Baroque popular music

Handel – Messiah

This work “messiah oratorio” was composed in just 24 days by one of the greatest baroque composers, George Frideric Handel(1685-1759). It witnessed the creation of some of the greatest masterpieces ever composed.

Emerging from the Renaissance, Baroque music was written in many forms by many composers like Bach, Vivaldi and Handel, over the course of 150 years, From the period’s beginnings in the early 1600s to when the Classical period style began to take over in the mid 1700s, collecting all forms of music and ideas.

Predictably, the violin was Vivaldi’s solo instrument of choice, and together with many colleagues, he was responsible for emancipating instruments “from their earlier dependence on vocal music.” Vivaldi takes all the delicious and expressive devices that are used to describe the emotions in early opera and transplants them into the instrumental realm.

And as you can hear in the featured excerpt, the “father of opera” Monteverdi is responsible for establishing the love duet as a central component of opera.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047

In Baroque music, the contrast was an essential element of expression, as was unity.

However, “the connection of such music to the original dances remained strong, as it influenced tempo, meter, character, and form.” The title of a dance was usually taken from the social dance the music sought to imitate. Bach – Toccata and Fugue in D minor

A great example of baroque music is The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, written by Johann Sebastian Bach 300 years ago.

However, there was original music composed in other parts of Europe as well. Just listen to how Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) uses dissonance and instrumental color to create drama, expressiveness, atmosphere, and suspense. The two favorite instruments for dance music were the harpsichord and the lute.

These continuo sonatas document a fascinating corner of the Baroque master’s oeuvre and simultaneously reveal the beginnings of the soon-to-emerge Classical style. She was a famous singer, played the lute, and she even wrote her own poetry. You can find out what baroque pop genre sounds like where you can preview artists or sort them the way you want, just click the headers to sort.