Baroque Essentials

Baroque Essentials

Few eras of classical music have produced as many indelible melodies as the Baroque period of the 17th and early-18th centuries: solo piano masterpieces created by J.S. Bach; Handel's oratorio Messiah; Vivaldi's pristine, programmatic The Four Seasons, to name a few. As the moniker suggests, the music embraced elaborate ornamentation, both in sections improvised by performers and in written arrangements. Innovative compositional forms and concepts emerged—such as the dance suite, like Handel's Water Music—as did new instrumental combinations with elements like the recently developed oboe featured in Bach's concerto for the instrument.

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