Baroque Terms

General Form Terms

Chorale – Movement for choir with slow steady tempo –

often moves in crotchets.

Pasacaglia – slow stately dance which uses ground bass

idea.

Chaconne – is a type of musical form it is similar to the pasacaglia. Similar to what we hear in Movt one as there is a ground bass throughout. The ground bass is a variation on repeated short harmonic ideas.

General Form Terms

Cantata – vocal work with orchestra featuring

Soloists

Aria – Song for solo singer accompanied by

instruments with a highly elaborate and ornamented

melody.

Da Capo Aria – Aria in ABA form where A is sung

again.

Recitative – Musical narrative or story telling where

voice is imitates natural inflections of speech

Musical Ideas

Episode – Music between each playing of the ritornello

theme

Ritornello – A musical idea which returns several times

throughout a piece of music.

Ground Bass/Ostinato bass – A constantly recurring

musical idea found in the bass line. Found in Movt 1 lasts

four bars and continues throughout the work.

Musical Ideas

Figured Ideas – Numbers written under the bass line for

organist/harpsichord player to indicate the arrangement of

chords.

Bass Continuo – One or two instruments used to

continuously play chords or bass line in the background of

baroque music. They played off the figured bass idea. The

keyboard instrument was the harpsichord and the bass

instrument was the cello.

Textures

Polyphonic/Contrapuntal – two or more contrasting melodies sung simultaneously.

Compositional Techniques

Imitation – where one voice/part copies another

Word Painting – also melodic feature – where the meaning of important words in the text are portrayed using music ‘grab’ (grave) in Movt 5 very wide downward leap to illustrate word.

Melismatic Singing – singing several notes to one syllable

Circle of fifths – bach changes chord in sequence – eg Mot 1 bars 103-106 he starts on Bb, F, Cm before ending on Gm – proceeding up 5 each time.

Baroque key Signatures – Sometimes Bach omits a sharp or flat from the key signature and puts it directly into the msuic as an accidental eg Movt 6 key is Cm with 2 flats instead of 3.

Melodic Features

Melismatic Singing – singing several notes to one syllable

Mono syllabic – one note to each syllable as in recitatives

Baroque Ornamentation – used widely in baroque music and usually left to the discretion of the performer.

Sequences – seen throughout the piece.

Scale Movement – rising and descending scale passages often moving quickly through the use of quavers and semi-quavers.

Ornamentation

Orchestration

Chamber Orchestra – small orchestra ranging from 2-4 instruments to 20 -25 instruments.

Terraced dynamics – baroque instruments no as powerful as instruments today so dynamics tended to be sudden rather than gradual.

Word Painting and Melismatic Examples

Movet 2 – Eilen – to hurry

(melismatic and word painting with use of semi-quavers)

Use of Jesu and Meister on antiphonal dialogue

Movt 3 – Erzunet – angry (melismatic)

Movt 3 – Weit – far (word painting leap of 10th)

Movt 4 – Beherzt – brave (upward leap) Word Painting

Movt 4 – Streite – to attack - octave leaps and melisma

Movt 6 – Rauben – to steal - melisma

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