Baroque Music - Composers

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Henry Purcell

- (1659-95).
England's greatest native composer, who wrote with consummate skill music of virtually every kind known during the Restoration. His compositions combined elements of the French and Italian baroque and traditional English musical forms.

Born in Westminster (now London), Purcell was the son of a court musician and became a chorister in the Chapel Royal at the age of ten; when his voice broke, he was apprenticed to the keeper of the royal instruments and tuned the organ in Westminster Abbey. Purcell was appointed composer for the court violins in 1677 upon the death of Matthew Locke. Three years later he succeeded John Blow as abbey organist. He became organist at the Chapel Royal in 1682 and was appointed composer in ordinary to the King's Musick (1683), a major post, under Charles II; later he was harpsichord player to James II. Purcell also taught music to the aristocracy, wrote ceremonial odes and anthems for royal events, and composed for the stage, church, and home. He died in London on November 21, 1695, and was buried under the organ in Westminster Abbey.

Purcell is most famous for his theatrical music. His only true opera is Dido and Aeneas, a masterpiece based on a tragedy by Nahum Tate and first performed in about 1689. Other dramatic works, although called operas, are actually instrumental and vocal music written to accompany such plays as Thomas Betterton's Dioclesian (1690); John Dryden's King Arthur (1691); The Fairy Queen (1692), a masque adapted from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (1692); and Dryden and Sir Robert Howard's The Indian Queen (1695; completed by Purcell's brother Daniel), which contains some of Purcell's most famous music. Purcell also wrote much fine sacred music, of which the anthem My Heart Is Inditing (1685), performed at the coronation of James II, is outstanding. His many songs and duets, both sacred and secular, are still highly regarded. His instrumental compositions include fantasias and sonatas, mostly for strings, and keyboard works.

Jean-Baptiste Lully

[Giovanni Battista Lulli]

- (b Florence, 1632; d Paris, 1687).
Italian-born composer (French nationality from 1681). Taught himself violin. At 14 went to France and worked as page to cousin of Louis XIV until prowess as dancer and mime was noted. Entered service of Louis XIV 1653, composed instrumental music for the court ballets. Some time before 1656 he became leader of 'les petits violons du Roi', a band of 21 players (an offshoot of the '24 violons du roi'), 'Instrumental composer to the King' 1653-61, 'Superintendent of Music and chamber music composer' 1661-2; 'music master to Royal Family' from 1662. From 1664 collaborated with Molière in series of comedy-ballets which were forerunners of French opera, the last and most famous being Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in which Lully danced role of the Mufti. Having assimilated both Italian and French styles and tastes, from 1673 he turned to opera composition and obtained from the King exclusive rights to arrange operatic performances in Paris. For the next 14 years, working with the poet Quinault, he not only wrote about 20 operas and ballets, but produced and conducted them and trained singers with firm discipline. He developed the formal 'French Overture', and replaced Italian recitativo secco with accompanied recitative, placing special emphasis on a style of declamation suited to French language. He introduced professional female dancers into the ballet. A supreme courtier and intriguer, he nevertheless made French opera a popular art. His death was caused by a gangrenous abscess which formed in his foot after he struck it with the long staff he used for beating time on the floor while conducting a Te Deum to celebrate Louis XIV's recovery from illness.

Operas: Les Fêtes de l'Amour et de Bacchus (1672); Cadmus et Hermione (1673); Alceste (1674); Thésée (1675); Atys (1676); Isis (1677); Psyché (1678); Belérophon (1679); Proserpine (1680); Persée (1682); Phaéton (1683); Amadis de Gaule (1684); Roland (1685); Armide et Rénaud (1686); Acis et Galathée (1686); Achille et Polixéne (with Colasse, 1687, produced posthumously).
Comedy-ballets with Moliére: Le mariage forcé (1664); L'amour médecin (1665); La Princesse d'Élide (1664); Le Sicilien (1667); Georges Dandin (1668); Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (1669); Les amants magnifiques (1670); Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670).
Choral: Motets for two choirs (1684); Miserere (1664); Te Deum (1677); De Profundis (1683); five Grands Motets (1685).

- The Oxford Dictionary of Music

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi

- (1567-1643).
Italian composer, the most important figure in the transition from Renaissance to baroque music. Born in Cremona, he studied music with the celebrated Veronese theoretician Marco Antonio Ingegneri. At the age of 15, Monteverdi composed his first work, a set of three-part motets, and by 1605 he had composed five books of madrigals. He became interested in the experimental musical dramas of Jacopo Peri, who was music director at the court of the Medici family, and in similar works by other early composers.

