Counterpoint - The Story of the Baroque Orchestra

For Your Enjoyment

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Connection Between Baroque Music and Architecture Through Monteverdi

In order to argue my position on the connection between Baroque music and architecture, I will use Claudio Monteverdi's Cruda Amarilli. In this madrigal, Monteverdi broke the rules of handling dissonance in order to "express the text more forcefully, inaugurating what he later called a new, second practice, better suited to moving the affections" (Hanning 179). Let's take a listen...

Just by listening to the piece, you can hear how the dissonance creates a bitter, tense 

over tone to the piece. The text translates to english as "Cruel Amaryllis, who with your very

name teach bitterly of love, alas! Amaryllis, than the white privet flower paler and more 

beautiful, but deafer than the asp and fiercer and more elusive. Since by speaking I offend

you, I shall die in silence" (Burkholder 378). Now take a look at the first few measures...

In this excerpt you can see the dissonances and breaking of conventional counterpoint. "For 

example, in the second measure the bass skips down to E, creating a seventh against the canto"

(Burkholder 378). Monteverdi's dissonances can be rationalized as embellishments, the key to 

the Baroque period. Everything was embellished from naves and frescos to madrigals and the first

operas.

Baroque Architecture

"In Baroque architecture, new emphasis was placed on bold massing, colonnades, domes, light-and-shade (chiaroscuro), 'painterly' color effects, and the bold play of volume and void. In interiors, Baroque movement around and through a void informed monumental staircases that had no parallel in previous architecture" (wikipedia). Architecture of the Baroque period was a direct response to that of the Renaissance "The Baroque period dates from the time when architects began to revolt against the pedantic rules of the Later Renaissance schoolmen, and it lasted until they tired of their untrammelled (not confined or limited) freedom and returned to their pedantry once more" (Briggs 23) Just as the music of the time, we see architects moving away from what we had come to know as "beauty" or "aesthetic" and dove into a new way of thinking and being. This new architecture remarkably parallels the music of the Baroque."Examples of architecture in the period so pure, so severe, so obviously free form", just as musicians made a move away from the conventionality of Renaissance music. (Briggs 22)

"For architecture is always the last art to feel a revolutionary change. It is too structural, too permanent, too eternal, one might almost say, to be blown from its course by every trifling aesthetic movement" (Briggs 23). Is architecture more "permanent" than any other art form? How may architectural entities have we to show from 200 BC? and yet we can date cave drawings and the epitaph of Seikilos back to BC... Why would one assume that architecture is more permanent or eternal than music? because it is tangible? 

Overview of the Baroque Period

The word, "baroque", has come to name the art, music, literature, and dance of the years 1600-1750. During these years of great exploration in the New World and enterprising discoveries of the scientific revolution, the art forms of western europe were also evolving. Where would we be today if Sir Isaac Newton had never developed his law of gravitation? or England did not settle their colony at Jamestown in 1607? or the art form of opera, combining theater, painting, and music never came to be? Just as any other period in history, the baroque pushed us forward and into a realm of expression and emotion.