The birth of opera and basso continuo

Around 1600, something tipped over. After two centuries of polyphony with all voices equal, Italian musicians wanted a single voice to sing, well to the fore, expressing a character's passions — joy, anger, despair — as, they believed, the actors of Greek tragedy had done. Within a few years this idea gave rise to a genre, opera, and to an accompanying technique that would reign for a century and a half, basso continuo.

Florence: scholars dream of ancient drama

In the 1570s and 1580s, scholars, poets and musicians gathered at the house of Count Giovanni de' Bardi in Florence: they are known as the Florentine Camerata. Among them was Vincenzo Galilei, lutenist, theorist (and father of the astronomer Galileo). They complained that polyphony drowned the words under interwoven voices. Their solution: accompanied monody, a solo voice declaiming the text flexibly, supported by a few chords.

In 1600 in Florence, for the festivities of Maria de' Medici's wedding to King Henri IV of France, Jacopo Peri staged Euridice, sung throughout: the oldest opera whose music survives. Seven years later, at the court of Mantua, Claudio Monteverdi presented L'Orfeo (1607). Monteverdi poured all his madrigal craft into it: a varied orchestra, choruses, dances, arias, moments where Orpheus's song turns to pleading. It is the first masterpiece of the genre, and it is still performed.

Recitative and aria

Opera soon organised itself around two ways of singing:

• recitative, close to speech, which moves the action forward: the singer follows the natural rhythm of the words over a sparse accompaniment;
• the aria, where the action stops so that a character can express a feeling, on a real melody, often with repeats. Later the da capo aria (A-B-A) became standard, the singer freely ornamenting the return.

In 1637 Venice opened the first public opera house, the San Cassiano: now anyone could buy a ticket. Opera left princely festivities to become a fashionable entertainment, and Venice soon had several theatres. Monteverdi, now Venetian, wrote The Coronation of Poppea there (c. 1643). The biggest stars of Baroque opera were the castrati, singers with high, powerful voices admired for their virtuosity, such as Farinelli in the 18th century.

Basso continuo, the engine of the Baroque

Beneath the solo voice there has to be harmony. The composer writes only the bass line, sometimes with small figures showing the chords (figured bass). One or more musicians realise it by improvising: a harpsichord or organ, a lute, a theorbo (a large long-necked lute) or a guitar for the chords, and often a cello, viola da gamba or bassoon to reinforce the bass. This team, playing "continuously" from start to finish, is called the continuo. It is found in nearly all music from 1600 to 1750: operas, cantatas, sonatas, concertos.

The continuo makes Baroque music conceived from the bottom up: a solid bass and a melody, with chords in between. It is the direct ancestor of the chord charts of jazz and pop, where an accompaniment is also improvised from symbols.

One bass formula even became a symbol of lament: a descent by semitones spanning a fourth (from G down to D, for example). Purcell uses it, repeated over and over (a ground bass), beneath Dido's death. Here is the pattern as it appears in many composers' works (a demonstration example):

M:3/4
L:1/4
Q:1/4=60
K:Gm clef=bass
G,3 | ^F,3 | =F,3 | =E,3 | _E,3 | D,3 |]

France and England

In France, a Florentine who came to Paris as a youth, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687), became master of Louis XIV's music. In 1672 he obtained the privilege of the Académie royale de musique (the Paris Opéra) and, with the poet Philippe Quinault, created the tragédie en musique, giving a large place to dance, choruses and a recitative modelled on French declamation. He also established the French overture: a slow, majestic section in dotted rhythms, then a fast section. His death became famous: while conducting a Te Deum, he struck his foot with the heavy staff used to beat time, and the wound became infected.

In England, Henry Purcell (1659–1695) wrote Dido and Aeneas in the late 1680s, a short opera whose final aria, When I am laid in earth, rests on a chromatic ground bass. Later, in the 18th century, Rameau renewed French opera, and the rivalry with Italian taste broke out in the Querelle des Bouffons (1752).

What to listen for

• A solo voice to the fore, highly expressive, alternating declamation (recitative) and melody (aria).
• A basso continuo: a harpsichord, organ or lute spelling out chords above a bass played throughout.
• Affects: each aria paints one passion, often a single one from beginning to end.
• Ornaments improvised by the singers, especially in repeats.

Listen

• Monteverdi: L'Orfeo, the opening toccata and the aria Possente spirto.
• Purcell: Dido and Aeneas, the aria When I am laid in earth.
• Lully: the overture and a dance from Armide (1686).
• Rameau: Les Indes galantes (1735).