In 1607 Monteverdi's first musical drama, Orfeo, was produced. This opera, which surpassed all previous attempts at musical drama, was possibly the most important development in the history of opera and established it as a serious form of musical and dramatic expression. Through skillful use of vocal inflection, Monteverdi sought to express emotion as it would be expressed in the highly charged speech of a great actor. The orchestra, considerably enlarged and varied, was used not merely as an accompaniment for the singers but also to establish the moods of the various scenes. The score itself contains 14 independent orchestral pieces. The public received Orfeo enthusiastically, and with his next opera, Arianna (1608), Monteverdi's reputation as an opera composer was firmly established.

In 1613 he was appointed to one of the most important musical posts in Italy, choirmaster and conductor at Saint Mark's Cathedral in Venice. From this time on, Monteverdi wrote numerous operas (many now lost), motets, madrigals, and masses. In his sixth, seventh, and eighth books of madrigals (1614-38) he moved away from the Renaissance ideal of equal-voiced polyphony toward the newer styles emphasizing melody, bass line, and harmonic support as well as personal, or dramatic, declamation. In 1637 the first public opera house was opened, and Monteverdi, stimulated by the enthusiastic response to opera, wrote a new series of operas, of which two remain, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to His Homeland, 1641) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppaea, 1642). Written in Monteverdi's old age, these operas contain scenes of great dramatic intensity in which the vocal and orchestral music accurately reflect the thoughts and emotions of the characters. They influenced many subsequent composers of opera and are still performed today. Monteverdi died in Venice on November 29, 1643.

- Encarta

Jean Philippe Rameau

- (1683-1764).
French composer, the country's greatest of the 18th century, and a highly influential music theorist.

Born in Dijon, where his father was an organist, Rameau traveled to Italy at the age of 18 and subsequently was employed as an organist in several French cities, most notably Clermont-Ferrand, where he stayed until 1722 and where he wrote his Traité de l'harmonie (Treatise on Harmony, 1722). He moved to Paris in 1723, where he taught harpsichord and music theory. His early compositions include light theatrical pieces and religious and harpsichord music. In 1731 he became director of the private orchestra of a wealthy music patron. This patronage enabled him to turn to opera. Rameau's 30 or so operas include many masterpieces of the French lyric theater: the tragedies Hippolyte et Aricie (Hippolytus and Aricia, 1733), Castor et Pollux (Castor and Pollux, 1737), Dardanus (1739 and 1744 versions), and Zoroastre (1749); the opéra-ballets Les Indes galantes (The Gallant Indies, 1735), Les fêtes d'Hébé (The Festivals of Hebe, 1739), and La princesse de Navarre (1745); and the comedy Platée (1745). His orchestration was powerful and innovative, as was the manner in which he used harmony for dramatic effect.

His Piéces de clavecin en concerts (Concerted Music for Harpsichord, 1741), for two violins and harpsichord, are among the earliest such works to give the keyboard an independent, rather than accompanying, part.

His theoretical writing set in systematic form the harmonic practices of the previous 100 years and detailed theoretical concepts that remained basic to European harmony until about 1900. Rameau died in Paris, September 12, 1764.

- Encarta

Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti

Alessandro
- (1659-1725).
Italian composer, who helped to establish the Neapolitan style of opera that dominated 18th-century music. Born in Palermo, Sicily, he was probably trained in Rome under the Italian oratorio composer Giacomo Carissimi. His earliest known opera, L'errore innocente, was produced in Rome in 1679. In 1684 a more important work, Pompeo, was performed in Naples, and Scarlatti was appointed musical director at the Neapolitan court. In 1702-3 he lived in Florence under the patronage of Ferdinand de Medici. Scarlatti was assistant choirmaster at the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome from 1703 to 1713. He reestablished himself in Naples in 1713, becoming musical director of the Austrian viceroy, and director of the Conservatorio di Sant' Onofrio. From 1719 to 1723 he worked in Rome. He then returned to Naples and lived there until his death.

