accompanied by
2160-412: The period composers experimented with finding a fuller sound for each instrumental part (thus creating the orchestra), made changes in musical notation (the development of figured bass as a quick way to notate the chord progression of a song or piece), and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established
2214-428: The pieces in a dance suite were inspired by actual dance music, dance suites were intended for listening, not for accompanying dancers. Composers used a variety of different movements in their dance suites. A dance suite commonly has these movements : The four dance types (allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue) make up the majority of 17th-century suites. Later suites interpolate one or more additional dances between
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2268-618: The première in October 1733 of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734. The critic implied that the novelty in this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was filled with unremitting dissonances, constantly changed key and meter, and speedily ran through every compositional device. Jean-Jacques Rousseau , who was a musician and composer as well as philosopher, wrote in 1768 in
2322-417: The sarabande and gigue: There are many other dance forms as well as other pieces that could be included in a suite, such as Polonaise , Loure , Scherzo , Air , etc. Domenico Scarlatti Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of
2376-471: The string-dominated norm for orchestras, which was inherited from the Italian opera, and the characteristically French five-part disposition (violins, violas—in hautes-contre, tailles and quintes sizes—and bass violins ) had been used in the ballet from the time of Louis XIII. He did, however, introduce this ensemble to the lyric theatre, with the upper parts often doubled by recorders, flutes, and oboes, and
2430-480: The subsequent period. Idiomatic instrumental textures became increasingly prominent. In particular, the style luthé —the irregular and unpredictable breaking up of chordal progressions, in contrast to the regular patterning of broken chords—referred to since the early 20th century as style brisé , was established as a consistent texture in French music by Robert Ballard , in his lute books of 1611 and 1614, and by Ennemond Gaultier . This idiomatic lute figuration
2484-774: The term "baroque" to music of this period is a relatively recent development. In 1919, Curt Sachs became the first to apply the five characteristics of Heinrich Wölfflin 's theory of the Baroque systematically to music. Critics were quick to question the attempt to transpose Wölfflin's categories to music, however, and in the second quarter of the 20th century independent attempts were made by Manfred Bukofzer (in Germany and, after his immigration, in America) and by Suzanne Clercx-Lejeune (in Belgium) to use autonomous, technical analysis rather than comparative abstractions, in order to avoid
2538-546: The transition between the baroque and classical eras, particularly French ( Marc-Antoine Charpentier , 8 sets, H.479, H.482, H.483, H.484, H.485, H.486, H.492, H.493), used this technique. Rossini famously included a Pastorale section in his William Tell Overture . The Italian pastorale Tu scendi dalle stelle , sometimes called "Carol of the Bagpipers" ( Canzone d'i zampognari ), is a widely popular Christmas carol by St. Alfonso Liguori , and Pietro Yon 's Gesù bambino
2592-476: The transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition—the heritage of Renaissance polyphony ( prima pratica ) and the new basso continuo technique of the Baroque ( seconda pratica ). With basso continuo, a small group of musicians would play the bassline and the chords which formed the accompaniment for a melody . The basso continuo group would typically use one or more keyboard players and
2646-687: Was Maestro di Cappella at St. Peter's from 1715 to 1719. In 1719 he travelled to London to direct his opera Narciso at the King's Theatre . According to Vicente Bicchi, Papal Nuncio in Portugal at the time, Scarlatti arrived in Lisbon on 29 November 1719. There he taught music to the Portuguese princess Maria Magdalena Barbara . He left Lisbon on 28 January 1727 for Rome, where he married Maria Caterina Gentili on 6 May 1728. In 1729 he moved to Seville , staying for four years. In 1733, he went to Madrid as
2700-454: Was from the 1906 edition compiled by Neapolitan pianist Alessandro Longo (L. numbers). Kirkpatrick's numbering is chronological, while Longo's ordering is a result of his arbitrarily grouping the sonatas into "suites". In 1967 the Italian musicologist Giorgio Pestelli published a revised catalogue (using P. numbers), which corrected what he considered to be some anachronisms , and added some sonatas missing from Kirkpatrick's edition. Although
2754-401: Was later transferred to the harpsichord, for example in the keyboard music of Louis Couperin and Jean-Henri D'Anglebert , and continued to be an important influence on keyboard music throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries (in, for example, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Frédéric Chopin ). The rise of the centralized court is one of the economic and political features of what
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#17327733458452808-535: Was meaningful to lump together music as diverse as that of Jacopo Peri , Domenico Scarlatti , and Johann Sebastian Bach under a single rubric. Nevertheless, the term has become widely used and accepted for this broad range of music. It may be helpful to distinguish the Baroque from both the preceding ( Renaissance ) and following ( Classical ) periods of musical history. Throughout the Baroque era, new developments in music originated in Italy, after which it took up to 20 years before they were broadly adopted in rest of
2862-423: Was the sixth of ten children of the composer and teacher Alessandro Scarlatti . His older brother Pietro Filippo was also a musician. Scarlatti first studied music under his father. Other composers who may have been his early teachers include Gaetano Greco , Francesco Gasparini , and Bernardo Pasquini , all of whom may have influenced his musical style. Scarlatti was appointed as a composer and organist at
2916-555: Was there he met Thomas Roseingrave . Scarlatti was already an accomplished harpsichordist ; there is a story of a trial of skill with George Frideric Handel at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome, where Scarlatti was judged possibly superior to Handel on the harpsichord , although inferior on the organ . Later in life, he was known to cross himself in veneration when speaking of Handel's skill. While in Rome, Scarlatti composed several operas for Queen Casimir's private theatre. He
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