Baroque Vs Classical

Listening Assignment 5: Late Baroque vs. Classical Every era in history has left their mark and in the process has affected many cultures and other time periods. The “Baroque” era, which began in the year 1600 and lasted an estimated 150 years, not only created new music, but a new artistic style that spread all across Europe. Through this new artistic style that spread like wild fire in this long span, a practice in continuo was also formed. Continuo is better known as parts accompanied with a bassline and harmonics, which is more familiar in orchestras. Many known musicians in this genre included some composers we’ve studied, such as Bach, Purcell, and Handel. Going into the first piece I listened to Bach’s “The Art of Fugue”, like many …show more content…
This era consisted of a more modern type of population in a sense as the populations became more educated and even became more literate in music. Many people seemed to just live their lives based on their pursuit of happiness and it does seem to show in their music, such as the piece “Military”, which seemed to rely much on the method of pleasing variety. Haydn accomplishes many contrasting melodies and crisp dynamic changes through techniques in tempo markings, melodic content, overall form, meter, and especially scoring. The piece begins and pretty much remains in cut time and is marked allegretto for tempo. The texture seemed homophonic, while the rhythm is march like. Some performing forces included a large orchestra along with trumpets, horns, and percussion instruments. The next piece by Mozart “Don Giovanni” continued similarly, as the melody seemed short in the orchestral intro with many leaps. The rhythm consisted of a duple meter and expressed anger emphasized by many dynamic shifts along with a quick tempo and wide range changes. There also seemed to be many quick notes delivered freely. The tone color seemed to be small as there was mainly an orchestra and continuo