Week 9: The Seventeenth Century: From Renaissance to Baroque
1. Stuff done this week
- So damn busy with fitness, family life, performing, work projects (I am responsible for the complete Microsoft Office roll out at my company; there is an MQ upgrade for April; just finished a Flash Player security patch upgrade). My academic work is suffering. I'm going slowly through the book Burkholder et al. (2014). I just try to remember: I'm doing this for me. There is no hurry.
- Saturday the 1st of April, me and the band drove to Waardamme in Belgium for a performance at Cowboy Up. Looking back, I think we did a great job. Sometimes the execution of the music was rough, but the show was intense and real. We got some great compliments, and I'm sure we're allowed back next year!
- Final work on our video for the song Cold Black Ground. Ramses Singeling used photographs he took from a trip to Spain and edited a Tarantino-style credit roll under our tune. The song is a murder ballad, the cold black ground is the classic folk metaphor for "the end". For instance:
How symbolic then, to start a music video clip with "the end".
Dramatic, hopefully moving the affections and... above all cheap, I trust. Here is the result:
"In the great book of John
You're warned of the day
When you'll be laid
Beneath the cold clay"
Hank Williams - The Angel of Death
"The cat'll sleep in the mailbox
and we'll never go to town
til we bury every dream
in the cold, cold ground"
Tom Waits - Cold, cold ground
How symbolic then, to start a music video clip with "the end".
Dramatic, hopefully moving the affections and... above all cheap, I trust. Here is the result:
Started researching the "Cold Black Ground" death-theme. To my sheer surprise, I found this nearly identically named old blues tune "Cold Black Ground Blues" by Ida Cox (1888 or 1896 – 1967)!
She was an African-american singer and Vaudeville performer. She was billed as "The Uncrowned Queen of the Blues". I included a link to the song:
2. Listening Done
On March 30th, I went to a concert of Scott Bradlee's Post Mordern Jukebox in the Heineken Musical Hall in Amsterdam. This group of performers turn current day music into quaint vintage pieces, usually jazz. The singers combine above average voices with instrumental improvisations and burlesque. It is thoroughly entertaining.
3. What I have learned
More reading from Burkholder et al. (2014). Here are the notes I took. With regard to the discussion of basso continuo, I supplemented the notes with Montagu's (1979) discussion on the subject.
3.1 Europe in the 17th Century
The scientific, political and artistic achievements of the 17th century have been foundations for western culture over the last 400 years.Europe was in the midst of a scientific revolution, led by scholars that relied on maths, observation and practical experiments to prove their theories. For instance Johannes Kepler proved in 1609 that the planets, including the earth, revolved around the sun in elliptical orbits at speeds that vary with their distance from the sun. Sir Francis Bacon argued for an empirical approach to science, relying on direct observation rather than ancient authorities. René Descartes balanced Bacon's inductive method with a deductive approach, explaining the world through mathematics, logic, and reasoning from first principles. Sir Isaac Newton combined these methodologies, discovering en describing the natural law of gravity in the 1660's.
Also, new thinking about politics and religion emerged. For instance: The English Levellers advocated democracy with equal rights for all men. Thomas Hobbes argued for an all-powerful sovereign state in his book Leviathan (1651). Henri IV issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598 guaranteeing some freedom to Protestants while confirming Catholicism as the state religion. Protestant England and Catholic Spain ended decades of war in 1604, and the Calvinistic Netherlands gained independence from Spain in 1609. The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), a religious conflict within the Holy Roman Empire, devastated Germany and caused many casualties. The English Civil War (1642-49) was a battle for power between the king and Parliament, but was also had religious aspects. Italy remained Catholic and was therefore spared religious wars, although in southern Italy an unsuccessful revolution against Spanish domination was staged. These conflicts among the power elites directly affected music; their members were often very important patrons of the arts.
Economically, a lot changed too. Europeans were colonizing America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. A lucrative market for sugar and tobacco developed, fueled by a cruel slave system that was used to labor on the overseas plantations. Europeans brought their (music) traditions with them. Britain, the Netherlands and Northern Italy prospered from capitalism, a system in which individuals invested their own money (capital) in businesses designed to return a profit.
The wealth supported the rise of public opera and concerts, and caused an increase in demand from the upper and middle classes for music, musical instruments and music lessons. Music was a way to compete for prestige. In France, power and wealth became more concentrated in the king. Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715) controlled the arts, including music, and used them to assert his glory. The church also continued to support music, although its role was less important as compared to previous centuries.
