Transcription
Hello. Okay, so we're moving on to a new era now, the Baroque era. And, of course, we're going to start at the beginning. The first things to know about the Baroque era is when it was. Conveniently, in this case, it's 1600 to 1750. That's 150 years, same length as the Renaissance was, remember in our previous chapter. And again, scholars debate about what the real dates should be, but it doesn't really matter for our purposes. And remember, it's all kind of imaginary anyway; these eras are just convenient framing devices, or bins, to organize our information. So 1600 to 1750.
Now, one thing that is different this time around is that there really is some significance to the year 1600 and the year 1750. They weren't just kind of picked out of a hat or picked because they ended in a zero or two, making it a nice even number. There are actual significant things that happen around that time, and I'll get to those in a little bit. Uh, and then, of course, the word Baroque—what does it mean? I'll get into that in a minute too, but first let me talk a little bit about the implications of this term. So, unlike the word Renaissance, the term Baroque is limited really just to the arts—we could say the visual arts, um, literature, music. Okay. Now, the Renaissance, or the Medieval, the Middle Ages, these are terms that are used to bracket a general historical era, which includes all kinds of cultural historical things, including the arts, but that's not really true of the Baroque. So Baroque pertains specifically to the arts and to a style within the arts. Okay.
Then what might we use for a term that indicates the sort of the general historical era that we're talking about, within which we find the Baroque style in the arts? Well, the book uses the term "The Age of Absolutism," and that's a pretty good one. What do we mean by the Age of Absolutism? Meaning this is the age of, or the era of, absolute monarchs, which means this is the period of time when the very upper layer of the nobility—meaning the aristocracy, kings and queens, and emperors—reached the peak of their power. Right? Remember, this is continuing a trend that we saw in the late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. Right? In the late Middle Ages, the Church begins to decline in power, and to fill that power vacuum, we see the nobility gaining in power, and specifically really not just any old nobility, but kings and queens. Because remember, one of the big changes as we went from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance is the invention of gunpowder. And the invention of gunpowder makes castles basically obsolete. Right? These fortified strongholds that are really the source of power, in a way, for earls and counts and dukes, or whatever. Right? Uh, so these castles, of course, can be battered down; walled towns can be battered down with cannon, which means whoever has the most cannon is going to win, and that's usually going to end up being the king, or whoever's in control of this central government. So this is also the age when nation-states, as we know them, come into being. It's not that there wasn't such a thing as a nation-state before; there was such a thing called France and England, whatever. But during the Middle Ages, for example, the King of France was not necessarily, you know, all-powerful, because there were lesser nobility who were technically underneath the King of France, but who might at any given time have more power, might have a more powerful army, or whatever. Well, this begins to change, uh, certainly in the Renaissance, and as we move into the Age of Absolutism. So the next—the lesser nobility, while still powerful in their own way, is not as powerful as the king. And the one king in particular that the book uses as an example of this trend is Louis XIV of France. So, um, I don't want to get too much into the historical background; we will do that, but just trying to again apply terms and titles to our big picture.
