How did baroque music sound at the time?

Question

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!

Answer 1

There are numerous groups such as The Academy of Ancient Music who perform baroque music using instruments constructed in the same way as baroque instruments (or in a few cases with genuine baroque instruments!). If you want to find out how it would have sounded, buy their music!

As far as the quality of musicians goes, there are many factors against your hypothesis.

• Every educated person was expected to be able to play at least one musical instrument to a competent standard; and since the gentry did not have day jobs, they had plenty of free time for practise.
• Amongst the middle and lower classes, music was one of the few ways to social-climb, in a highly stratified society.
• Without recorded music, the way to have music around you is for you and your friends and family to play yourselves. Before recorded music, there was a general culture that everyone sang, and everyone could play something or clap along. This is where folk music came from.
• It's wrong to assume that folk music is less complex, or that folk musicians are less talented. Musicianship doesn't generally pay well compared to a regular job, and it does generally require you to travel. Collectors such as the Lomaxes provided ample evidence of the quality of musicianship from people who never thought of it as a career.

• The most important years for learning to play an instrument are in your childhood, so a lower life expectancy is not really a problem.

• Added later with hindsight: One thing to remember is that baroque players were closer in ability to a modern rock band than to a modern classical orchestra. The basic melodies and counterpoint were scored, but every player was also expected to be able to improvise backing where necessary as well, in the same way as a guitar player today jamming over a chord sequence, and the "continuo" part (usually on harpsichord) was always improvised. Lead players were expected to be able to improvise solos too. Whilst a certain level of improvisation is required for grade 8 on the classical syllabus, it is very much a neglected skill, and it's not at all unusual to find highly-trained classical musicians who cannot improvise well. This would make them extremely poor baroque musicians. On the other hand, for example, the twin-guitar lines of Thin Lizzy or Wishbone Ash and the ability of those guitarists to improvise solos would entirely suit them to baroque musicianship.

Answer 2

In many respects technological progress in music has been less about the very best sounding better than about it becoming more and more feasible to produce "good" sounds at lower and lower cost.

In terms of equipment, keep in mind that Stradivarius violins (et al.) were constructed at about that time, so it was possible for people to construct instruments then that sound as good as any do today. I don't see any reason why a well constructed and well maintained organ in the 17th/18th century would sound any worse than a more modern one. Though perhaps this is like the ship of Theseus, this recording of the world's oldest playable organ sounds just fine to me:

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and, aside from the effects of recording, probably sounds pretty much like it would have 500 years ago.

Answer 3

We can get some insight from how Bach adapted his compositions for different instruments, presumably in response to the availability (or lack of it) of suitable players. For example, cantata BWV 69 Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, a secular reworking of 69a. From Julian Mincham's commentary, my emphases:

... the tenor aria of the earlier work became one for alto in the later version with violin and oboe replacing the original flute and oboe da caccia obbligati [...]

Might the reason have been that there was no tenor available capable of singing the aria in the later version? This seems highly unlikely. The same individual would almost certainly have sung the demanding tenor line in the opening chorus and if he was capable of that, he would surely not have baulked at the aria.

A more likely explanation is that Bach did not have a capable flautist available. It is known that in his early Leipzig years he enjoyed the services of at least one virtuoso flute player, the evidence of which is to be found in many arias and choruses, particularly in the second cycle. If he could not call upon an adequate player for C 69 he would have had to rethink the whole layout of the aria: which is precisely what he did. This argument is strengthened by the fact that nowhere else in C 69, not even in the opening chorus, are flutes called upon.

No working composer is going to compose music that can't be played. So it's reasonable to suppose that everything Bach wrote could be played to a standard he found acceptable by the forces he had available. Given the technical difficulty of parts he wrote to play himself (eg the harpsichord 'cadenza' in Brandenburg 5), we can get an idea of the skill level he would have expected from a skilled player, and we can compare the parts he wrote for when a skilled player was available versus when just the 'standard' orchestra was present.

Given that your hypothetical high school orchestra probably doesn't have a virtuoso flautist in it (or indeed any other virtuoso instrumentalist), we can conclude the performance would have been closer to the professional standard of today, than the amateur standard of today. Of course, for stylistic reasons the NY Phil sound different anyway!