Baroque Music - Part Two

Sacred Vocal Music

Most of the sacred, or religious, music of the Baroque was written specifically to be performed as part of a church service, whether Catholic, Lutheran or Anglican. The principal sacred form during the Baroque period, as in all other periods of European music, was the musical setting of various liturgical rites known as "Masses". But the Baroque also had sacred musical forms which were particular to that time, especially the sacred cantata and the sacred oratorio.

Every service had specific times when music was appropriate and much of the music performed at those moments was composed by the Kapellmeister for that particular day. Traditionally, the choir participated in much of the sacred music-making, for when the choir sings, they are, in a sense, speaking for the whole church, or even the whole of Christianity. Another aspect of Baroque sacred music is its tendency to borrow from secular traditions. That is, one could perceive the cantata as a mini-unstaged opera. The church cantata employed such characters as Christ and the Sinner to comment on Christian issues in both arias and recitatives. The oratorios were the most operatic of all the sacred works, complete with narrative plots, several acts, real characters and implied action. Another major difference between sacred vocal works and Italian operas was the use of the chorus to heighten the drama and speak for the religious community.

J.S. Bach and the Baroque Cantata

Bach's magnificent cantatas can find their origins in the earlier motets from the 1650s. "Cantata", literally, "a piece to be sung", was used in the 17th century to mean a variety of vocal compositions, the common feature being the inclusion of at least one piece for solo voice. Bach fused two types of cantatas -- the solo cantata with recitatives and arias and the chorale cantata with two or more movements based on chorale text -- to develop a new prototype for the church cantata. Bach's tremendous musical achievement occupied much of his time during his years at Leipzig where he held his final position as municipal Kapellmeister. Typically, his cantatas open with a short orchestral prelude which is followed by an extended chorus, then solo singing interlaced with the chorales, and finally closing with a hymn. Bach composed over 300 cantatas. These intimate works offer a very personal view of his spirituality, of his vision of life and death, and of his lifelong devotion to his Creator. Later vocal music owes much to these cantatas, from the exquisite, delicate miniatures of Romantic period song-cycles to the grandiose choral exaltation of the closing movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Handel and the Baroque Oratorio

Towards the end of his life George Frideric Handel found his musical home in the oratorio. They proved to be even more successful with English audiences than his operas. His best known work in this genre, Messiah, has been performed continuously and in many countries around the world.

Short filmed interview with Sir Colin Davis interspersed with clips from live performances featuring the
London Symphony Orchestra. Sir Colin's new recording of the work for LSO Live was released in
October 2007 on multi-channel Super Audio CD.

Perhaps more that any other piece in European musical tradition, it serves as a deeply moving musical ambassador, exquisitely transcending the barriers of national and cultural boundaries. Even Mozart took great care to completely reorchestrate the piece, adding the latest in glowing orchestral colors. His use of woodwinds to enhance many of the melodic lines offers a very refreshing sound. As it has been performed through the centuries, it also offers the modern listener an opportunity to consider a variety of performance approaches to this magnificent piece.

Handel wrote Messiah in just a little more than three weeks, borrowing where appropriate from his previously written secular vocal works. The oratorio, unlike opera, takes great advantage of the choral elements, allowing Handel to develop the grand musical effects which so captivated his audience. With Handel the choruses become the people, and thus the center of the drama. Based on the life of Christ, from Old Testament prophesies to the Passion, it was first performed in Dublin on April 13, 1742, at Neale's Music Hall to a packed, enthusiastic house. Handel continued to revise Messiah over the next decade, rewriting up to a third of the solo passages. Its first London performance met with mixed reviews, but by mid-century it had established its permanent place in the repertory. Originally performed at Easter, it was not until the twentieth century that it became a staple of the Christmas season.

After the composer's death, Messiah continued to grow in popularity in England. In Victorian times it was performed with enormous numbers of instrumentalists and singers. Its grandest scale performance -- presumably ever -- was in 1883, with a total of 4,500 performers from the Sacred Harmonic Society. In some sense this was the precursor to today's "Sing-along Messiah," which, depending upon the size of the audience, offers similar vocal forces. Many of the most recent performances have reacted to the Victorian tradition of a grandiose Messiah by seeking to return to Handel's original conception of the work, one that employs modest orchestral size and color, a chorus of fifty or so, and ornaments and cadenzas for the singers in the style of Handel.

