Essays on Instrumental Music

The aesthetics of the Baroque era and it's addiction to motion and scale was reflected not only in architecture, sculpture and painting, but it has mainly become obvious in the music. The world of contrasts, contradictions and passion was expressed by major and minor keys. The meaning of the major key is joy, the slightest nuances from tenderness to exultant. The minor key means sadness in melancholy and tragic desperation.

RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE

Musical culture in the XVII and the beginning of the XVIII century has been developed in the frame of Baroque style (Claude 3). It has created new art principles ...

Music

Often Jewish music’s contemporary reception history leads us to consider Salamone Rossi as the beginner of Jewish music. Salamone himself, as a musician and composer, who as a professional wanted earning his living outside and inside the Jewish community, also desired his audience to comprehend in his compositions of Hebrew style the Jewish music’s beginnings. On one hand, Rossi had a hope that beginnings’ general questions would be reflected in his compositions, what his theological-aesthetic apologists and Rossi himself considered as a fundamental musica antica, Temple’s ancient music, before the diaspora music in Jerusalem. Accumulating at ...

Rhetoric can be defined as the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively (thefreedictionary). There have been many instances where the relationship between rhetoric and music has been close, particularly in the Baroque period (rhetoric).

Until relatively late in Western civilization, music was mainly a vocal art form and therefore words were of high importance. As a result, composers tended to be inspired by rhetorical principles when combining text with music (rhetoric). Furthermore, even after independent instrumental music gained popularity, the rhetoric principles continued to be used for both vocal and instrumental music.

Rhetoric and music have basic elements ...

Listen to the Corelli, Vivaldi and Bach examples. Using the stylistic features of each, write a summary of the development of instrumental music in the 18th century. Be aware of overall form and musical elements you hear in the examples. Explain the musical terms you use.

Instrumental music developed quite profoundly in the 18th Century especially through the music of Bach. Amongst the most important forms of musical development one can identify the fugue, the gavotte as well as the minuet. The 18th century also saw the development of the concerto grosso which also ...