So the big picture, the frame, is 1600-1750. We could call it the Baroque era in the arts, and we do see some similar characteristics, let's say, from the style of painting and sculpture and architecture and literature and music. So there are sort of parallel currents in the different art forms, but that's just strictly within the arts. Maybe the general historical term that we should be aware of is the Age of Absolutism. And remember, they affect each other. Like, why do you need to know about the historical cultural stuff? Because that's where the music comes from. The better you understand what is going on historically culturally, the better you'll understand the music. Okay, so let's get back to that term Baroque. What does it mean? Well, here's what the book has to say: Although the word Baroque has at various times meant bizarre, flamboyant, and elaborately ornamented, modern historians use it simply to indicate a particular style in the arts. An oversimplified but useful characterization of Baroque style is that it fills space—canvas, stone, or sound—with action and movement. Okay. Um, all that is all well and good, but they never actually tell you what the word means. I'm going to tell you what it really means. It has to do with pearls, believe it or not. If you are in the pearl business—now remember, there are different types of pearls—if you go to a jewelry store today and buy a pearl necklace, they might be real pearls, but they are probably cultured pearls, meaning you have a bed of oysters somewhere, and you put a little bead—a nice perfectly round bead—inside of an oyster. And that oyster—that bead is like an irritant to the oyster—and the oyster covers it with these layers of mother-of-pearl over time to try and relieve that irritation. And you wait long enough, and enough layers have been laid down over that little bead, and you get a nice round pearl. Well, that's not the way it happens in nature. In nature, a grain of sand gets inside of the pearl—and the pearl tries—gets inside of the oyster, and the oyster tries to cover it up with these layers of mother-of-pearl. The grain of sand is irregular in shape, right? And so, as those layers are being put down, they—these irregularities are magnified and exaggerated, right? So if you look at, you know, pearls that have come from natural oysters out there in the ocean someplace, they don't look all nice and perfectly round. There are some that are more round and will fetch a greater price, and then there are some that are lumpier. And if you were in the pearl business, you had to have sort of a grading system of different levels of pearls—that some would get more, some would get less. A barroco—it's a Portuguese word—is a low grade of pearl; it's lumpy, it's misshapen, it doesn't bring as much money. Right? And then the term Baroque is just the French version of this Portuguese word, baroko. So it basically means a lumpy, misshapen pearl. And it's kind of an interesting term, actually. I wish the book had actually, you know, taken the trouble to give you the history of the word, because it implies something that is beautiful—a pearl—but that is unfortunately misshapen, distorted, exaggerated. I believe the first use of this term Baroque to describe music was in an encyclopedia, and I believe it was actually the philosopher Rousseau who first used that term, and he used it as a criticism, uh, meaning obviously it's not a complimentary thing to say that, you know, something is exaggerated or grotesque or misshapen or bizarre. So it was applied in a sort of a derogatory way, and of course it was applied by people who sort of came after and were looking back at a previous style and saying, "Oh, this stuff from the old days—it was so exaggerated, misshapen, over the top—Baroque!" Right? So it was not meant in a complimentary way; it was meant as a criticism. Um, but there is, you know, as with many criticisms of this kind or characterizations, there's more than a kernel of truth to it. So especially if we compare this Baroque style to the previous Renaissance style, you can see some differences, and these differences are true not just in the visual arts but also in, uh, in music.
So we look at these examples, and I'll, uh, maybe put links up. Of course, we have these pictures right here in your book; hopefully you have the book, either the physical book or the e-book. But let's look at a couple of these—at these paintings. I'll just stick this up into the camera for a second. So, uh, on one side we have this painting of this scene, uh, from the Old Testament; this is Judith slaying Holofernes. And then, uh, on the other side—I guess that's your left, maybe—we have a statue of David by Bernini, the greatest sculptor of the Baroque era. Now we've had a sculpt—a sculpture of David in the previous unit too, the Renaissance era David by Michelangelo, which is much better known, uh, and I'm going to compare the two, but first let's look at this painting by, uh, Gentileschi—her name is Artemisia Gentileschi—and, uh, this was actually a favorite subject; I believe Gentileschi, uh, painted the same subject many times, and other artists did as well. Uh, what it is, it's a scene from—I forget which book of the Old Testament—but, uh, basically there is a—in the Old Testament—there's the story of the, uh, I believe it was the Assyrians or maybe the Babylonians—maybe the Babylonians—who, um, captured and