Baroque music refers to the period or dominant style of Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750.
The Baroque style followed the Renaissance period, and was followed in turn by the Classical period after a short transition (the galant style).
The Baroque period is divided into three major phases: early, middle, and late. Overlapping in time, they are conventionally dated from 1580 to 1650, from 1630 to 1700, and from 1680 to 1750.
Baroque music forms a major portion of the "classical music" canon, and is widely studied, performed, and listened to.
The term "baroque" comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning "misshapen pearl".
Key composers of the Baroque era include: Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Domenico Scarlatti, Claudio Monteverdi, Alessandro Stradella, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Arcangelo Corelli, François Couperin, Heinrich Schütz, Dieterich Buxtehude and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber.
The Baroque saw the formalization of common-practice tonality, an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key; this type of harmony has continued to be used extensively in Western classical and popular music.
During the Baroque era, professional musicians were expected to be accomplished improvisers of both solo melodic lines and accompaniment parts.
Baroque concerts were typically accompanied by a basso continuo group (comprising chord-playing instrumentalists such as harpsichordists and lute players improvising chords from a figured bass part) while a group of bass instruments—viol, cello, double bass—played the bassline.
A characteristic Baroque form was the dance suite.
While the pieces in a dance suite were inspired by actual dance music, dance suites were designed purely for listening, not for accompanying dancers.
During the period composers experimented with finding a fuller sound for each instrumental part (thus creating the orchestra), made changes in musical notation (the development of figured bass as a quick way to notate the chord progression of a song or piece), and developed new instrumental playing techniques.
Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established the mixed vocal/instrumental forms of opera, cantata and oratorio and the instrumental forms of the solo concerto and sonata as musical genres.
Dense, complex polyphonic music, in which multiple independent melody lines were performed simultaneously (a popular example of this is the fugue), was an important part of many Baroque choral and instrumental works.
Playing music in Baroque era | Johann Sebastian Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565)
La musica barocca è un'epoca nella storia della musica colta occidentale che segue il Rinascimento e si estende dall'inizio del XVII fino a circa la metà del XVIII secolo.
Le caratteristiche tipiche di questa lunga ed eterogenea epoca musicale sono la rappresentazione degli affetti (l'assegnazione di tipi di rappresentazione musicale a stati d'animo specifici), lo stile concertato (l'interazione di gruppi sonori eterogenei) ed il basso continuo (le voci della melodia sono contrapposte a una voce di basso, che è notata con numeri per indicare gli accordi da suonare).
Per questo motivo è stato suggerito il termine “Era del direttore d’orchestra”.
Nel periodo barocco la musica strumentale si emancipò dalla musica vocale e diede origine anche all'orchestra nel suo senso moderno.
L'inizio del periodo barocco nella musica fu segnato intorno al 1600 dall'invenzione della monodia (canto solista o voce solista strumentale con accompagnamento) e dal nuovo genere dell'opera in Italia, il cui principale rappresentante fu Claudio Monteverdi.
Lo stile drammatico e carico di emozione fu trasferito alla musica strumentale da Girolamo Frescobaldi e adattato in Germania da Heinrich Schütz alle caratteristiche della lingua tedesca.
Dopo questa fase iniziale, intorno al 1640, ebbe inizio in Italia l'alto barocco, con un carattere più lirico e una maggiore fluidità formale, con Francesco Cavalli come compositore di opere, Giacomo Carissimi di oratori e poi Arcangelo Corelli con la musica per archi.
In Francia, uno stile barocco indipendente, in cui la danza rivestiva maggiore importanza, fu instaurato da Jean-Baptiste Lully, nelle cui opere, a differenza dello stile italiano, il contenuto espressivo del canto rimase contenuto.
In Inghilterra, Henry Purcell combina influenze italiane e francesi con la tradizione locale e le peculiarità della pronuncia inglese.
In Germania la scuola organistica della Germania settentrionale, importante anche per la musica vocale sacra, trovò in Dietrich Buxtehude un rappresentante di spicco.
Nel tardo barocco, a partire dal 1690 circa, la combinazione degli stili nazionali sviluppatisi nel periodo dell'alto barocco giocò un ruolo importante, in Francia con François Couperin, in Germania con Georg Philipp Telemann e in Inghilterra con Georg Friedrich Händel.
La tensione tra i rapporti tonali viene ora utilizzata per sviluppare forme più ampie, come nella forma ritornello (con una parte ricorrente chiamata ritornello) di Antonio Vivaldi.
Un cambiamento di stile con melodie più dettagliate e una riduzione della polifonia (più voci indipendenti) iniziò negli anni Venti del Settecento, inizialmente nell'opera italiana, ad esempio con Leonardo Vinci e Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.
Jean-Philippe Rameau presentò la prima teoria dell'armonia (la teoria della successione di armonie di più toni).
Anche Domenico Scarlatti, compositore di sonate per clavicembalo attivo in Spagna, divenne un precursore del periodo classico, rompendo la continuità barocca, mentre allo stesso tempo la densità strutturale di Johann Sebastian Bach, che servì da modello per i compositori del periodo classico, funge da contrappunto.
L'anno della morte di Bach, il 1750, è spesso utilizzato come punto di fine di un'epoca.
La musica barocca serviva principalmente a rappresentare la nobiltà e la chiesa.
I musicisti erano organizzati in forma di corporazione oppure avevano un impiego fisso.
La tipologia dell'imprenditore musicale inizia a farsi notare solo a metà del XVIII secolo, in un'attività musicale in cui la borghesia è sempre più coinvolta.
Le Quattro Stagioni è un gruppo di quattro concerti per violino del compositore italiano Antonio Vivaldi(Compositore e violinista Barocco, 1678-1741), ognuno dei quali dà espressione musicale ad una stagione dell'anno.
