The musical baroque has neither the same origin neither the same extension nor the same destiny as the architectural or literary baroque. And however he affirms himself like an art of the movement and variation, through the creation of new kinds, characterized by a concerting structure: he thus joined the major tendency of the baroque to dramatization.

Centered on Italy and Germany, the musical baroque is spread on one century and half, between Monteverdi and Jean-Sebastien Bach.

In Europe of the beginning of the XVIIe century, the erudite music is not limited any more to the courses or the churches, but gains the lyric rooms, the academies and the living rooms, concerning a more vast public, and making it possible to the musicians to gain their independence of creators. The musician frequently moves, to accompany a patron, to seek an employment or to meet his fellow-members: Monteverdi belongs as much to Mantoue as in Venice, and Bach in Köthen or Leipzig, while Händel or Gluck lives and composes successively in several countries.

Compared to the Rebirth or with French traditional balance, the Baroque music is characterized however by its contrasts, its wild imagination and its sumptuous ornaments. The musicologists distinguish three periods in his evolution.

First baroque: the “stile rappresentativo”

The first baroque, which extends from approximately 1580 to 1640, is rather difficult to distinguish from the late Rebirth: intellectuals, taking as a starting point the Neoplatonic ideas, wonder about the musical expression and define the stile rappresentativo, founded on the recitative and which will give rise to the opera. Members of Carmerata fiorentina (Academy florentine) rested by the count Giovanni Bardi, Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini illustrate well this research which tends to link the text and the music in scenic works. Monodic song, the evolution leads to the opera and the oratorio. The melodies are simple, the very reduced counterpoint, the low continuous one becomes the obliged support of the melody. Monteverdi establishes the link between the PRIMA prattica (polyphony of the Rebirth) and the secunda prattica (synthesis between the polyphony and the monodic expression), in works expressing the most impassioned human emotions. It is for Teatro San Cassiano of Venice, first opera house opened to the public, which he writes the Crowning of Poppée. In Germany devastated by the Thirty Year old war, Heinrich Schütz makes known to be up to all the tricks Italian, but transposes in splendid sonorities the depth of her faith Lutheran. The instrumental music profits however from progress of the violin makers crémonais: in the acute ones, the viol is replaced by the violin.

Median baroque: “beautiful canto” and “concerto grosso”

The median baroque is, between 1640 and 1690, the great time of the public opera. The travelling troops spread beautiful the canto, with its arias emphasizing prima donna it. As for the instrumental music, she sees developing the sonata, for soloist or trio, and the concerto grosso.

Late baroque: the contribution of the pianoforte

The last baroque - of 1690 to 1750 - sees the music overriding the drama. The low one continues is not more essential. The sonatas and concertos require a great virtuosity of the interpreters. The instruments continue to improve: between 1698 and 1709, the factor of Italian harpsichord Bartolomeo Cristofori develops the pianoforte.

There exists a sensitivity baroque which is expressed in arts or the literature, and whose excess and pathetic one are fundamental features. But the composers of this long period (1580-1750) preserve, for the ones, certain forms of the Rebirth, like Monteverdi or Schütz, which practice the motet or the madrigal, or, for the others, transcends these same forms, like Händel or Bach, which open the ways of the chamber music, the concerto, and especially of the opera and its crowned corollary, the oratorio.

The treaties and the lampoons multiply, considering all the aspects of the music, the theory, the composition and the execution, the technique and the ornaments. From there rise from the practical solutions, which put a term in particular at the too great disparity between the tuning forks, the instruments or the temperaments.

As of the end of the XVII ^E century, “the good” temperament for the agreement of the instruments with fixed sounds makes it possible to the musicians to find in Europe of the similar conditions of execution. This unification makes baroque minus a specific music that a particular coloring which shows through in the trade of each composer.

There is thus no strictly speaking style baroque in music, but of the elements of the one time sensitivity used by the musicians. Those transcended the forms and prepared the blossoming of the great classicism Viennese which will invent the symphony and the string quartet, but will be able to benefit from the one rich time old legacy of experiments and audacities.