Romantic Instrumental Music

Music began to change form the style of the Renaissance to a more complicated form around 1750. The period following the Renaissance is called the Baroque.

"Music of any period reflects, in its own way, some of the same influences, tendencies, and generative impulses that are found in the other arts of that time. Thus the word "baroque," usually used despairingly by eighteenth-century art critics to describe the art and architecture of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, came to be applied also to the music of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries."

"The term has in the past, and to some extent in the present, carried implications of absurdity, grotesqueness, or abnormality. But as applied to the music of the period of 1600-1750 the term "baroque" has no such pejorative connotations, for much of the music of this time is of the finest quality."

The Baroque style is easiest seen in the Baroque churches in Europe. It is obvious in the ceiling and altar paintings, the ornate carvings and metal work, and in the highly expressive sculpture. In music, aspects of the Baroque can are flamboyance, spectacle, and emotionalism in Italian Operas. Also, the use of dramatic in religious music and the massing together of large groups of voices and instruments. Some baroque was seen before 1600 and was seen after 1750 and the early baroque was first seen in the works of Monteverdi and in the Venetian School. The major-minor tonality actually emerged from this period and composers began to note the key within the titles of their music.

Also pertinent to Baroque style of music, "a regular persistent rhythmic pattern was frequently used throughout a movement of an instrumental piece in order to constantly maintain a single basic mood." The main texture of the Baroque was a similar rhythm in all of the parts with the horizontal motion mostly existing in the bass and soprano. There was also an emphasis on chord structure where improvisation was important to the main voice or instrument. There are two main practices in the composition of Baroque music: the music being governed by the text and the text being governed by the music. Writers also began to write music for certain voices and/or instruments instead of something that is transposable to any voice or instrument.

"The true beginnings of opera coincide with the beginning of the baroque period." "Opera was originally used in the Renaissance ...