[MUSIC] Now we come to the Baroque Period in music. Though in truth, these period, these time designators are somewhat arbitrary. No composer ever slaps his forehead. It's the year 1600. Time for the Baroque style. Or, it's 1750, time for the classical era. Styles change gradually, and we, historians, and people generally, set convenient dates, so that we can understand things. We divide time into hours and minutes and seconds just to make sense of it all. Now with the Baroque period, we are lucky. Because there's a rather clear cut off provided by an event or development that happened around 1600. It comes conveniently in the form of the creation of a new musical genre in the West. Opera, again, Italy around 1600. Opera became so important that we can use disappearances to mark the beginning of the Baroque era. Similarly, we have a convenient end marker for the conclusion of this style of music, 1750. In fact, JS Bach did us a great favor by dying in 1750. [LAUGH] Of course, I'm kidding, it'd be wonderful if I had even more great music by Bach, but the fact that he died in 1750, and musical style changed thereafter, became very different, is a convenient end marker for us. So for the Baroque we have these two convenient goal posts, 1600, 1750. It's a long span, and one that incorporates many stylistic changes. Indeed in the arts and music, the Baroque era is something of a disjunctive and highly variegated period of artistic time. Where do we get the term Baroque? Well, it come from the Portuguese word, barroco, pearl of irregular shape. At first, the term Baroque had something of a pejorative sense, meaning irregular, untamed, perhaps even bizarre in style. Well if not, bizarre, at least flamboyant. And it's also generally dramatic and grandiose in scale. To get a sense of this, let's look at some slides. Here we are again at St. Peters in Rome, constructed from roughly 1550 to 1650. Late renaissance, into the early baroque. It's big. The largest church in the world. And we can get a sense of this by turning the other way. The Piasa can accommodate several football or soccer fields. Now going inside, on the left side of the nave of the church, the longest nave in the world in Christen. On the right, the canopy over the high alter. It's huge, nine stories tall or about 90 feet tall. Designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1626. Now the flamboyant baroque, well it's evident here in these monstrances showing the radiation of the transubstantiation of the Holy Spirit, which is a typical image found in Roman Baroque churches. Here we have two. Both designed again by Bernini. One for Saint Peters, on the left, and the other for the Church of Our Lady of Victory, also in Rome. Also in the same church, Our Lady of Victory, the famous Saint Teresa in agony, which twists with Baroque energy. And now, speaking of Bernini, let's do a comparison, it's instructed I think to put the two together. David by the young Michelangelo, and David by Bernini, a century later on the right. What's your reaction to them? Think about it for a minute. How do they exemplify the Renaissance as opposed to Baroque statuary? Well on the left long straight lines, balance and proportion, versus on the right, right angles and twists. From the left placid smile. On the right, a tense grimace. Renaissance, Classical serenity versus Baroque energy. Let's go back to that Roman church of Our Lady of Victory and let's look at the ceiling there with the organ to the left. Well, why is this not Classical in any way? Well, because the ceiling is overrun with activity, with ornamentation. There's scarcely a square inch here that is not used in some active way. It's all energy. Now we turn to a comparison again. St. Peters on the left, St. Florian in Austria. Again, here it's not only ornament, but power. We see both energy and power. These structures are large, but they are also highly ornate. There's a string vertical structure, the pillars go up and support. But on top it's all decoration and ornamentation. And that often happens in Baroque music. Where we get a simple vertical support, but also a highly ornate canopy up above, or in musical case, a highly ornate melody. Now let's review just a bit here, what we're seeing on the screen at the moment is a slide of a representation of most Renaissance religious music and most song repertoire of the Renaissance. How it looked, in terms of texture. As you can see, it's highly imitated. Highly contrapuntal. Highly horizontal. With independent lines. Now let's compare here. Here's what early baroque texture is more likely to look like. More homophonic, more block-like, more vertical. As the image says, not all voices in homophonic texture are created equally, top and bottom are more important. The bass in baroque music is strong, and usually steady, as we'll see later on when we get to our segment four with the baroque basso continuo.
