The Baroque Cabinet

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J.S. Bach, Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV599, from Das Orgel-Büchlein

(Chorale prelude based on the same chorale melody as BWV61)

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Gibbons - GMO article

Consort song - GMO

Consort song - Oxf. Companion

In Nomine - GMO

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Jacob Marrel, Two tulips, a shell and an insect, 1634

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"To heare a faire young Gentlewoman play upon the Virginals, Lute, Viall, and sing to it...are lascivientium delitiae, the chiefe delights of lovers, [which] must needs be a great entisement." - Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (first pub. 1621), part 3, section 2, member 2, subsection 4

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J.S. Bach, Brandenburg Concertos 1-6 (BWV 1046-1051)

Other resources:

Manuscript of BWV 1046

Bach-Gesellschaft edition of BWV 1046

(Note the imaginative mixture of different instrumental timbres in Brandenburg No. 1 - this is typically German)

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Test yourself! [BETA] I've created a Quizlet platform that provides you with some flash cards, quizzes, and games which may assist in your MUSC2502 revision.

NB: These do not represent the type or scope of the questions you will receive in the test - the quizzes are not intended as "mock tests". You still need to do your usual preparation!

People - quiz

People - space race*

People - scatter

Music - flash cards

Music - quiz

Music - space race^

Music - scatter

*Make sure you set it to "Show...Term"

^Make sure you set it to "Show...Definition"

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J.S. Bach, Cantata Freue dich, erlöste Schar, BWV 30 (1738 or later)

Sung by Magdalena Kožená

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Palazzo Borromeo, Isola Bella, Lago Maggiore

A wonderful example of whimsical, "bizarre" Baroque architecture

***

Charles de Brosses actually criticized the delicate ornamentation of the renovated Pamphili Palace in Rome as "Baroque" in 1755...the word comes from the Portuguese, originally denoting an irregular pearl...

...and now we use the term in music (and art) history.

Small world: *Charles de Brosses admired the singing and playing of the choir girls in Venice *Palazzo Pamphili was the home of Cardinal Pamphili, one of Corelli's most important patrons and the dedicatee of the composer's Op. 2 *the Borromean Islands were owned by the Borromeo family (for whom they are named); Gesualdo's maternal uncle was Cardinal Borromeo, one of the most important figures of the Counter-Reformation

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Detail of Crivelli's 17th Century Baroque Garden at Palazzo Borromeo, Isola Bella, Lombardy, Italy

Photo by Diana Mayfield

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Antonio Martin Y Coll: Diferencias sobre las folias

Viola da gamba

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Bass viol scroll

Click here to see the whole instrument (viola da gamba family)

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Tenor viol

(member of the viola da gamba family)

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Charles de Brosses on the music of the ospedali:

"The transcendent music here is that of the hospitals. There are four of them, all made up of illegitimate girls or orphans, and some whose parents are not able to bring them up. They are educated at the expense of the State, and trained only to excel in music. Therefore they sing like angels and play the violin, the flute, the organ, the oboe, the cello, the bassoon; in short no instruments are big enough to frighten them. They are cloistered like nuns. They alone perform, and each choir is composed of forty girls or so. I assure you there is nothing so delightful as to see a young girl, a pretty nun, in a white dress, with a bunch of pomegranate flowers at her ear, conducting the orchestra and beating out the time with all the grace and precision imaginable. Zabetta of the Incurabili is particularly astonishing through the range of her voice and the violin-like sounds she carries in her throat. I myself have no doubt that she has swallowed Somis’ violin."

(Venice, 1739)

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Italian woman's dress, 1725–40

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J.F.A. von Uffenbach on Vivaldi playing a cadenza: the performance "really terrified me, for such [music] has not been nor can ever be played;  he came with his fingers within a mere grass-stalk’s breadth of the bridge, so that the bow had no room—and this on all four strings with imitations and at incredible speed."

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Frescobaldi, Recercar cromatico post il Credo

from Fiori musicali (1635)

Note the innovative chromaticism, which would have been designed to lift the souls of the congregation towards their maker.

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Cecilia Bartoli, Sacrificium (2009)

Bartoli's tribute to the Italian castrati offers a rare glimpse of the explosively virtuosic musical world they inhabited. In this film, arias from now largely forgotten composers such as Nicola Porpora and Francesco Araia transport us back to the 18th century opera house...with the help of Bartoli's exquisite show(wo)manship, of course.

Porpora was actually the teacher of Joseph Haydn. As a young man, "Haydn [was] Porpora’s valet, pupil and his keyboard accompanist; he [later] claimed to have learnt ‘the true fundamentals of composition from the celebrated Herr Porpora’." (GMO)