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68-764: The Zorian Quartet was an English all-female string quartet ensemble. It was founded in 1942 by and named after violinist Olive Zorian . It gave the premiere performances of, and made the first recordings of, several compositions for string quartet by English composers, including Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett . It also gave the premiere English performances of quartets by Ernest Bloch and Béla Bartók . The original members were Olive Zorian (1916–65, violin I); Marjorie Lavers (violin II); Winifred Copperwheat (1905–76, viola ); and Norina Semino ( cello ). Some sources say that

136-459: 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

204-437: 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

272-472: 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

340-543: A location (e.g. the Budapest Quartet ). Established quartets may undergo changes in membership whilst retaining their original name. 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 the Renaissance period , and

408-584: A number of quartets: "Beethoven in particular is credited with developing the genre in an experimental and dynamic fashion, especially in his later series of quartets written in the 1820s up until his death. Their forms and ideas inspired and continue to inspire musicians and composers, such as Wagner and Bartók ." Schubert's last musical wish was to hear Beethoven's Quartet in C ♯ minor, Op. 131 , which he heard on 14 November 1828, just five days before his death. Upon listening to an earlier performance of this quartet, Schubert had remarked, "After this, what

476-435: A perspective] is the notion that Haydn "invented" the string quartet... Although he may still be considered the 'father' of the 'Classical' string quartet, he is not the creator of the sting quartet genre itself... This old and otiose myth not only misrepresents the achievements of other excellent composers, but also distorts the character and qualities of Haydn's opp. 1, 2 and 9". The musicologist Cliff Eisen contextualizes

544-407: 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

612-463: 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

680-566: 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 ,

748-464: A total of five string quartets; he won Pulitzer Prizes for two of them: No. 2 and No. 3 . Three important string quartets were written by Helmut Lachenmann . The late 20th century also saw the string quartet expand in various ways: Morton Feldman's vast Second String Quartet is one of the longest ever written, and Karlheinz Stockhausen's Helikopter-Streichquartett is to be performed by the four musicians in four helicopters. Quartets written during

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816-530: 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

884-646: Is left for us to write?" Wagner, when reflecting on Op. 131's first movement, said that it "reveals the most melancholy sentiment expressed in music". Of the late quartets , Beethoven cited his own favorite as Op. 131 , which he saw as his most perfect single work. Mendelssohn 's six string quartets span the full range of his career, from 1828 to 1847; Schumann 's three string quartets were all written in 1842 and dedicated to Mendelssohn, whose quartets Schumann had been studying in preparation, along with those of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Several Romantic-era composers wrote only one quartet, while Dvořák wrote 14. In

952-514: 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

1020-572: 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

1088-541: The Baroque trio sonata , in which two solo instruments performed with a continuo section consisting of a bass instrument (such as the cello) and keyboard . A very early example is a four-part sonata for string ensemble by the Italian composer Gregorio Allegri that might be considered an important prototype. By the early 18th century, composers were often adding a third soloist; and moreover it became common to omit

1156-498: 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

1224-460: The classical period usually had four movements, with a structure similar to that of a symphony : The positions of the slow movement and third movement are flexible. For example, in Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn , three have a minuet followed by a slow movement and three have the slow movement before the minuet. Substantial modifications to the typical structure were already present by

1292-468: 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

1360-456: The "classical" string quartet around 1757, but the consensus amongst most authorities is that Haydn is responsible for the genre in its currently accepted form. The string quartet enjoyed no recognized status as an ensemble in the way that two violins with basso continuo – the so-called ' trio sonata ' – had for more than a hundred years. Even the composition of Haydn's earliest string quartets owed more to chance than artistic imperative. During

1428-621: The 1750s established the ensemble as a group of four more-or-less equal partners. Since that time, the string quartet has been considered a prestigious form; writing for four instruments with broadly similar characteristics both constrains and tests a composer. String quartet composition flourished in the Classical era , and Mozart , Beethoven and Schubert each wrote a number of them. Many Romantic and early-twentieth-century composers composed string quartets, including Mendelssohn , Schumann , Brahms , Dvořák , Janáček , and Debussy . There

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1496-533: The 1750s, when the young composer was still working mainly as a teacher and violinist in Vienna, he would occasionally be invited to spend time at the nearby castle at Weinzierl of the music-loving Austrian nobleman Karl Joseph Weber, Edler von Fürnberg. There he would play chamber music in an ad hoc ensemble consisting of Fürnberg's steward, a priest, and a local cellist, and when the Baron asked for some new music for

