Baroque

[klokker]

It's hard to beat this. My favorite YouTube vid.

 

[Clef_de_fa]

I performed this piece on piano for my Master's Recital:

 

[vilshofen]

Cimarosa! Been stealing his licks for years. Great thread!

 

[mdlewis]

Prolific baroque composers absent from these postings are Telemann and Albinoni, who wrote a lot of stuff for wind instruments. I've always been interested in early music (due to the other wind instruments I used to play). As mentioned by others, there are so many parallels to rock and roll (minus the blue notes though). An interesting take on pre-baroque (Renaissance) music is this recording, which is one of my favorites- .

 

[Clef_de_fa]

Probably my fav from that time

 

[Pug the Pig]

Purcell, definately another favourite..try the 'frost scene' from his King Arthur..

 

[Duanestuermer]

I start every day by playing a Bach cello suite on my fretless.

 

[Fredrik E. Nilsen]

Probably my fav from that time

Beautiful. But, I had to close my eyes. All the errors in the notation was too annoying.

 

[Deleted member 165050]

Probably my fav from that time

I’ve still got the score for Dido & Aeneas from schooldays... haven’t opened it for several decades!

 

[SteveCS]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question (I've been a listener for a while, but know little about the theory typical of Baroque), were non-diatonic notes frowned upon in this era, or are there some notable pieces that used them successfully?

I believe the early compositions were mostly diatonic, but I'm not sure what it evolved to near the end of the era.

Not if the cadenza in the closing bars (37 onwards) of the Prelude from Cello Suite 1 are anything to go by...

 

[KeepItMoving]

So, this thread motivated me to stop lurking and finally get an account here - excellent topic!

I've found Ariane Cap's Bach bass duets to be an excellent entry point into playing Baroque on the electric bass:

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The pieces she's done so far are both lovely, and strike a good balance between being accessible and challenging. The high (right-hand) part of the march piece is extremely satisfying to play.

If anyone's interested in the Baroque era as a whole, there's a terrific book by James R. Gaines called Evening in the Palace of Reason (http://a.co/heGSkBt). It's a parallel biography of J.S. Bach and Frederick the Great, and does a great job of showing how music and other parts of culture and society were evolving at a time of great change.

Anyway, thanks to OP for starting this thread - some great comments already, and it's got me thinking about trying to tackle one of the 'cello pieces.

 

[SteveCS]

...Albinoni, who ...

...also wrote plenty for strings...

 

[IamGroot]

I hope this isnt off topic, but I have heard it said that Bach never violated the compositional rules of the time. Which rules were these? Fux?

 

[Deleted member 165050]

Not if the cadenza in the closing bars (37 onwards) of the Prelude from Cello Suite 1 are anything to go by...
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Most certainly not diatonic, but the suites were composed around 1720 so towards the latter part of the Baroque period...

 

[alaskaleftybass]

Thank you @Matthew_84 for the excellent brain stimulant this Sunday morning. Thank you everyone for the excellent input. Nice way to start a Sunday morning!

 

[Matthew_84]

Not if the cadenza in the closing bars (37 onwards) of the Prelude from Cello Suite 1 are anything to go by...

Most certainly not diatonic, but the suites were composed around 1720 so towards the latter part of the Baroque period...

Were the early compositions of the Baroque era fairly diatonic, or were there even some pieces then that broke-free from diatonism?

 

[Fredrik E. Nilsen]

Most certainly not diatonic, but the suites were composed around 1720 so towards the latter part of the Baroque period...

Chromaticism was frequently used in the baroque era.

 

[Two-Spirit]

I thought it would be nice to have a thread to just talk about this period of classical music.

Please feel free to share your favourite pieces, composers, as well as post any questions you may have regarding the theory and the compositions themselves.

As far as I can tell, this is one of the earlier instrumental pieces from this era. These were composed in 1605.

Ah Bach!!! I like the Brandenburg Concertos

 

[Deleted member 165050]

I’d forgotten I got this from Amazon a while back... this thread has inspired me to dig it out.

 

[Tommyc]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question (I've been a listener for a while, but know little about the theory typical of Baroque), were non-diatonic notes frowned upon in this era, or are there some notable pieces that used them successfully?

I believe the early compositions were mostly diatonic, but I'm not sure what it evolved to near the end of the era.

When you get to his theorical works (BacH) i.e. those that weren't really written to be performed, not only are they highly chromatic there are even suggestions of atonality. I'm thinking in this case of The Art of the Fugue, especially the last contrapunctus which Bach left unfinished at his death. He used his name as a leitmotiv or b flat, a, c, b. In his part of Germany b commonly meant b flat and H was b natural. You'll notice that that sequence, the Bach motive, is comprised of notes that are chromatic.