Tag Info

Couple of ideas... Harmony: Baroque music was the period when harmonic progression (instead of just counter point) started to become a fundamental part of composition (See Functional Tonality). Dissonance is resolved to consonance throughout a phase. Minimalism tends to focus more on a stable harmony, but in both case the Harmony tends to be a very ...

Some of the music was written quickly in a kind of shorthand. If you as a harpsichordist were expected to write a new piece for flute and harpsichord to be performed tonight, you would probably just write a lead sheet for the harpsichord part and wing it from that. The Baroque equivalent is "figured bass": just the bass notes with numbers indicating the ...

About his development as a composer and the links with his 2 older brothers Johann-Christof and Johann-Jacob. Yes JS was exposed very early to music, music practice and various instruments. He and his brothers were expected to master various instruments and to play ex tempore and generally become proficient in the family's trade, go to other members of the ...

Learning to improvise in the style that Baroque musicians used at that time is quite a deep field of study. It's what we call "historically-informed performance practice." If you have a score that has the originally-published markings for turns, trills and ornaments, then there are specific rules on what notes to play. There is certainly room for a little ...

I don't believe that there is special name. In late renaissance/early baroque the assignment of fixed instruments was quite unusual, since there were plenty of alternatives (crumhorns, hurdy-gurdys and whatever) and the scores had to adjust to what the playing amateurs had at hand. The lute is surely replaceable by harpsichord or any other continuo ...

It seems that available instrumentists (more than instruments) were key as well as a figure of the composer as an individualistic and total master of the music he writes. The development of cellists' virtuosity (such as Joseph Franz Weigl, friend of Haydn, Josef Fiala, Josef Reicha (friend of Mozart) and later the Duport brothers and Romberg) has been ...

Much of Bach's education in composition came from him making hand copies of many musical scores, as music was not mass-printed at the time. Having mastered the Baroque notions of counterpoint and developing motives, combined with his known skill at improvising in the style, why would he seek to give up mastery of a style to be mediocre at a new one? As to ...

I can recommend "Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music" by Sandra Rosenblum. This book deals with how piano music was played in the classical period--Mozart, Haydn, early Beethoven, Clementi, etc. The author has synthesized treatises from that era with illustrations from the music, and given her own opinions on various problems of interpretation. I ...

Bach received instruction form his older brother, who was a student of Pachelbel. Bach copied a lot of music of other composers: Buxtehude (famously), Couperin, Frescobaldi, Kerl, Froberger, Pachelbel and many others. Regarding the wide range of influences from German (both North and South), Italian and French music, I don't know that it was that unusual. ...

It's just a change in style, like the way blues and rock bands changed from having guitars only in the background to having guitars up front. The basso continuo was a standardized sort of accompaniment, typically given a bass line and chord symbols only and filing in the chords ad libitum. J.S. Bach was already beginning to exert more control, writing ...

You are absolutely right in saying that both have functional harmony/resolve dissonances but it is in fact more useful in drawing comparisons to compare both of these styles with everything in between them. For example, the shift over the Classical and Romantic periods tended to shift, harmonically, towards countering listeners' expectations over a very ...

As guidot pointed out, those pieces were more late Renaissance than early Baroque. Music of this era was often written out as separate parts that did not specify the instrumentation. So a performance could use different combinations of instruments selected by the performers. These pieces were probably written for singer, two treble solo instruments, and ...

Actually, that is a yes-yes. Research notes inegales for more information about the practice of purposefully "un-equalling" equally written note values for expressive effect. Baroque musicians were fond of employing double dotting and playing even figures unevenly. Jazz is a descendent of Baroque music. Where do you think some of our earliest jazz styles ...

Improvisation is a skill that has to be learned and practiced, just like any other musical skill. You can start with rhythmic variations of short phrases. For example, if a phrase contains consecutive sixteenth notes, then play a mix of eighth and sixteenth notes, possibly inserting a few quarter notes at resolution points. You can also use the same ...

The solo Fantasias were intended for a traverse flute in D, and so would be best played on a voice flute (recorder in D -- not common, not cheap). However, you can easily find them transposed for alto. His other music with a flauta part is most often for alto. Rule of thumb: if the Baroque music you're looking at has one or more sharps then it's mostly ...

It really depends on the music. I don't think there are any rhythmic permutations of 2/4 time that we could definitively say should not be slurred. Emphasis could be anywhere in a measure depending on where the composer has decided to phrase. Perhaps one thing you might try doing is finding repeated material and play it differently (either with dynamics or ...