1564-523: 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

1632-510: The Op. 20 quartets as follows: "Haydn's quartets of the late 1760s and early 1770s [opp. 9, 17, and 20] are high points in the early history of the quartet. Characterized by a wide range of textures, frequent asymmetries and theatrical gestures...these quartets established the genre's four-movement form, its larger dimensions, and ...its greater aesthetic pretensions and expressive range." That Haydn's string quartets were already "classics" that defined

1700-814: 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

1768-597: 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

1836-600: 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

1904-497: 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

1972-403: 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

2040-478: 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

2108-713: 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

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2176-616: The difference between one masterpiece and the next." The musicologist Roger Hickman has however demurred from this consensus view. He notes a change in string quartet writing towards the end of the 1760s, featuring characteristics which are today thought of as essential to the genre – scoring for two violins, viola and cello, solo passages, and absence of actual or potential basso continuo accompaniment. Noting that at this time other composers than Haydn were writing works conforming to these 'modern' criteria, and that Haydn's earlier quartets did not meet them, he suggests that "one casualty [of such

2244-469: The early "quartets" are actually symphonies missing their wind parts. They have five movements and take the form: fast movement, minuet and trio I, slow movement, minuet and trio II, and fast finale . As Ludwig Finscher notes, they draw stylistically on the Austrian divertimento tradition. After these early efforts, Haydn did not return to the string quartet for several years, but when he did so, it

2312-446: 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

2380-459: The finales of nos. 2, 5 and 6. After Op. 20, it becomes harder to point to similar major jumps in the string quartet's development in Haydn's hands, though not due to any lack of invention or application on the composer's part. As Donald Tovey put it: "with Op. 20 the historical development of Haydn's quartets reaches its goal; and further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply

2448-419: The first movement in sonata form , allegro, in the tonic key; a slow movement in a related key and a minuet and trio follow; and the fourth movement is often in rondo form or sonata rondo form , in the tonic key. Some string quartet ensembles play together for many years and become established and promoted as an entity in a similar way to an instrumental soloist or an orchestra . The early history of

2516-459: The genre by 1801 can be judged by Ignaz Pleyel 's publication in Paris of a "complete" series that year, and the quartet's evolution as vehicle for public performance can be judged by Pleyel's ten-volume set of miniature scores intended for hearers rather than players – early examples of this genre of music publishing . Since Haydn's day, the string quartet has been prestigious and considered one of

2584-575: The genre. During his tenure as Master of the Queen's Music , Peter Maxwell Davies produced a set of ten entitled the Naxos Quartets (to a commission from Naxos Records ) from 2001 to 2007. Margaret Jones Wiles composed over 50 string quartets. David Matthews has written eleven, and Robin Holloway both five quartets and six "quartettini". Over nearly five decades, Elliott Carter wrote

2652-430: The group to play, Haydn's first string quartets were born. It is not clear whether any of these works ended up in the two sets published in the mid-1760s and known as Haydn's Opp. 1 and 2 ('Op. 0' is a quartet included in some early editions of Op. 1, and only rediscovered in the 1930s), but it seems reasonable to assume that they were at least similar in character. Haydn's early biographer Georg August Griesinger tells

2720-444: The keyboard part, letting the cello support the bass line alone. Thus when Alessandro Scarlatti wrote a set of six works entitled Sonata à Quattro per due Violini, Violetta [viola], e Violoncello senza Cembalo (Sonata for four instruments: two violins, viola, and cello without harpsichord), this was a natural evolution from the existing tradition. The musicologist Hartmut Schick has suggested that Franz Xaver Richter invented

2788-450: 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

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2856-433: 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

2924-568: 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

2992-401: 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

3060-469: The modern era, the string quartet played a key role in the development of Schoenberg (who added a soprano in his String Quartet No. 2 ), Bartók , and Shostakovich especially. After the Second World War , some composers, such as Messiaen questioned the relevance of the string quartet and avoided writing them. However, from the 1960s onwards, many composers have shown a renewed interest in

3128-561: 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

3196-412: 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

3264-428: 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

3332-618: 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

3400-454: The progressive aims of the Op. 20 set of 1772, in particular, makes them the first major peak in the history of the string quartet. Certainly they offered to their own time state-of-the art models to follow for the best part of a decade; the teenage Mozart , in his early quartets, was among the composers moved to imitate many of their characteristics, right down to the vital fugues with which Haydn sought to bring greater architectural weight to