Along with patronage from aristocrats, rich civilians and the church, many cities invested in "academies", private associations that sponsored the arts. Public opera houses were established in many cities, beginning in Venice in 1637. In England the first paid public concerts were organized in 1672.
This spirit of innovation also dominated music of the period. New ways of making music were invented: new idioms were devised, such as basso continuo, monody and recitative; new styles, featuring a pronounced dissonance and greater focus on solo voice or instrument performance; and new genres, including opera.
This outpouring of innovation marked the beginning of a period we in retrospect call the Baroque. The Baroque composers focused on moving the affections (emotions) and were driven by continuous invention of new genres, styles, and methods, the gradual diffusion of Italian ideas and the development of independent national idioms.
3.2 From Renaissance to Baroque
The term "baroque" - coined in the mid 18th century - means "abnormal", "bizarre", "exaggerated", or "in bad taste". With regard to music, it reflected on, what was then perceived, the "boldness of its sound". It later gained a more positive connotation, as 19th century art critics began to appreciate the ornate, dramatic, and expressive tendencies of 17th century art (painting, music, architecture). By the 1950s Baroque was well established as a name for the period of about 1600 to around 1750. This period does not encompass just one style, but many; we cannot therefore speak of a Baroque style.
The Affections
Composers of the Baroque period sought musical means to express or arouse the affections. The unifying ideal reflected in the music is that it should have dramatic power and must generate emotions such as sadness, joy, anger love, fear, excitement, or wonder within the listener. Music of the Baroque era is dramatic, centered in opera but extending to songs, church music, and instrumental music. And drama requires an audience: in the 17th century the concept of "the public" in the modern sense begins to emerge. During this period, a stricter division developed between, on the one hand, the performers as professionals, and on the other, the listener as passive recipient whose feelings the performers sought to move. All the arts in the 17th century sought to move the affections, and that goal licensed painters, sculptors, poets and musicians to transcend previously established rules.
The Second Practice
Composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) distinguished between a "first practice", the 16th century style of vocal polyphony, and a modern "second practice", used by modern Baroque composers. In the first practice, music had to follow its own rules and thus dominated the verbal text, while in the latter the music serves the effect and rhetorical power of the words. Voice-leading rules may therefore be broken and dissonances may be used more freely to express the feelings evoked in the text. In Monteverdi's music, words and music are of equal importance and serve to convey emotions that prompted the words.3.3 General Characteristics of Baroque Music
Before the 17th century, composers had written polyphonic music, madrigals for example, with a number of melodic lines, each of equal importance, interwoven to form a network of music.By the early 17th century, the predominance of polyphony, is replaced by monody (a solo vocal style distinguished by having a single melodic line and instrumental accompaniment. This trend especially dominates in the madrigal. Under the influence of mainly Italian composers, the worldly love song evolved from a five-part composed piece to monody.
A tradition of chordal music started to develop. It was founded on a bass line, below a melody, between which a number of other instruments each played a note of the appropriate chord (Montagu, 1979: p.17-18). So, the bass serves an increasingly harmonious function, the middle vocals are increasingly reduced to serve as "filler" voices and the upper voice gets all the melodic attention. The monody is associated with the term basso continuo, or figured bass.
Basso continuo
In the early Baroque music, a tendency developed to attribute importance to the lowest and highest parts. The tenor, which held the melody in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and alto declined in importance, even vanishing altogether. So the top part was only supported by the lowest, bass line, which was named the basso continuo (or thorough bass in Italian). It was usually played by several instruments simultaneously on one or more continuo instruments (typically harpsichord, organ, lute or theorbo). These instruments would play both the bass line and the appropriate chords or chordal figuration above it.Initially it was left to the performers, to fill in the appropriate chords or inner parts. The player would have to be sufficiently well trained to be able to guess which chords were correct and which were coming next, improvising a progression which would make musical sense (Montagu, 1979: p. 18).
For simple songs this would be work well, but for more harmonically complex compositions this could present difficulties. To solve this, composers adopted a custom of adding numbers to the bass line, which would indicate to the player which chords to use. One had to interpret which chord to use, by counting up from the bass note. The basso continuo player would see the score in the bass-clef (a harmonic solution is printed in the treble key):
 |
| Figured Bass (Wikipedia, 2016) |
Now, the 6 indicates the same chord (which is C) based on the 3rd and the 6th counting from E (in the bass).