enslaved the Hebrews. And the leader of the army which accomplished this and which enslaved—took them all—was this guy Holofernes. And the leaders of the Hebrew tribes were sort of in fear and trembling of Holofernes; didn't know what to do. But Judith, uh, knew what to do; she had a plan. She said, "Okay, I know I'm gonna, like, become his girlfriend, and, uh, I'll sort of, you know, cozy up to him, and some night when he's coming back to his tent all drunk, he's gonna get it." Right? And so she carried out her plan, and you can see in this painting—first of all, it's a grotesque scene; it's not the kind of thing that you're going to see in a Renaissance era painting; it's not really beautiful; it's not meant to be beautiful; it's meant to be shocking; it's meant to get your—it's meant to be, uh, it's meant to have an emotional impact. Now, it's beautifully painted, uh, definitely; it's skillfully painted, but beauty is not the first priority; getting an emotional response is the first priority. And for that reason, there are various techniques that are employed. First of all, all of the figures in the painting are in some kind of like exaggerated, uh, I'm not going to say it's a pose; they're not really posing; they are in action; it's like a snapshot taken that gives the illusion of motion. Everybody is straining; you know, Holofernes is straining against these women trying to kill him; Judith's assistant there in the red dress is trying to hold Holofernes down; and Judith is trying to run that knife through his throat. And Judith has this amazing expression on her face where she's both kind of disgusted at what she has to do and also determined to do it. Notice also the use of contrast and the very vivid colors—all right, that red and that blue—notice the contrast of the white sheets, which allows you to see very vividly this bright red blood on the sheets. Right? All of that heightens the drama. And, by the way, this is the kind of thing that really wasn't possible, uh, in earlier eras, because the Baroque—let's say the late Renaissance into the Baroque—was that was when we first start to see oil paint. If you look at most Renaissance paintings, the colors aren't as vivid because they couldn't really get that kind of color with the earlier mostly egg-based paint—tempera paint it's called. Um, so, uh, that's that painting. Let's look at, uh, this statue by Bernini of David. Now, if we contrast this with the very famous—I probably don't even have to show it to you; it's so famous—the statue of David by Michelangelo—Michelangelo's David is striking a pose; he is not yet, uh, in action. This is the moment before David does what he is best known for—killing Goliath. He has the sling over his shoulder; he's got the rock in his hand; and he's looking over at Goliath, and he's like, "Yup, I'm going to get you, but first I'm going to strike this pose and look awesome and beautiful." Right? So the emphasis again is on beauty; Michelangelo wants us to appreciate how beautiful David is. But, uh, Bernini wants us to, to give a sense of the drama and the action. So in this case, David is now—his whole body is twisted around, and he is in the act of flinging that stone, uh, he's just about to, and he's twisted around, and the expression on his face—again, you can see it's sort of this—this might not be the best angle, actually; if you see it face-on, it's a really an amazing expression; he's kind of like this, you know, he's straining, and he's obviously there's a—there's a lot of intensity. Right? So again, the emphasis on the intensity, the emotion, rather than on, uh, some, uh, sort of abstract or notion of beauty. Right? Uh, and so we see this over and over again in the Baroque era, and it's an interesting thing to point out because it brings out a—the question of what is art all about, in a sense, or what is—what is any art—not just the visual arts, but art, music, or whatever. If you are creating a work of art, what is your first priority? What is the main thing that you want to do? And, uh, I think maybe today we have a notion that, oh, what's—if you were to ask people what is art all about, what is the purpose of art, if you are an artist, what are you trying to do? I think probably today most people would say something like, "You're trying to express yourself," but that's not the only possibility, or that's not the only, let's say, top priority in the Renaissance. Uh, and again, I'm speaking very generally, but I think it's fair to say that in the Renaissance, if you were to ask a Renaissance artist, you know, if you were to list your priorities, what is your top priority? I think the Renaissance artist might say something like, "Well, first of all, it has to be beautiful. If it isn't beautiful, it doesn't qualify as art." You know, the idea of ugly art would be a contradiction in terms. Now, today, unfortunately, in my opinion, that's no longer a contradiction in terms, and we see a lot of stuff that calls itself art, or whose creator calls it art, that is ugly—that's not just, you know, the viewer's opinion, let's say, but it's actually intended to be ugly, and the artist is doing that for a certain reason; maybe they're trying to make a commentary on the ugliness of society or life or whatever. But to a Renaissance artist, that would seem absurd, and would say, "No, it's not art if it's not beautiful." And then there are probably other priorities also that