More Baroque Instrumental Genres
In this class, we will continue our discussion of Baroque instrumental genres which began in lecture 6 with a consideration of a few different genres that span the whole Baroque period from the 17th to the mid 18th century.
The Keyboard Toccata
While music for solo keyboard was composed and published in the Renaissance period, it wasn’t until the 17th century that it began to become a very common and popular type of music. There were many different genres for solo keyboard, but one of the most common was the toccata. The term comes from the Italian word toccare which means “to touch.” The idea was that a toccata demonstrated the player’s ability to “touch” the keyboard, that is to demonstrate finger dexterity in performance. In the Renaissance period, these pieces typically featured chords played in one hand, while the other hand would play very fast scalar lines. The specific type of keyboard instrument is not usually specified and most of these pieces can equally be played on harpsichord, organ or clavichord.
The genre continued to be popular in the Baroque period. Perhaps the most well-known today is Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, a piece which has become associated with 1930s horror movies to the point that its use has become a cliché. (Interestingly, the piece’s origin is shrouded in mystery, with questions about the authorship doubting the attribution to Bach or even suggesting that it was originally written for violin and later transcribed for organ). If you are interested, you can listen to this piece here, but it is not one of our assigned works.
Frescobaldi
Our example is by the 17th-century composer Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643). He was born in Ferrara, Italy, and studied there with the composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi. By 1607, he had moved to Rome where he worked as a church organist. Eventually, he was appointed organist of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, one of the most prestigious posts, which he would hold on and off until his death. Most of his published works come from this period in Rome and include mostly works for solo keyboard, some sacred, some not. One of the most popular was his publication in 1635 of the Fiori Musicali (Musical Flowers), a collection of liturgical organ music for use in religious services.
In addition, he published two books of toccatas and other keyboard pieces, one in 1615 and the other in 1627. These publications would be extremely influential on the genre and on instrumental music more broadly. More so than earlier Renaissance toccatas, Frescobaldi’s toccatas featured more heavily contrasting sections, often with extremely complex and difficult rhythms. For instance, at the end of the ninth toccata in book 2, Frescobaldi writes, “the end is not reached without fatigue.”
But also, these works became much more varied. They included not just freely composed toccatas, but also so-called elevation toccatas (toccate per l’elevazione), which were intended for use on the organ during the Communion (Elevation) portion of the Catholic Mass. Some were actually arrangements of madrigals by other composers in a toccata format, while others used the technique called durezze e ligature, which essentially meant slower pieces that heavily used suspensions in which dissonances on a strong beat were resolved to consonance on a weak beat. These suspensions were often chained together.
Frescobaldi’s style, though primarily Italian, was transmitted to Germany through his student, the composer and keyboardist Johann Jakob Froberger (1616–1667). Later, Frescobaldi’s music would be influential on Bach, especially his Fiori Musicali.
Our example is Frescobaldi’s tenth toccata from book 1. Below is a chart of the broadly conceived sections that organize this piece. Usually, each section will end with a cadence or pause of some kind before the next one begins, clearly delineating where the sections begin and end. There is no clear formal organization, but rather the contrast of sections and the instrumental virtuosity are the primary points of musical interest here.
Girolamo Frescobaldi, Toccata decima from Il primo libro di toccate, etc. (1615)
Recording performed by Roberto Lorregian.
- Section 1 (introduction, establishes key): 0:00–0:50
- Section 2 (block chords in right hand, fast notes in left hand): 0:50–1:01
- Section 3 (motivic and imitative): 1:01–2:04
- Motive 1: 1:01–1:19
- Motive 2: 1:19–1:47
- Motive 3: 1:47–2:04
- Section 4 (durezze, briefly uses suspensions and dissonance): 2:04–2:16
- Section 5 (motivic and imitative again): 2:16–2:44
- Section 6 (mostly similar to Section 2 but with brief interjection of motivic section): 2:44–4:25
- Block chords/fast low notes: 2:44–3:06
- Motivic: 3:06–3:36
- Block chords/fast low notes: 3:36–4:25
Handel’s Water Music
While we have already been introduced to the orchestral suite with Telemann’s Don Quixote suite in lecture 6, there is another orchestral suite which I’d like you to listen to. While working in England, the German composer Handel wrote two major orchestral suites which are still popular today: the Water Music (1717) and the Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749). Both works were fairly situational, written at the behest of the king of England (George I in 1717 and George II in 1749). They are instrumental pieces for orchestra, but both were intended for outdoor performances at specific events and feature wind and percussion instruments more heavily than a typical Baroque orchestra.
The Water Music was commissioned by George I for an outdoor concert on July 17, 1717 which he wanted to take place literally on the Thames River in London. The King and his retinue boarded the royal barge at about 8 pm on July 17th and sailed from Whitehall Palace in Westminster towards Chelsea. Another boat followed with about 50 musicians on board, playing Handel’s music. The use of wind instruments especially helped to make the music more audible in the outdoor setting, where other noises of the city might interfere. A painting by 19th-century artist Eduoard Hamman in which he imagines the scene of King George I and Handel on the royal barge.