Modern technology affords us a wonderful opportunity to compare a variety of performances. The three recordings offered of this great work give an idea what a nineteenth century audience might have heard, evoking the forces of thousands, a typical mid-twentieth century performance, and, finally, one that attempts to create a performance similar to what Handel himself might have heard. It is important to mention that the musical experience we feel in listening to a recording can be quite different from what we feel at a live performance. A recorded performance can often sound more interesting if it has a large variety of tone colors and a rhythmic lightness. A live performance, however, can be incomparable, especially in its power to deliver a soul-shaking wall of sound from massed chorus and orchestra.

The Baroque Legacy

The principal legacy of Baroque music is, of course, the music itself. This is a legacy which is best understood, best appreciated, by simply being played and heard. For over two centuries, most Baroque music remained unplayed, perhaps because concert halls had become too large for what is essentially chamber music, perhaps because the instruments and playing techniques had been supplanted by those then newer than Baroque, perhaps because the music itself failed to communicate as directly and naturally as Classical, Romantic and late Romantic music, especially given the loss of the performance techniques of the Baroque period. A limited amount of Baroque music lent itself to being performed in the newer manner, especially the music of Bach and Handel's Messiah.

Henry Purcell, Hear My Prayer - The Monteverdi Choir

But most fell by the wayside: the music of Monteverdi and Purcell, of Couperin and Rameau, and of so many others was too dependent for their musical effect on the colors and techniques of Baroque performance to survive the "translation" to performance on later instruments played with later techniques.

Today's recording technology, joined with the recent rebirth of the instruments and performance techniques of the Baroque, give this music a second life, a new vitality. We are fortunate to live in a time when such an important cultural heritage can again be revived, when we can again hear the music of the Baroque. (Ex.: Handel's Water Music)

Glossary

Aria. A movement, generally in an opera, cantata, or oratorio, for a solo singer with instrumental accompaniment.

Affect. The particular emotion being described in a given Baroque piece.

Baroque music. European art music written between roughly 1600 and 1750.

Cadenza. Virtuoso solo passage in the manner of an improvisation, performed near the end of an aria or a movement of a concerto.

Cantata. A composition in several movements for solo voice(s), instruments, and sometimes chorus.

J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Movement 1
Solo Instruments: violin, recorder, oboe, trumpet

Concerto grosso. The principal Baroque orchestral form, contrasting a single solo or group of solo instruments and a small orchestra.

Continuo. (1) A set of chords continuously underlying the melody in a piece of Baroque music; (2) the instrument(s) playing the continuo, usually cello plus harpsichord or organ.

Counterpoint. The art of combining two or more melodic lines harmoniously.

Fret. Ridge on the finger board of some string instruments, for example, gamba, lute and guitar, which determines the length of vibrating string or strings.

Fugue. Polyphonic form popular in the Baroque era in which one or more themes are developed by imitative counterpoint.

Gamba. viola da gamba, a fretted, bowed string instrument with the approximate range of a cello. The gamba was often used as a continuo instrument. It had been supplanted by the cello before the end of the eighteenth century.

Imitative polyphony. Counterpoint in which a melodic subject is presented in one voice, then echoed in another, with each part continuing as others enter.

Madrigal. A 16th-century Italian (or English) song for three to eight voices.

Melody. The aspect of music concerned with the relative pitch of notes, as distinct from rhythm. The succession of single tones varying in pitch and rhythm and having a recognizable musical shape..

Oratorio. Long dramatic piece, with neither sets nor dramatic action, and performed by soloists, chorus, and orchestra.

Ornamentation. Melodic decoration, either improvised or indicated through signs in the music.

Part. The music for a particular instrument (recorder, flute, viol, etc.) or voice (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) in an ensemble.

Prelude. Introductory piece leading to another, such as fugue.

Program music. A musical piece that tells a story, often with the mimicking of everyday sounds.

Recitative. A half-singing, half-reciting style of presenting words in opera, cantata, oratorio, etc., following speech accents and speech rhythms closely.

Rhythm. Sonic action in time or the arrangement of durational sonic patterns or tone lengths that fall on or between a "beat".

