Baroque (1600–1750)

Around 1600, Italian musicians wanted to recapture the power of ancient theatre. They invented accompanied monody: a solo voice expressing the passions, supported by a bass line and chords. This was the birth of opera, with Peri’s Euridice (1600) and then Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607).

The heart of Baroque music is the basso continuo: a harpsichord, organ, lute or guitar plays the bass throughout and improvises the chords shown by figures. Above it, melodies are covered in ornaments (trills, mordents, appoggiaturas). This is also when major and minor keys took over, and keyboards were tuned so that more and more keys could be played.

The Baroque loves contrast: loud and soft in blocks (“terraced” dynamics), soloist against orchestra in the concerto, choir against orchestra in the oratorio. Vivaldi set the three-movement form of the concerto, Corelli that of the sonata.

For the keyboard, this is the age of dance suites (allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue, minuet), preludes and fugues. Bach brought it all together: his Inventions and his Well-Tempered Clavier are still at the heart of piano study. Around 1700 in Florence, Cristofori invented a harpsichord that could play “piano e forte”: the future piano.