Many Londoners gathered on the riverside or on boats on the river itself to listen and follow the boats. George I apparently enjoyed the music so much that he requested it to be repeated three times on the trip to Chelsea and again on the trip back to Whitehall around 11 pm that night. This required the 50 musicians to play more or less continuously from 8 pm to about midnight, except for a brief break when the King arrived at Chelsea. In this 1747 painting by the Italian artist Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal) of the newly completed Westminster Bridge in London, there are two barges which are intended to depict the new Lord Mayor of London journeying to Westminster Hall to be sworn in. However, this might be similar to how the two barges looked when the Water Music was performed.
Handel’s music, when later published, was organized into three separate suites. Each suite collects a number of individual dance movements together, and two of the three suites begin with an overture. Each of the dance movements is intended to evoke the style of that kind of dance, but was not intended to actually be danced to. This is called stylized dance music.
Our example includes two dance movements from the first of the three suites. The two dances are the bourrée and the hornpipe. The bourrée is a French dance in a duple meter that tends to be slightly on the faster side and typically has a dactylic rhythm (patterns of long, short, short). The hornpipe is an English dance usually in triple meter, somewhat slower and often with accents off the beat.
George Frideric Handel, Suite in F major, HWV 348, “Water Music” (1717)
Recordings performed by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. [Listen on YouTube]
- Movement 8: Bourrée
- Movement 9: Hornpipe
Bach’s Musical Offering
Another important collection of instrumental music in the Baroque is J.S. Bach’s Das Musikalisches Opfer (The Musical Offering). This set of pieces includes a variety of genres from keyboard canons and fugues to a whole trio sonata for flute, violin, and basso continuo. Some of the canons include clever musical riddles that must be deciphered in order for the canon to be performed.
This unusual collection is not standard to the period in any way, but rather stems from a particular event in Bach’s life. On May 7, 1747, Bach met with Frederick II, King of Prussia (also known as Frederick the Great), at the king’s residence in Potsdam (near the Prussian capital of Berlin). At the time, Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel was working for the king as a court musician. So this was partly an excuse to visit his son, but also to impress the king, who was himself an amateur flute player and composer. See this 1852 painting by Adolph Menzel, which depicts the King playing flute while Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach plays a keyboard. Other musicians are also playing on the right side, while courtiers observe from the couches on the left side. In the corner on the far right, leaning against the wall, is Johann Joachim Quantz, a renowned flutist and composer who served as flute teacher to the King.
While this painting does not relate to the occasion of J.S. Bach’s meeting with Frederick II, it does give you a sense of what such a scene might have looked like, at least in a 19th-century artist’s imagination.
During this historic meeting, Frederick showed Bach (the father) his newest acquisition: a piano. The piano had only just been invented in the 1720s, and they were not very common by 1747. At this point, they were mostly experimental, but Frederick owned a few. We will discuss the invention of the piano more in a later class, but essentially, they were originally a variant of the harpsichord, which used hammers to strike the strings rather than quills to pluck them. But in terms of overall shape, they were basically the same. The one innovation of the piano was the ability to play louder or softer, depending on how hard the player struck the key.
After showing off his pianos, Frederick challenged Bach, who was known as an exceptional improviser, to improvise a three-voice fugue based on a theme which the King devised himself. This theme, now known as the Thema Regium (theme of the king) was particularly tricky due to its chromaticism and winding contour. See the theme itself and also an audio clip of the theme from the beginning of the three-voice fugue.
Bach was more than up to the challenge. Once he successfully improvised a fugue in three parts, the King challenged him to improvise one in six parts. At this, Bach demurred and said that he would return home and write it out and send it to Frederick. On his return to Leipzig, Bach did exactly that but also wrote out the three-voice fugue and added in a trio sonata and many canons all based on this theme. Whether he actually sent these to the King is not entirely clear, and in fact, some or all of this story may have been exaggerated or altered in the telling over the course of the centuries. So it may not all be entirely true. However, four months after the meeting, Bach published these pieces as Das Musikalisches Opfer, and that publication is solid evidence that some kind of music did come from this meeting.
Our example from this collection is the promised six-voice fugue. While this fugue could be performed on a single keyboard instrument as in our example, it could equally be performed by six different instruments, each taking a part. Bach published it in score format, meaning each part is written on a separate musical stave. Many keyboardists (especially organists) of the time could read open score notation such as this, but it would not be inaccurate to perform it with a small group of instruments instead.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Das Musikalisches Opfer, Fugue in six parts on the King’s Theme (1747)
Recording performed by Gottfried Von Der Golz. [Listen on YouTube]
Discussion Questions
- How does Frescobaldi take a genre (the toccata) that is primarily for demonstrating virtuosity and find ways to express something musically and/or emotionally?
- In what ways do Handel’s Water Music pieces sound danceable, and in what ways do they sound stylized (that is, not danceable)?
- How do we approach pieces like Bach’s six-voice fugue, which are inherently intellectual rather than emotional? Can we find something appealing about the sound of it, even if it may come across as demonstration of intellect and craftsmanship?