a Renaissance artist would say: "Well, it has to be beautiful, and it has to be realistic; it has to imitate nature, and it should also get an emotional response. Obviously, we want people to feel something, to be moved in some way, but probably the emotional response is maybe second or third in our hierarchy of priorities, because the idea is—to someone with that kind of mindset, let's say—to be overly emotional, to put emotion as your top priority, risks sacrificing some beauty and creating some art that is maybe over the top and in poor taste, maybe wearing its heart out on its sleeve." Right? Okay, so it's a different mindset in the Baroque, uh, in the Baroque over here versus the Renaissance. In the Baroque, I think, uh, again speaking very generally for Baroque artists, if you were asked a Baroque artist what is your number one priority, they would probably say, "Emotion. I want to get an emotional response from my viewer if I'm a visual artist, or from my listener if I'm a composer." Right? And these kind of abstract notions of beauty—yes, it should also be beautiful—but emotion has to come first. Uh, and after all, not all emotions are beautiful. If my priority is always beauty—beauty, everything must be beautiful—well, how am I ever going to express maybe the uglier emotions, uh, like, uh, like rage or sorrow or gloom or anxiety or whatever? How am I going to depict those things if it always has to be beautiful? Right? So this is kind of a problem; there's a—there's an inherent tension or conflict between beauty and expressing emotion. Right? And in different eras, different artists or different composers, uh, might bring different priorities to bear when they're—when they're dealing with this problem. Okay. Now, uh, we're going to see lots of examples of this, uh, when we get into talking about music, but probably the—the single best example—and here I'm getting to the thing that makes 1600 the important year for the beginning of the Baroque—the most exaggerated, over-the-top, theatrical, perhaps bizarre and flamboyant musical genre is, of course, opera. And opera is invented right around 1600. It is a new genre of music that is not really something that evolves from something else, which is usually the case; it was really kind of like invented by a certain group of people right around the year 1600. In fact, the date of the earliest surviving opera is 1600, and we're going to learn about this opera—Euridice is the title of this opera. Now, it's the earliest surviving opera because there was an earlier opera by the same creators, which unfortunately has not survived; we know that it existed, but it's been lost. That earlier opera, Daphne, I believe, was composed 1598, but it hasn't survived. 1600 is the year of the earliest surviving opera, and that's why we choose 1600 as the date at the beginning of the Baroque era. And we're going to see, when we get to talk about opera—actually, we're going to talk about opera first—the book actually doesn't cover opera first; when we get to talking about different genres of music, they go through and sort of a different priority, a different list. We are going to get around to all the different genres that are listed in the book, but I'm going to start with opera, because if you understand opera, you understand the rest of the Baroque so much better, because opera is hugely influential on all other genres of music. Opera, uh, very soon after its invention, became sort of like the big important type of composition that a serious composer had to create. It was—it's sort of like think of it this way: If you are, uh, an actor or a producer, let's say, or a director, you're in the sort of like the—the screen business; there are lots of different types of creations you can make; you can make TV shows or commercials or music videos, or you could do, you know, theater. But the movies are the big leagues, right? I mean, if you want to be a star, you want to be a movie star; you want—if you're—if you're a producer, director, you want to be a movie producer, director; that's the big genre, which also influences all the other genres. Right? So the style of TV shows, the style of commercials and music videos, usually imitates the trends that are set in the movies. So movies are the big dog. Same thing with opera back in the Baroque era; a lot of these trends and styles and characteristics that we see throughout the Baroque era had their beginnings in opera; opera is the trendsetter, and most of these other genres kind of follow along. So it makes sense to start with opera. So once we get through sort of the basics of the Baroque era, we learn about the historical background and the characteristics of the music, etc.