Origins of the Baroque
EARLY BAROQUE OPERA
The “first practice”
 The “first practice” is the older, established, tradition
of Renaissance music, and is mainly polyphonic in
nature.
 Polyphony—several musical lines or voices that
sound simultaneously but move independently.
 The art of counterpoint continues to develop during
the Baroque era and remains important well into the
19th-c.
The “second practice”
 The “second practice” used vocal music as its
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standard.
Inventors of this second practice helped shape opera
into an art form, and the appearance of this art form
marks the beginning of the Baroque period.
Music of the “second practice” is monodic.
It consists of a single melodic line against a
complementary accompaniment (called basso
continuo.) Texture—homophonic
This accompaniment does not compete with the text,
but enhances the emotional expression of the text.
Stile recitativo
 The word “recitative” derives from the same root
word as “recite”.
 This style of singing lies somewhere between singing
and speaking.
 Allows words to be projected with special clarity.
Claudio Monteverdi
 Monteverdi (1567-1643)
 An innovator, his career straddled the Renaissance
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and the Baroque Era.
He composed in both the old and new styles.
Director of music at St. Mark’s in Venice.
(Italy was the center of the musical world during the
Renaissance)
LA Tu se’ morta from Orpheus (1607)
Henry Purcell
 Purcell (1659-1695)
 Opera: “Dido and Aeneas” Aeneas is from Troy.
Dido is the windowed Queen of Carthage (Tunisia).
Typical of opera, this is a story of ill-fated love.
 Dido and Aeneas was composed in 1685. Opera was
not popular in England. Eventually, Italian opera
achieved some popularity. Dido is the one of the first
operas written in English.