A solution, which is demonstrated is a first inversion of the C-chord:
- E (=the bass note)
- C
- G(=3rd above E)
- C(=6th above E).
No figure indicates a common chord in root position, eg, F-A-C, the third and fifth counting from the F at the bottom. In the example below: the F chord (F-F-A-C).
The performer might play only chords, or add passing tones or melodic motives that imitated the treble or bass. Not all pieces used basso continuo; because its purpose was accompaniment. It was unnecessary in solo lute and keyboard music. In my mind, figured bass is in all respects a musical "short hand" notation.
I discussed the concept with my mandolin teacher, Thijs Rührup. This is how he explained it to me:
"In the Renaissance (1400-1600) the "glorification of the worldly-mainly humanistic aspect" starts to develop in music composition . You can also see this in the visual arts of that time. The development of individualism is now especially important, human feelings are central, and harmonies used are becoming increasingly bold, there is increasing urge for personal expression with the composer who especially wants to 'stir the human affects' "
"In the Baroque era, we started to discern the basso continuo phenomenon. It should be seen as a further development in the urge for human expression that first started in The Renaissance. This was especially the case with performing musicians. Basso Continuo must therefore be seen as a further development of those "bold and daring harmonies" of the Renaissance (that our 21st century ears would probably not find so daring these days)."
"During the Baroque period, the composer often wrote only the melody voice and bass voice. At that time, people still conceptualised music in terms of "voices" ... just consider the Fugue, a typical Baroque music form: it features multiple voices (Soprano, Alt, Tenor and Bas) which complement each other with linear harmony.So, the Baroque composer wrote only the melody voice (high register) and the lower voice (low register) that became the "bearer" of the harmony. Often the same composer would provide a numbered bassline, but also key accidentals - (b or # etc.) and natural symbols."
"The numbers would denote the intervals (4 = quarter, 5 = quint, 6 = sext, 7 = septime from the baseline, but also b7, # 3, natural signs and: unrelated but still good sounding intervals (now we call those dissonants)."
"Chromatism is an important new feature of that time ... From these numbers, the performer deduced which "filling harmonies" (nowadays we speak of "appropriate chords") that the composer required... The performer would then still have had the freedom to decide how he would execute these "harmonic fills" (today we talk - especially in the Jazz - about the "voicings" of the chords), ultimately facilitating a thinking in chords 'en bloc', so no longer linearly constructed, from the current minor and major scales.Professional, often highly skilled performers from that time would calculate the bass line, while the composer wrote only the melody and bass voice and gave the performer freedom to determine how he was going to accompany the composition on his/her Chord instrument (Lute, Theorbo or Harpsichord/Clavichord). For playing the bass line, generally a Bassoon, in combination with a Viola Da Gamba or a Cello, was often used."
So, the basso continuo becomes the basis for composing in the baroque era. In conjunction with all this, slowly but surely, a harmonic thinking and the major minor system develops.
