Baroque
The Theater of the Affections, or the Poetics of Wonder
The Baroque inherited the crisis of Mannerism and transformed it into a new experimental language, bringing the seconda pratica to its fullest consequences in opposition to the Renaissance classicism of the prima pratica.
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The period was characterized by exuberance, exaggeration, a taste for the bizarre, and strong emotional tension, in opposition to Renaissance balance. Its aesthetic canon was essentially the pursuit of “wonder.”
The beginning
1600
The Baroque began between the late sixteenth century and the early decades of the seventeenth.
Emerging in an age of religious and scientific crisis, the movement abandoned the Renaissance ideal of harmony in order to explore human “affections” in an intensified and dramatic way. It was founded on an experimental language that gave birth to new forms—opera, oratorio, and sonata—and expressed itself through the “concertato style,” which blended instruments, including the voice, to generate astonishment and move the soul. It is an art that reflects a sense of precariousness and illusion, where reality and fiction merge, as in opera.
In the Baroque, stylistic contamination was programmatic. The theatrical style entered church music, and vocal writing profoundly influenced instrumental music, and vice versa. Frescobaldi, for example, in his instrumental works, and Monteverdi, in his vocal ones, were part of the same movement of experimentation on the “affections.”
The peak
1620-1650
It reached its peak between 1620 and 1650, with the affirmation of opera in Venice and the full maturity of Monteverdi and Frescobaldi.
The turning point
mid-17th century
Around the middle of the seventeenth century, the transition toward Arcadia gradually began; by reaction, a more rational “regime of taste” opened the way to the Enlightenment, with figures such as Corelli and Vivaldi.
The end
1680
Toward the end of the seventeenth century, with the gradual affirmation of a new classicist taste, the Baroque came to a close.
Poetics
The artist’s aim was to astonish the listener through invention, exaggeration, and powerful expression of the affections, surpassing the rules codified by late medieval and Renaissance tradition.
Historiographical context
A “German-centric” periodization places the end of the Baroque in 1750 with the death of Bach; such a scheme may suit historiography outside Italy, but it fails to define the extraordinary complexity and richness of our music. It makes little sense to stretch a period over a century and a half, as the German school proposes. In doing so, the entire Italian laboratory of the early seventeenth century—from Monteverdi onward, including the seconda pratica and monody, the true hinge between Renaissance and Baroque and later Arcadia—would be overshadowed. Coherence with the history of the other arts, sciences, and literature in Italy would also be lost. Limiting the Baroque instead to the early seventeenth century, in respect of our history and culture, illuminates the birth of musical theater and of the modern style in Italy.
History
That Baroque period of intense musical creativity was in reality marked by devastating religious wars and by the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The age nevertheless emerged transformed by the great scientific discoveries of Galileo, which altered the vision of the world and stripped man of his last certainties.
The advent of the Counter-Reformation imposed control over themes, especially sacred ones, pushing musicians to concentrate on the emotional effectiveness of musical language in order to communicate their messages. The scientific revolution, on the other hand, demonstrated that the Earth is not at the center of the universe, undermining the humanistic confidence in harmony between man and cosmos and generating, at the same time, a sense of precariousness and instability that Baroque music powerfully expressed.
Thought
In philosophy, the humanistic trust in a harmonious cosmic order was abandoned in favor of doubt and relativism. For the new Italian thinkers, certainty resided only in the “awareness of uncertainty,” in the instability of reality and in its “deceptive appearances.” A distinctly Italian “Dionysian” thought thus emerged—linked to excess and the senses—in opposition to the “Apollonian” and rational thought of classicism.
Baroque thought was therefore dominated by the loss of certainties. As the critic Giovanni Getto wrote, what emerged was not faith and certainty but the awareness “of the instability of reality,” which translated into an aesthetics of fiction and doubling, since things are not what they appear to be and man himself is a collection of masks. Opera became the privileged space in which this constant exchange between reality and illusion could be represented.
Art
The taste for excess, monumentality, curved and dynamic forms, illusionistic and theatrical effects also characterized the visual arts and architecture. The goal was, here too, to arouse wonder in the spectator, just as in music.
In architecture, with Bernini and Borromini, and in painting, with Caravaggio or Pietro da Cortona, dramatic effects were sought through strong contrasts of light and shadow, perspectival virtuosity, and a powerful emotional charge. The total work of art, fusing architecture, sculpture, and painting, found a perfect parallel in the birth of opera in music, which unites sound, text, actors, dancers, and stage design—much as television and cinema do today.
Literature
The intensified use of metaphor and rhetorical figures to create astonishment and “wonder” also characterized Italian Baroque literature. One need only think of Giambattista Marino. Dominant themes included the fleetingness of time, the illusory nature of life, the bizarre, and even the macabre.
Baroque literature thus broke with the canons of late Renaissance classicist balance. Poetry, in particular, pursued ingenuity, the witty “conceit,” and daring metaphor, as summarized in the famous line “The poet’s aim is wonder.” This search for surprising effects and elaborate language was the literary counterpart to the harmonic and melodic audacity of contemporary musicians. For this reason, it is appropriate to align the temporal boundaries of the musical Baroque with those of literature and the visual arts—roughly from 1600 to about 1680, and no further. After that, Italy, unlike other parts of Europe, changed direction once more, leading the world toward Arcadia.
Performance practice and genres
Performance practice was creative, imaginative, free, and not overly formalized. The practice of basso continuo, for example, was not a mere philological reading—as it is sometimes misunderstood today—but a form of “controlled improvisation,” in which accompaniment was extemporaneously realized over a sketch, in parallel with the technique of the “canovaccio” of the Commedia dell’arte, upon which actors improvised.
The genres cultivated in the Baroque were above all opera, oratorio, cantata, sonata, the concertato style, and accompanied monody.
Places and key figures
Admired centers throughout the world, regarded as musical beacons of the time, included Venice—especially the Basilica of San Marco and the first public opera houses—Rome with its chapels and oratories, Mantua at the Gonzaga court for the birth of Orfeo, Naples, and the other major Italian cities.
Baroque, Renaissance, Mannerism, Arcadia, Seconda pratica, Counter-Reformation, Opera, Oratorio, Cantata, Sonata, Concertato style, Accompanied monody, Basso continuo, Affections, Opera theater, Wonder, Expression of the affections, Claudio Monteverdi, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini, Emilio de’ Cavalieri, Giacomo Carissimi, Galileo Galilei, Giovanni Getto, Bernini, Borromini, Caravaggio, Pietro da Cortona, Giambattista Marino, Urban VIII, Basilica of San Marco, Rome, Mantua, Venice, Naples, Gonzaga, Musical theater, Counterpoint, Emotional expression, Illusion, Fiction, Mask, Ingegno, Poetic wonder, Conceptismo, Classicism, Aesthetics of the double
Representative works
Monteverdi’s Orfeo marked the birth of opera; his Vespro della Beata Vergine was the manifesto of the concertato style; the Lamento di Arianna embodied the new cultural climate; and Frescobaldi’s Toccatas served countless masters as a perfect model for instrumental experimentation.
Music in History
The Baroque reorganizes musical language through theatre, affect, and new instrumental forms.
Explore the Baroque →