Ritornello. A musical form in which melodic and harmonic material return over and over again in the course of the movement.

Rondo. A musical form which repeatedly presents a principal theme in alternation with other material in the pattern, ABACADA....

Solo sonata. Sonata for one instrument, generally accompanied by the continuo.

Thorough bass. See Continuo.

Trio Sonata. Sonata for two main instruments, always accompanied by the continuo.

Tutti. All instruments playing together.

Variations. A musical form in which a theme is presented then repeated many times in different guises created by the transformation of elements such as rhythm, tempo, harmony, and accompaniment.

Vibrato. Small fluctuations of pitch used in Baroque music as an ornament.

Virtuoso. A highly proficient instrumentalist or vocalist.

Timeline
Period of Baroque music: circa 1600 to circa 1750

Musicians

Scientists and Philosophers

From John Dryden's A Song for St. Cecilia's Day (1687)

From harmony, from heavenly harmony
This universal frame began:
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high:
"Arise, ye more than dead."
Then, cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
[To culminate all harmony] in man.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell!
When [man first] struck the corded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,
And, wondering, on their faces fell
To worship that celestial sound.
Less than a god they thought there could not dwell
Within the hollow of that shell
That spoke so sweetly and so well.
What passion cannot Music raise and quell!

The trumpet's loud clangor
Excites us to arms,
With shrill notes of anger,
And mortal alarms.
The double double double beat
Of the thundering drum
Cries: "Hark! the foes come;
Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat."

The soft complaining flute
In dying notes discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,
Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.

Sharp violins proclaim
Their jealous pangs, and desperation,
Fury, frantic indignation,
Depth of pains, and height of passion,
For the fair, disdainful dame.

But O! what art can teach,
What human voice can reach,
The sacred organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race;
And trees unrooted left their place,
[When he would play] the lyre;
But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher:
When to her [voice her saintly] breath was given,
An angel heard, and straight appeared,
Mistaking earth for heaven.

Recommended Listening

1 J.S. Bach, Prelude and Fugue in D major, Book II, Well-Tempered Clavier: [CD; approx 5-1/2 min] Leonhardt, harps.; Angel CD CB-49128 (2 discs - Book II of Well Tempered Clavier)

2 F. Couperin, Le dodo ou l'Amour au berceau and L'»vapor»e, Ordre, Ordre [Suite] 15,#s 2 & 3: [CD; cuts 18 & 19; 3:52 + 1:46 = 5:38] Leonhardt, harps., Phillips 420 939-2

3 D. Scarlatti, Sonatas K. 347 & 348: [CD; cuts 12 & 13; 2:10 + 2:21 = 4:31] Thornburgh, harps., Koch International Classics, KI-7014

4 A. Corelli, La Follia Variations, V Opus 5, # 12: [CD; approx 12 min] Purcell Quartet, Hyperion CDA-66226

5 Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, Opus VIII, # 2, movements 2 & 3, "The summer storm": [CD; cuts 5 & 6; 5:33] Concerto Amsterdam, Schroeder, v. & cond., Harmonia Mundi [France] 90-5129

6 J.S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, 1st mov't: [CD; approx 10 min] Leonhardt Ensemble, Pro Arte CDD-212 (2 discs with all 6 B'b'gs)

7 Monteverdi, Aria Pur ti miro from The Coronation of Poppea: [CD; approx 5 min] Vienna Concertus Musicus, Harnancourt, cond., Teledec 35247 ZC (4 discs)

8 Purcell, Aria When I am laid in earth and Dido's Lament from Dido and Aeneas: [CD; cut 46; approx 7 min] Taverner Players, Kirkby, sopr., Chandos CD-8306

9 Rameau, Plat»e, duet from Act 3 scene viii:[CD; 8 min ?] Musiciens du Louvre, Mankowski, cond., Erato WE 815-ZA (2 discs)

10 JS Bach, Cantata # 82, Ich habe genug, 1st Aria: [CD; approx 7 min] Taverner Players, Hyperion CDA 66036

11 Handel, Messiah Victorian version: [CD; approx 6-8 min] Sir Thomas Beecham 1927 recording, Pearl

12 Handel, Messiah mid&shy20th century version: [CD; approx 6-8 min] LSO, Colin Davis, cond., Heather Harper, sopr.