Scarlatti was one of the first opera composers to strongly differentiate the singing styles of aria and recitative. His opera overtures established the Neapolitan overture type, which has three movements, in fast, slow, and fast tempos. His cantatas, numbering more than 600, introduced many advanced harmonic procedures to the musical vocabulary of the time.

Domenico
- (1685-1757).
Italian harpsichordist and composer, born in Naples. He studied first with his father, Alessandro Scarlatti, and later with the Italian composer Francesco Gasparini. Scarlatti first attracted attention by his revision (1704) of the opera Irene by the Italian composer Carlo Francesco Pollarolo. In subsequent years Scarlatti lived in Rome, Naples, and Lisbon and frequently toured Europe as a traveling virtuoso. In 1729 he was summoned to the Spanish court at Madrid, which remained his residence for the rest of his life.

Scarlatti was a founder of the modern school of keyboard technique; he was the first composer to call for such devices in performance as arpeggios, the rapid repetition of a single note, and the crossing of hands. His keyboard compositions, entitled sonatas, are all short pieces. About 550 of these have been preserved; many have a recognizable Spanish flavor. Scarlatti also composed several operas, religious music, and instrumental works.

- Encarta

Christoph Willibald von Gluck

- (b Erasbach, 1714; d Vienna, 1787).
German composer. Went to Prague University in 1732 to study music and philosophy, also learning violoncello. In 1735 travelled to Vienna under protection of Prince Lobkowitz. Joined private orchestra of Prince Melzi, who engaged him for his orchestra in Milan, 1737. There he probably studied with Sammartini. Wrote his first opera Artaserse, 1741, seven more following up to 1744. Travelled with Prince Lobkowitz to London 1745, composing two operas produced in 1746, meeting Händel, and giving two concerts as performer on glass armonica. After 1746, travelled in Austria and Denmark and again visited Prague and Naples. In 1754 Empress Maria Theresa appointed him opera Kapellmeister to court theatre in Vienna, a post which required him to compose in the more lively and flexible style of the fashionable French opéras comiques. During 1755-61 he was closely associated with Durazzo (court theatre Intendant), Quaglio (scene-painter), Angiolini (dancer), and the poet Calzabigi, with whom he evolved his operatic 'reforms' in which the singers' claims were subjugated to those of the drama, with recitativo accompagnato ousting the more formal secco recitative. His ballet Don Juan (1761) and opera Orfeo (1762) embodied these principles which reached full expression in Alceste (1767), an anticipation of Wagner's music-drama. Gluck set forth his operatic creed in the preface of Alceste.

He resigned his Vienna court post in 1770 and went to Paris, having been contracted to compose Iphigénie en Aulide for the Opéra. Its production in 1774 was followed by a slightly revised French version of Orfeo and two years later of Alceste. Jealousy of Gluck's success in Paris led to an engineered quarrel with the Italian composer Piccinni, who was asked to set the same libretto on which Gluck was known to be working on. Gluck destroyed his sketches but composed Armide (1777), followed by Iphigenie en Tauride (1778). In 1779 he returned to Vienna and retired, living in a grand manner and dying after defying his doctor by drinking a post-prandial liqueur. The simplicity and sublimity of Gluck's melodies, supported by a vivid dramatic snese, have ensured the survival of a large proportion of his music. Works include:

Operas: Artaserse (Milan 1741); La caduta dei giganti and Artemene (London 1748); La Semiramide riconosciuta (Vienna 1748); La contesa dei Numi (Copenhagen 1749); La clemenza di Tito (Naples 1752); Le Cinesi (1754); La danza (Vienna 1755); Il rè pastore (Vienna 1756); Orfeo ed Euridice (Vienna 1762); Telemaco (Vienna 1765); Paride ed Elena (Vienna 1770); Iphigénie en Aulide (Paris 1774); Orphée (Paris 1774); Alceste (Vienna 1767, Paris 1776); Armide (Paris 1777); Iphigénie en Tauride (Paris 1778); Echo et Narcisse (Paris 1779).
Operas Comiques: L'Ile de Merlin and La Fausse Esclave (Vienna 1758); La Cythére assiégée (Schwetzingen 1759); L'Arbre enchanté (Vienna 1759); La Rencontre imprévue (Vienna 1764).
Ballets: Don Juan (Vienna 1761); Semiramide (Vienna 1765).
Misc.: De Profundis, chorus; six sonatas a tre (London 1746); nine symphonies (Vienna 1753).

- The Oxford Dictionary of Music

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