3468-564: The pursuit of the more advanced quartet style found in the eighteen works published in the early 1770s as Opp. 9, 17, and 20 . These are written in a form that became established as standard both for Haydn and for other composers. Clearly composed as sets, these quartets feature a four-movement layout having broadly conceived, moderately paced first movements and, in increasing measure, a democratic and conversational interplay of parts, close-knit thematic development, and skilful though often restrained use of counterpoint. The convincing realizations of

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3536-468: The quartet disbanded in 1949. Other sources say that it continued to perform for at least another ten years. The later date is supported by evidence that the violinist Frances Mason and the cellist Eleanor Warren were members of the Zorian Quartet in the 1950s. String quartet The string quartet was developed into its present form by the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn , whose works in

3604-910: The story thus: The following purely chance circumstance had led him to try his luck at the composition of quartets. A Baron Fürnberg had a place in Weinzierl , several stages from Vienna, and he invited from time to time his pastor, his manager, Haydn, and Albrechtsberger (a brother of the celebrated contrapuntist Albrechtsberger ) in order to have a little music. Fürnberg requested Haydn to compose something that could be performed by these four amateurs. Haydn, then eighteen years old [ sic ], took up this proposal, and so originated his first quartet which, immediately it appeared, received such general approval that Haydn took courage to work further in this form. Haydn went on to write nine other quartets around this time. These works were published as his Op. 1 and Op. 2; one quartet went unpublished, and some of

3672-476: The string quartet is in many ways the history of the development of the genre by the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn . There had been examples of divertimenti for two solo violins, viola and cello by the Viennese composers Georg Christoph Wagenseil and Ignaz Holzbauer ; and there had long been a tradition of performing orchestral works one instrument to a part. The British musicologist David Wyn Jones cites

3740-477: The string quartet: Further expansions have also produced works such as the String octet by Mendelssohn , consisting of the equivalent of two string quartets. Notably, Schoenberg included a soprano in the last two movements of his second string quartet , composed in 1908. Adding a voice has since been done by Milhaud , Ginastera , Ferneyhough , Davies , İlhan Mimaroğlu and many others. Another variation on

3808-416: 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

3876-480: 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

3944-774: 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

4012-449: The time of Beethoven's late quartets, and despite some notable examples to the contrary, composers writing in the twentieth century increasingly abandoned this structure. Bartók's fourth and fifth string quartets, written in the 1930s, are five-movement works, symmetrical around a central movement. Shostakovich's final quartet , written in the 1970s, comprises six slow movements. Many other chamber groups can be seen as modifications of

4080-550: The traditional string quartet is the electric string quartet with players performing on electric instruments . Notable works for string quartet include: Whereas individual string players often group together to make ad hoc string quartets, others continue to play together for many years in ensembles which may be named after the first violinist (e.g. the Takács Quartet ), a composer (e.g. the Borodin Quartet ) or

4148-476: 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

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4216-413: The true tests of a composer's art. This may be partly because the palette of sound is more restricted than with orchestral music, forcing the music to stand more on its own rather than relying on tonal color ; or from the inherently contrapuntal tendency in music written for four equal instruments. Quartet composition flourished in the Classical era. Mozart , Beethoven and Schubert each composed

4284-407: The widespread practice of four players, one to a part, playing works written for string orchestra , such as divertimenti and serenades , there being no separate (fifth) contrabass part in string scoring before the 19th century. However, these composers showed no interest in exploring the development of the string quartet as a medium. The origins of the string quartet can be further traced back to

4352-551: Was a slight lull in string quartet composition later in the 19th century, but it received a resurgence in the 20th century, with the Second Viennese School , Bartók , Shostakovich , Babbitt , and Carter producing highly regarded examples of the genre, and it remains an important and refined musical form. The standard structure for a string quartet as established in the Classical era is four movements , with

4420-440: 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

4488-401: 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

4556-535: 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

4624-496: Was to make a significant step in the genre's development. The intervening years saw Haydn begin his employment as Kapellmeister to the Esterházy princes, for whom he was required to compose numerous symphonies and dozens of trios for violin, viola, and the bass instrument called the baryton (played by Prince Nikolaus Esterházy himself). The opportunities for experiment which both these genres offered Haydn perhaps helped him in

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