—the style of Baroque era music compared to the earlier Renaissance style—once we get through all that, we're going to start with opera. And opera itself—it's—it's pretty complex; there's a lot of different elements to—to understand. So just kind of like foreshadowing—give me a little preview of what you're in for. All right, so let's go back to, uh, to talk about the Baroque era generally. So just now I said, okay, the significance of 1600 is that that's kind of like when opera was invented, and opera is hugely influential. How about 1750? What's the significance of 1750? Well, 1750 happens to be the year that the greatest composer of the Baroque era, and also most people who are knowledgeable about this would agree, the greatest composer ever who ever lived, J.S. Bach, died in 1750. Now, it was awfully convenient—not for him, certainly, but for us—that Bach died in 1750, because that's exactly halfway through the century, and it gives us a nice clean cut 150 years. But I'm going to talk—now having talked about the significance of 1600—I'm going to talk a little bit about the significance of 1750. Just because J.S. Bach died in 1750—although that's the date that we're going to use, and that's what significance of that date is—it's not really that important. I mean, certainly it was for Bach and his family, but it was not really that earth-shattering an event in the musical world, uh, because, um, for one thing, J.S. Bach was not all that well known in his own lifetime. He's well known today; he's regarded today as the greatest composer who ever lived, but in his own lifetime he was somewhat obscure; he was not nearly the most famous composer. If you were to ask the average person on the street, let's say, in the, you know, early to mid-1700s, if you were to ask somebody who was the greatest composer, they would probably say Handel. Handel was born actually the same year as Bach; he died a few years afterwards, but Handel was much better known, for reasons that I'll get into when I talk about the two of them; I'm going to do a sort of a compare-contrast on Bach and Handel later on. Another thing is that—so Bach wasn't all that influential in his own time to begin with—and also, let's say, the last 20 or 30 years of J.S. Bach's life and career, the style that he composed in—we'll call it the late Baroque style—was already starting to become considered old-fashioned, actually, and the style was starting to move on. Now, Bach was a middle-aged guy by that time; Bach ended up dying in 1750 at the age of 65. So in his, let's say, middle and later years, he was composing in a style that most people probably would have considered kind of old-fashioned. This probably didn't bother Bach in the least; he didn't care what those young kids thought, whether his music was old-fashioned or not; that was the style that he had been trained in, and probably didn't even care that other composers—like his own children, for example—a couple of his—several of his sons became composers, and a couple of them actually were more famous than their old man because they were composing in the more cutting-edge style, which has come to be known as the Classical style. So when we get to the Classical era, which is the one after this one, uh, we'll see that the—the Classical style doesn't like begin in 1750 just because Bach died; it really is emerging in the 1720s, the 1730s; it's a gradual transition of style from what we'd call the late Baroque to the early Classical style. And picking 1750 is a little bit arbitrary; we pick 1750 really just kind of like in honor of J.S. Bach, because he is so great. So just be aware—the significance of 1750—that's the year that Bach died, but in reality, uh, the—the style undergoes a sort of a change that is so gradual that we probably can't really pick any particular date as like, "This is when the Classical style started." It's a gradual transition. Okay. All right, so I've already started sort of talking about music and composers, but I want to stay in the background a little bit and continue talking a little bit about this, like the historical stuff. Remember, we're trying to paint a big picture, and we've got our frame—1600-1750—we've got our title—the Baroque era, aka the Age of Absolutism. Right? What's—what's that all about? Well, as I said, this is the time when the aristocracy—the very upper crust of the nobility—reaches the peak of its power. And what does that mean for the arts? Well, it means a lot, because these kings and queens and emperors, and also the lesser nobility—their underlings, dukes, counts, whatever—they're—they're at the peak of their power and influence and wealth, and a lot of this wealth, of course, is…
Coming out of the new world and coming out of this explosion in trade that is a result of the age of exploration, which came earlier during the Renaissance, so there's a lot more trade, a lot more wealth concentrated in the hands of these very powerful nobility. And what do they do with that money? They spend it on palaces, which are filled with artworks and sculptures, and they spend it on music; they hire composers and entire orchestras for their own entertainment and also for use in their in their worship services in their chapels. Remember the the uh the upper nobility; they don't go to church with the little people. They have their own church, their own chapel built into the palace or on the grounds of the palace, and that means they need musicians to provide music for those uh religious services.
So although we still have uh we still have the Catholic Church and various other churches—so, for example, the Lutheran Church is also a very musical church, and J.S. Bach, as we'll see, is a Lutheran—we'll talk a little bit about the music of the Lutheran Church. We still have church musicians, sacred music, and certainly we have secular music. We're going to learn lots of different genres of secular music, but really during this time it would have been much more prestigious, higher pay, a much better job to have to work as a court composer for a king or a duke or some member of the nobility than as a church musician.