The concerto medium
17th century composers frequently combined voices with instruments that played different parts. The result was called the concertato medium or concertato style ("concertato" means "to reach agreement" in Italian). In musical concerto, contrasting forces are brought together in a harmonious ensemble.Mean tone and equal temperaments
Joining voices and string instruments with keyboards and lutes created problems of tuning. 16th century musicians used a variety of tuning systems. Just intonation was preferred by singers and violinists because it allowed the adjustments needed to keep harmonic intervals perfectly in tune. Keyboard players could not adjust pitch while performing, so they used mean-tone temperaments. Here, the major triads from Eb to E major were in tune, but those further to the flat or sharp side were out of tune. Furthermore, chromatic semitones (Bb-B) were much smaller than diatonic semitones (such as B-C).Chords and dissonance
Basso continuo composition led naturally to thinking of consonant sounds as chords rather than as sets of intervals over the bass. This idea, in turn, led to a view of dissonance less as an interval between voices than as a note that does not fit into a chord. As a result, a greater variety of dissonances was tolerated, through by the mid-17th century, conventions governed how they could be introduced ans resolved.Chromaticism
This followed a similar development, from experimentation around the turn of the century to freedom within an orderly scheme by mid-century. It was used especially to express intense emotions in vocal works, to suggest harmonic exploration in instrumental pieces, and to create distinctive subjects for treatment in imitative counterpoint.Harmonically driven counterpoint
The nature of counterpoint changed during the Baroque era. Treble-bass polarity and the use of continuo altered the balance among the parts, replacing the polyphony of equal voices typical of the 16th century with an emphasis on the bass. Also in imitative counterpoint, the individual melodic lines were subordinated to a succession of chords implied by the bass, producing a counterpoint driven by harmony.Regular and flexible rhythm
Music in the Baroque period was either very metric or very free. Composers used flexible rhythms for vocal recitative and improvisatory solo instrumental pieces like toccatas and preludes. For other music, regular rhythms, such as those found in dance music became more pervasive. Vertical barlines became more common in all kinds of music in the 17th century. They were increasingly used in the modern sense to mark off measures, recurring patterns of strong and weak beats, with the value and number of beats indicated by time signatures.Centrality of performance
The music is centered on the performer and the performance, not the composer and the work. Baroque musicians regarded written music as a basis for performance, not as an unalterable text. Performers were expected to add to what was written. Continuo players improvised chords, melodies, and even counterpoint above the given bass. Vocal and instrumental soloists ornamented melodies while performing.Ornamentation
Baroque musicians regarded ornamentation, or the embellishment of a musical line, as an important means to move the affections; it was not just for decoration. They recognized two principal ways of ornamenting a melodic line:- brief formulas called ornaments, such as trills, turns, appoggiaturas, and mordents, were added to certain notes to emphasize accents, cadences, and other important points in the melody.
- more extended embellishments, such as scales, arpeggios, and the like, were added to create a free and elaborate paraphrase of the written line. This process, sometimes called division, diminution, or figuration, was especially appropriate to melodies in slow tempo.
Alterations
Performers were free not only to add embellishments to a written score but also to change it in other ways. Singers often added cadenzas - elaborate passages decorating important cadences - to arias. Arias were omitted from operas, or different arias substituted, to suit the singers. In every respect, the written music was regarded as a script that could be adapted to suit the performers.From modal to tonal music
Musicians in the early 17th century still thought of themselves working within the domain of (church) modes. By the last third of the century, Corelli, Lully, and other composers were writing music we regard as tonal. This means it operates within the system of major and minor keys, like we know from music of the 18th and 19th centuries.3.4 Enduring Innovations
An important element in baroque music is the emancipation of instrumental music: instrumental and vocal music were regarded as equals. Even in vocal music, instruments played an important role, not just as accompaniment, but also as equal partners for the vocal parts.
In the baroque, therefore, the pure instrumental music greatly increases. Many instrumental music forms (Toccata, Prelude, Sonata, etc.) develop. There is an increasing focus on instrumental and vocal virtuosity. Concerted styles emerge in which groups of musicians (a soloist against a group, 2 groups, etc.) compete with each other, as if they are in a musical conversation. This leads to the development of new genres like the concerto, concerto grosso and solo concert. The use of dual choirs is also part of this concerted principle.
Many of the innovations of the early 17th century endured for centuries, and some are still with us: interest in dramatic effect, emotional expressivity, rule-breaking as a rhetorical device, treble-bass polarity, chordal harmony, chromaticism, idiomatic writing, and tonality.
In the baroque, therefore, the pure instrumental music greatly increases. Many instrumental music forms (Toccata, Prelude, Sonata, etc.) develop. There is an increasing focus on instrumental and vocal virtuosity. Concerted styles emerge in which groups of musicians (a soloist against a group, 2 groups, etc.) compete with each other, as if they are in a musical conversation. This leads to the development of new genres like the concerto, concerto grosso and solo concert. The use of dual choirs is also part of this concerted principle.
Many of the innovations of the early 17th century endured for centuries, and some are still with us: interest in dramatic effect, emotional expressivity, rule-breaking as a rhetorical device, treble-bass polarity, chordal harmony, chromaticism, idiomatic writing, and tonality.
4. Sources
BURKHOLDER, J, GROUT, D. and PALISCA, C. (2014) A history of western music, 9th edition, New York: W.W. Norton. Pages: 286-306.MONTAGU, J. (1979) The World of Baroque & Classical Musical Instruments, New York: Woodstock. Pages 17-18.
WIKIPEDIA (2016) Basso continuo. [Online] Available from: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basso_continuo [Accessed: 29/05/2017].
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