Chapter 8 Prelude: The Late Baroque Period

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Chapter 8Prelude The Late Baroque Period

• The Emotional World of Baroque Music

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Key Terms

• Affects

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The Emotional World of Baroque Music (1)

• Baroque thinkers, scientists, artists
  fascinated by human emotions
• Scientists studied classified emotions
• Baroque composers thought music should mirror a
  wide range of emotions
• Each new piece expressed a specific emotion
  consistently exhaustively
• Thus Baroque emotional expression was
  powerfulyet curiously impersonal

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The Emotional World of Baroque Music (2)

• Like good actors, Baroque composers studied
  appropriate ways of expressing emotions
• Also like actors, they expressed emotions that
  were not necessarily their own
• These emotions often took on a theatrical
  qualitylarger than life
• Theatrical emotion must have intensity, clarity,
  focus

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Affects

• Many techniques used to maximize expression of
  emotions (affects)
• Baroque writers catalogued musical elements
  appropriate for each affect
• Specific keys
• D minor serious E minor pathos etc.
• Certain melodic or rhythmic figures
• Specific instrumental vocal types or genres
• Gigue ardent fleeting zeal
• Chant noble simplicity
• etc.