Now, as we saw in the Renaissance, some composers will go back and forth from one kind of position to the other. J.S. Bach did this, for example; he worked for members of the nobility as a court composer, but then he actually spent the last several decades of his life as a church musician. But if you could choose—in other words, if you were you know famous enough or uh if you were recognized as as being really great and you were in demand—if you had your choice, you would want to work for the nobility; more prestige, higher pay, is just a better gig all around.
However, we should keep in mind that if you got one of these kind of jobs as a court composer, you were still treated as a servant; you were on the staff, right? You were not treated as some sort of great artist that has to be deferred to; you were the help. Uh, and of course a a wealthy nobleman would have a tremendous staff tending to his every need, right, hundreds of people, and you would just be one of the you'd be you know a high-class servant for sure; you'd be higher up than maybe you know the guy who is doing the dishes, you know, the maid or the butler, the gardener or the stable master or the whatever. You're a high-class skilled servant, but you're still a servant, and you are treated as such, and that's probably about the best you could hope for as a composer.
So again, maybe the best example of this, in the example that they that they mentioned specifically, is Louis XIV. All right, so Louis XIV was the absolute ruler of France for a very long time, and um one of the ways that he sort of projected power was actually through the arts. So they have a a picture here of the palace that Louis built at Versailles, which is a few miles outside of Paris. Um, Louis made a conscious choice to to move the seat of government and his own residence as king out of Paris over to Versailles, where he built this tremendous huge palace, which is still there to this day. And the idea was to, first of all, Louis kept, you know, on the grounds of his palace—I mean, there's thousands of rooms—who's in those rooms? Well, he would invite, quote unquote, invite—this is like an invitation you can't refuse—he would invite his lesser nobility to come to Versailles and stay there with him, and uh this this was sort of like a you know, keep your your enemy your friends close, but your enemies even closer, by keeping those nobility off of their own estates and in close proximity to Louis, you can kind of keep an eye on them and keep them from stirring up trouble in their own provinces. But also it's a way of projecting your own magnificence and power.
So Versailles was sort of like an enormous set, like in a play, or that that it was like the stage that Louis had constructed for himself, and it's it's monumental and it's filled with art and sculpture and formal gardens and fountains. So that, for example, if you are a foreign emissary of some kind—let's say you're the ambassador from Spain or from Holland or from England or whatever—and you are arriving you know to to for official business at Versailles, and you pull up in your carriage and you see this huge unbelievable palace, it's going to fill you with a little sense of you know, fear and trembling, like, who is the man behind all of this, who commanded and who paid for and built all of this? It's got to be a pretty important formidable guy not to mess with. So that's again um part of the purpose of all this; it's not just that they liked art, they liked having pretty things, they did, but they also wanted to project their own power and magnificence through the arts, right, and they they competed with each other, as happened in the Renaissance as well; they competed with each other to try and attract the best talent, because it would bring you more prestige. Um, so the the nobility we would say were the patrons, the main patrons of the arts uh during the Baroque era. Of course, the church was still a patron of the arts, but remember the church, the Catholic Church, is not as powerful as it used to be, right? Okay.
Um, one thing, one more thing I'll get into here in talking about uh the uh well a couple more things that the book mentions; I'm just going to touch on these paragraphs on pages 101 and 102. So first of all, some of this I've already mentioned; it says the aristocracy was enormously rich and powerful during the 17th and 18th centuries—that's the 1600s, the 1700s—kings and princes proclaimed their greatness by means of splendid palaces and magnificent court entertainments, like balls, banquets, lays, operas, and plays. Um, now a little farther down it says here—this is kind of an important development, two important developments at the toward the bottom of page 102—the middle class too influenced the development of the Baroque style. In the Netherlands, for example, prosperous merchants and doctors commissioned realistic landscapes and scenes from everyday life.
