Historical context
Let's for example consider Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (click here to enjoy). It was composed at the very beginning of the 18th century in Germany. At that time:
- Architecture of concert rooms was not as sophisticated as today as our knowledge of the physics of sound and of materials was not as advanced as it is today.
- Our ability to measure the frequency of sound was mainly based on the human ear (I think but might be wrong)
- There were not even 500 million people on earth (from this graph) and maybe about 10 million people in Germany (vaguely estimated by extrapolation from this graph) and maybe 90% of them were peasants and the others were from the clergy, working in the army or performing many different functions. It leaves very few musicians. Also, social mobility and life expectancy were extremely low compared to today, which does not help for recruiting good musicians.
- Players could not travel from city to city as easily as they do today.
Overall, it feels to me like the conditions (buildings and instruments) for playing were probably not ideal and more importantly it feels like there were probably not a lot of good musicians around.
Note that I randomly considered a country and a period of history but I am happy to take any insights about the quality of baroque (or even medieval) music you can give me.
Question
How did baroque music sound at the time?
Did it sound like the orchestra at my local high school practising in a classroom with old instruments or did it sound just as good as when the New York Philharmonic is playing in the 21st century?
I realize the answer is likely somewhere in between these two extremes and it may be hard to 1) know the answer and 2) correctly describe what were the main differences but if you can give me a vague idea, that'd be great!