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Good evening! I just saw your post about the Music of Marie Antoinette and since I can't attend the event, because I live in central Europe I wondered if you could enlighten me about the difference. I'm very enthusiastic about baroque music. Thank you for your time! :)

Hi! So great you are interested in baroque music! I have to say that living in central Europe is quite an advantage! Many festivals, concerts and groups are pretty near you.

There are many differences between a baroque (or early music if we’re talking about other older periods) and “modern” or classical interpretation: many things from the number of musicians playing to the speed they choose to play.

For a simple and fast explanation I’m gonna give two examples of very well known music in two quite different versions: Vivaldi’s four violin concerti Le Quattro Stagioni (ca. 1721, published in 1725).

First, this version by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Kenneth Sillito, Violin: Julia Fischer.

And now, this other version by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Conducted by Clemens-Maria Nuszbaumer, violin: Midori Seiler

WARNING: this video version has a choreography (that I find quite distracting) but the music is PERFECT. The four concerti are based in a sonnet, and the choreography is based in that sonnet, so you can read it HERE if you wanna know what is going on there XD.

Both are VERY different, right?

Well, the first version is like the ones we usually hear by a quite famous chamber orchestra (nowadays conducted by Joshua Bell). Of course it’s nice and good, but I have to say it is not the way i like my Vivaldi played.

The second version is by one of the most famous chamber orchestras who plays (mainly) early music.

Taking a look at the videos (and of course lending an ear) some of the differences easier to spot are:

The tones are different. Musicians in an orchestra tune their instruments to A, but before the late 19th century, A was not the same pitch everywhere (I know, wtf). Modern A is 440 hz but a baroque A could be as low as 392. Baroque performers nowadays use A=415 hz to tune their instruments. That’s why the second version is in a lower pitch.

The vibrato. Look at the violin players in both videos. The ones in the first version use their regular vibrato, and the ones in the second do not. In baroque music the vibrato was an ornament, so when it was used there was a reason for it, or sometimes it could be used at the end of a long note. This also applies to singers.

A baroque version may not sound like the music you remember. This is a funny one: in the baroque era many of the ornaments or embellishments that we now think as fixed in the music, were not even written and the musicians were supposed to add them to the music according to their taste and (of course) were supposed to know how and when ti use each and every one. Now, this make that people working with the music with no ornaments add their own ornaments and that makes that no version is just like another and that my friend, is what for me makes baroque music (played in a baroque way) so appealing. This is particularly delicious with singers (just went to a concert of Philippe Jaroussky last week and he never sung a single phrase the same way twice. I love him).

This of course, is very broad and simplistic way of explaining but I think these are the easier to spot details. Remember as well that many of these musicians may be playing original instruments from the period or reproductions, that also sound (and look) quite different from the modern versions (check the wind instruments! They were/are awesome!), and that the places where this music was played were different from our modern music halls, so a different sound and number of musicians were needed (in those times something like Mahler’s symphonies weren’t even an idea).

Also to all readers: if I wrote something totally outrageous and out of place or plainly wrong, please let me know and correct me! I’m always happy to learn and correct my infromation <3

#music #baroque music #early 18th century #1720s #early music #vivaldi #the four seasons #Le Quattro Stagioni #Academy of St. Martin in the Fields #julia fischer #Midori Seiler #Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin #phantasmaturgia