So I've been talking a little bit about the middle class; it's a bit of a misleading term today in America. Most people, the vast majority of people, consider themselves to be middle class, right? Basically anyone who works for a living, you know, uh unless you're like maybe a I don't know a Wall Street tycoon or something living in a penthouse, uh most people who work for a living kind of consider themselves middle class. So it's a very large, broad segment of the population; that's why politicians are always trying to appeal to the middle class, right, because that's where the votes are, that's where the people are. In the Middle Ages, in the Middle Ages, the middle class was practically non-existent, a very thin sliver of society; most people, remember, were either peasants—you know, that's the vast majority of people—or there were nobility, or there were clergy. What ultimately became the middle class was this very, very small segment of society who had maybe a skilled trade or was a merchant or was maybe a bureaucrat of some kind, right? But as we go into the Renaissance and as we get into the age of absolutism, the Baroque era in the arts, this middle class does start to grow, right? Uh, the cities slowly start to get a bit larger; remember, there's more commerce, there's more trade, right? So we need more merchants, we need more bankers, we need more bureaucrats, for example, for these bigger centralized governments; we need more lawyers, we need printers and bookbinders, and we need all kinds of you know, skilled trades, and the people uh who are in these skilled trades, they are better educated than they used to be; they know how to read, and they're teaching their children how to read, and they want they want the better things in life; they want to uh not only read books, which are now kind of like newly available at uh at reasonable prices thanks to the invention of printing back in the 1450s, but they also want to teach their kids, for example, music, and they want to teach their kids how to dance, you know, this is sort of again how to raise your station in society; it's through education and culture so that you can impress the right people. Basically, that is the powerful people who already have that education and culture; they will recognize your talents and abilities, etc., etc. So this is like what we call today social mobility. So that means that for the first time now the middle class has kind of an effect on artistic or musical taste because they are also sort of consumers of the arts.
The Baroque era is when we start to see the first public concerts, for example, and public theatrical performances. What do I mean by public concerts? Were there no concerts before then? There were concerts, there was music, but they were either private performances in some castle or palace, or they were performances as part of a church service, or you know, you might have sort of informal dances or village fairs or whatever during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. But during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, there was no such thing as walking up to a concert hall and going to the ticket booth and shelling out some money for a ticket, going inside, sitting down, and enjoying a concert or a play; that's something new that occurs during this period, during the Baroque era. So, for example, the first public opera house is built in Venice in 1637. Now, opera was invented, remember, in 1600, and for the first few decades it was kind of private entertainment for the super wealthy, but someone got the bright idea, hey, you know, the middle-class people might like this too; let's build a big opera house, a big theater in the middle of the city where the middle-class people live, and let's charge you know, reasonable prices, and let's make money off this deal, right? So that's again, public concerts, opera, public theater, all invented in the Baroque era and appealing to the middle class. And by appealing to the middle class, that means you want to sell tickets, right? So uh you have to kind of cater to their tastes. Middle-class people are also buying music; remember, music is printed now, it's easily available; they are buying instruments. This is another huge trend in the Baroque era; the Baroque era is the the period when instrumental music really comes into his own, is taken seriously by major composers and kind of explodes in popularity, right? If we could see sort of a trend line from the beginning of the Baroque to the end, we'll see instrumental music take off in popularity, so that by the time we get to the end of the Baroque, instrumental music is actually more popular, or let's say there is more purely instrumental music being composed than there is purely vocal music. Most of the vocal music even of the Baroque period is not just a cappella, vocal for voices alone; it's for voices and instruments combined. The Renaissance was the great era of a cappella vocal music, but as we move into the Baroque era, that scene is kind of old-fashioned; yes, it's very beautiful, but it's not as intense and dramatic somehow as combining voices and instruments together, as is done in opera, for example. Opera is not just a cappella singing; it's singing with a pit orchestra to provide an of tension and drama and just kind of sheer volume and contrast of sound. Okay, so I'm trying to tie lots of things together, but all of this relates to this historical background. We have a rising middle class; middle class is still it still doesn't have any political power; it has some wealth, it has some leisure time and some education; still doesn't really have any political power; that's going to come later when we get to the Classical era in the 19th century. But for now, at least, it's it's starting to become a factor in the development of music. And also most of these composers themselves, we could consider them middle class; J.S. Bach was a middle-class guy, right? If he had been a nobleman, he wouldn't have needed to work for a living, you know, uh he wouldn't have had—and now there were some there were some nobility who actually were uh well trained in music, and we'll see this as well when we get into the Classical era, just because it was a passion and a hobby, but no noblemen had to write music in order to put food on the table the way that J.S. Bach and others did.