Furono composti intorno al 1718-1720, quando Vivaldi era maestro di cappella alla corte di Mantova.
Furono pubblicati nel 1725 ad Amsterdam, in quella che all'epoca era la Repubblica delle Sette Province Unite, insieme ad altri otto concerti, con il titolo Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione.
Un ritratto anonimo ad olio conservato al Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, generalmente ritenuto di Vivaldi, 1723
The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year.
These were composed around 1718-1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua.
They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam in what was at the time the Dutch Republic, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention).
Orazio Gentileschi | Young Woman with a Violin (Saint Cecilia), 1612 | Detroit Institute of Arts
Ferri's way of painting is elevated by a technique which is almost virtuosity, where the traditional tools of the surrealism are inserted onto the traditional iconographic elements.
His career took on greater notoriety for having been in charge of portraying Pope Francis.
There were two works commissioned from the Italian artist, which occupy privileged places in the Vatican.
Vincenzo Sorrentino was born in Torre Annunziata, (Naples) Italy.
He is an illustrator, painter, sculptor and modeler of ceramic works.
His exhibition activity began in 1984 in institutional places, private galleries and at cultural institutes.
He taught painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, and since 2001 he his a professor of fresco theory and technique at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan.
The small picture (18 x 16 1/8 in., or 45.5 x 41 cm) could be described as one of the last works of the Delft artist’s formative years (ca. 1654-58), during which he adopted various subjects and styles from other painters and at the same time introduced effects based on direct observation and an exceptionally refined artistic sensibility.
Influenced by the detailed realism of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) and his followers in Leiden, Vermeer created his most illusionistic image in The Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SK-A-2344).
The artist worked on the statuary groups for the Villa on the Pincio for seven crucial years during which his brilliance, freedom, narrative bent, and delight in amazement blossomed and then developed in all their power.
The work had been commissioned from Bernini by Cardinal Montalto for his villa in 1623.
The cardinal’s untimely death blocked the commission, but Scipione Borghese decided to take it over.
Bernini interrupted his work on the Apollo and Daphne, dedicating himself to this new sculpture, which - according to Baldinucci, one of the artist’s first biographers - he finished in only seven months of work.
Her forehead crisscrossed with jewels, the sitter of this portrait displays a pink, or carnation, a symbol of love and marriage.
The gilt picture frame visible in the background locates her in a luxurious interior, but her pensive expression elevates the portrait beyond a mere statement of status.
Rembrandt's 'recipe for a stopping-out varnish' on the verso of a drawing 'Landcape with a River and Trees', 1654-55.
• "..in order to etch, take white turpentine oil, and add half the turpentine to it; pour the mixture into a small glass bottle and let it boil in pure water for half an hour".
It is evident that Rembrandt refers (alas fragmentarily) to a so-called 'stopping-out varnish', used to terminate the bite of acid in select areas of a plate that had already been exposed to the etching agent.
Thus other portions will remain exposed to the acid to deepen the bite.
The State Hermitage Museum / Государственный Эрмитаж has been open to the public since 1852.
It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky.
The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day.
Antonio Canova | Hebe, 1800-1805
Hebe is one of the most famous works of Antonio Canova (1757-1822), an outstanding Neoclassical sculptor of the late 18th - early 19th century.
According to ancient myth, Hebe was the daughter of Zeus and Hera and was the embodiment of youth.
As serving-maid to the gods on Mount Olympus, she was responsible for bringing round cups of nectar, the drink of eternal youth and immortality, during feasts.
The Galleria Borghese Museum houses and displays a collection of ancient sculptures, bas-reliefs and mosaics, as well as paintings and sculptures dating from the 15th through the 19th centuries.
The works are displayed in the 20 frescoed rooms that, together with the portico and the entrance hall, constitute the spaces of the Museum open to the public.
More than 260 paintings are housed in the storerooms of the Galleria Borghese, which are located above the floor of the Pinacoteca and set up like a picture gallery.
Cristoforo Stati (Italian, 1556-1619) | Adone and Venere, XVI-XVII | Installation Galleria Borghese
Moreover, the Gallery boasts an invaluable collection of ancient statues and busts from the Medici family, which adorns the corridors and consists of ancient Roman copies of lost Greek sculptures.
Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) | Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1772-1777 | Royal Collection (UK)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.
The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City - The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.
Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online.
Since its founding in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects.
Every day, art comes alive in the Museum's galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.
Guido Reni | The Immaculate Conception, 1627
Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575-1642), during his lifetime the most celebrated living painter in Italy, was famous for the elegance of his compositions and the beauty and grace of his heads, earning him the epithet "Divine".
This altarpiece, with its otherworldly space shaped by clouds and putti in a high-keyed palette, was commissioned in about 1627 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome for the infanta of Spain.
It later hung in the cathedral of Seville, where it deeply influenced Spanish painters, especially Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, whose workshop produced many iterations of this subject.
Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, also known as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, but commonly referred to as The Night Watch (Dutch: De Nachtwacht), is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt van Rijn.
It is in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum but is prominently displayed in the Rijksmuseum as the best-known painting in its collection.
The Night Wahtc is one of the most famous Dutch Golden Age paintings.
Rembrandt's large painting (363x437 cm (12 by 14+1⁄2 feet)) is famed for transforming a group portrait of a civic guard company into a compelling drama energized by light and shadow (tenebrism).
The title is a misnomer; the painting does not depict a nocturnal scene.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), French Rococo painter whose most familiar works, such as The Swing (1767), are characterized by delicate hedonism.
Fragonard was the son of a haberdasher’s assistant. The family moved to Paris about 1738, and in 1747 the boy was apprenticed to a lawyer, who, noticing his appetite for drawing, suggested that he be taught painting.
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