Okay, one other thing I want to talk about here in this sort of historical background section; this is the last paragraph on page 102. It says, "It is also helpful to think of Baroque style against the backdrop of scientific discoveries during the 17th and 18th centuries. The work of Galileo (1564-16) and Newton (1642-1727) represented a new approach to science based on the union of mathematics and experiment, etc., etc." Okay, uh we're probably not going to come back to this so much in this era, but this is going to be really big moving on into the Classical era. So just make a little note of this, that the 17th century—let's say the 1600s—is really the beginning of the scientific revolution, which is itself—the scientific revolution would not have been possible without the foundation being laid in the Renaissance. Lots of scientific discoveries being made in the Renaissance too, or let's say lots of let's say uh discovery of what the Greeks—rediscovery and appreciation and examination of what the Greeks and Romans did—but then also questioning what the Greeks and Romans believed and did and seeing if they could improve on it, right, which leads to the scientific revolution, right? A lot of what the scientific revolution discovered began with questioning the accepted uh teachings of Aristotle. Just about all the sort of the science-based teaching or natural philosophy of the Middle Ages uh and Renaissance was based on Aristotle; Aristotle was the authority on all things scientific, but then it was you know, discovered that if you if you actually observed and made measurements of things, Aristotle was wrong about a lot, and the discovery of Aristotle's mistakes in essence sort of made possible, paved the way for the scientific revolution. So just kind of bookmark that; we'll come back to that in the following era, in the Classical era, which takes place during a another sort of larger historical period which we call the Enlightenment. All right, but we'll put that aside; that's to come in the future. Uh, all right, I think that's probably all the time I have now, and that brings us up to page 104. The next lecture is going to be on Baroque music, so I've done about as much as I'm going to do in the lectures on the historical background stuff. Obviously, there's more in the book; I haven't just read verbatim everything out of the book; you should read what's in the book, but be thinking of this historical background as we now look at specific types, specific features of Baroque music generally and specific types of pieces.
And one thing I'll say actually before I go, rather than dividing pieces into or compositions, types of compositions into sacred and secular as we've been doing, right, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, we have sacred music and secular music; we still have sacred music and secular music, but the secular music is now so much more important, which is different, right? Because in the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, sacred music was more important, but now secular music is really more important; there's more of it being composed, and the greatest composers, although they do still create sacred music, they're usually composing more secular music; music has nothing to do with religion really. The more important division is not sacred and secular; it's vocal and instrumental. So when we start to look at different genres and kind of create a chart and kind of plug them in, there's going to be a vocal side and an instrumental side. On the vocal side, the vocal music of the time, remember, is for voices and instruments combined, and the first of these vocal genres we're going to look at is opera, and once you understand opera, it's pretty under easy to understand the other two, which is oratorio and cantata. So on our vocal side, we're going to have opera, oratorio, and cantata; three different major types or genres of vocal music with instruments. On the instrumental side, there are so many different types of pieces; I'm not going to list them all now, but we can sort of sub sub-categorize them into pieces for a large group, which we'll call the orchestra—orchestral music—pieces for a small group, which we call chamber music, and pieces that are generally for solo instruments, especially the keyboard instruments, which are uh increasing let's say in in popularity, but also for solo instruments like the violin or the cello or whatever. A lot of times the violin or the cello or flute pieces are played with keyboard accompaniment, but really the most important really solo instrument are the the keyboard instruments, for kind of obvious reasons, because you can play a lot of notes at the same time. All right, so uh just be thinking about that as we go ahead; we've got vocal over here, instrumental over here, and we can subcategorize instrumental into orchestral, chamber, and solo. All right, we'll leave it at that. Next time we'll talk more specifically about Baroque music; we'll start from page 104 and work our way through this. All right, see you then. Bye-bye.