The major composers in the baroque period were:

  George Frideric Handel, One of the greatest composers of the late baroque period (1700-1750) and, during his lifetime, perhaps the most internationally famous of all musicians. Handel was born February 24, 1685, in Halle, Germany, to a family of no musical distinction. His own musical talent, however, manifested itself so clearly that before his tenth birthday he began to receive, from a local organist, the only formal musical instruction he would ever have. In 1703 he traveled to Hamburg, the operatic center of Germany; here, in 1704, he composed his own first opera, Almira, which achieved great success the following year. In the spring and summer of 1707 and 1708 he traveled to Rome, enjoying the patronage of both the nobility and the clergy, and in the late spring of 1707 he made an additional short trip to Naples. In Italy Handel composed operas, oratorios, and many small secular cantatas; he ended his Italian sojourn with the spectacular success of his fifth opera, Agrippina (1709), in Venice. Handel's greatest gift to posterity was undoubtedly the creation of the dramatic oratorio genre, partly out of existing operatic traditions and partly by force of his own musical imagination; without question, the oratorios of both the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn and the German composer Felix Mendelssohn owe a large debt to those of Handel. Handel's rich and unique musical genius deserves to be remembered in the extraordinary fullness of its entirety. Back To List


Johann Sebastian Bach,  was born on March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Thüringen, into a family that over seven generations produced at least 53 prominent musicians. Johann Sebastian received his first musical instruction from his father, Johann Ambrosius, a town musician. When his father died, he went to live and study with his elder brother, Johann Christoph, an organist in Ohrdruf. In 1700 Bach began to earn his own living as a chorister at the Church of Saint Michael in Lüneburg. In 1703 he became a violinist in the chamber orchestra of Prince Johann Ernst of Weimar, but later that year he moved to Arnstadt, where he became church organist. In October 1705, Bach secured a one-month leave of absence in order to study with the renowned Danish-born German organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude, who was then in Lübeck and whose organ music greatly influenced Bach's. The visit was so rewarding to Bach that he overstayed his leave by two months. He was criticized by the church authorities not only for this breach of contract but also for the extravagant flourishes and strange harmonies in his organ accompaniments to congregational singing. He was already too highly respected, however, for either objection to result in his dismissal. In 1707 he married a second cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, and went to Mülhausen as organist in the Church of Saint Blasius. He went back to Weimar the next year as organist and violinist at the court of Duke Wilhelm Ernst and remained there for the next nine years, becoming concertmaster of the court orchestra in 1714. In Weimar he composed about 30 cantatas, including the well-known funeral cantata God's Time Is the Best, and also wrote organ and harpsichord works. He began to travel throughout Germany as an organ virtuoso and as a consultant to organ builders. In 1717 Bach began a 6-year employment as chapelmaster and director of chamber music at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. During this period he wrote primarily secular music for ensembles and solo instruments. He also prepared music books for his wife and children, with the purpose of teaching them keyboard technique and musicianship. These books include the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Inventions, and the Little Organ Book. Bach's first wife died in 1720, and the next year he married Anna Magdalena Wilcken, a fine singer and daughter of a court musician. She bore him 13 children in addition to the 7 he had had by his first wife, and she helped him in his work by copying the scores of his music for the performers. Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723 and spent the rest of his life there. His position as musical director and choirmaster of Saint Thomas's church and church school in Leipzig was unsatisfactory in many ways. He squabbled continually with the town council, and neither the council nor the populace appreciated his musical genius. They saw in him little more than a stuffy old man who clung stubbornly to obsolete forms of music. Nonetheless, the 202 cantatas surviving from the 295 that he wrote in Leipzig are still played today, whereas much that was new and in vogue at the time has been forgotten. Most of the cantatas open with a section for chorus and orchestra, continue with alternating recitatives and arias for solo voices and accompaniment, and conclude with a chorale based on a simple Lutheran hymn. The music is at all times closely bound to the text, ennobling the latter immeasurably with its expressiveness and spiritual intensity. Among these works are the Ascension Cantata and the Christmas Oratorio, the latter consisting of six cantatas. The Passion of St. John and the Passion of St. Matthew also were written in Leipzig, as was the epic Mass in B Minor. Among the works written for the keyboard during this period are the famous Goldberg Variations; Part II of the Well-Tempered Clavier; and the Art of the Fugue, a magnificent demonstration of his contrapuntal skill in the form of 16 fugues and 4 canons, all on a single theme. Bach's sight began to fail in the last year of his life, and he died on July 28, 1750, after undergoing an unsuccessful eye operation. Bach was buried in St John's Cemetery which stood one block outside the town's Grimma Gate in the early morning of July 31, and in the absence of any tombstone his grave was soon forgotten. When St John's Church was rebuilt in 1894 a few Leipzig scholars and Bach admirers succeeded in having what were believed to be the composer's bones exhumed. Partial identification was established by a series of anatomical and other tests. The bones were laid to rest in a stone sarcophagus next to the poet Gellert in the vaults of the Johanniskirche, and many people went to pay homage to this tomb until the church was destroyed by bombs in WW2. Once more his remains were rescued and in 1949 buried, this time in the altar-room of the Thomaskirche where they remain to this day. Back To List
Claudio Monteviride (born Cremona, 15 May 1567; died Venice, 29 November 1643).He studied with Ingegneri, maestro di cappella at Cremona Cathedral, and published several books of motets and madrigals before going to Mantua in about 1591 to serve as a string player at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga. In 1599 he married Claudia de Cattaneis, a court singer, who bore him three children, and two years later he was appointed maestro di cappella on Pallavicino's death. In 1607 his first opera, Orfeo, was produced in Mantua, followed in 1608 by Arianna. Disenchanted with Mantua, he then retumed to Cremona, but failed to secure his release from the Gonzaga family until 1612, when Duke Vincenzo died. He seems to have been less active after circa 1629, but he was again in demand as an opera composer on the opening of public opera houses in Venice from 1637. In 1640 Arianna was revived, and in the following two years Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, Le nozze d'Enea con Lavinia (lost) and L'incoronazione di Poppea were given first performances. In 1643 he visited Cremona and died shortly after his retum to Venice. Back To List

Herny Purcell, He was a chorister in the Chapel Royal until his voice broke in 1673, and he was then made assistant to John Hingeston, whom he succeeded as organ maker and keeper of the king's instruments in 1683.In 1677 he was appointed composer-in-ordinary for the king's violins and in 1679 succeeded his teacher, Blow, as organist of Westminster Abbey. It was probably in 1680 or 1681 that he married. From that time he began writing music for the theatre. In 1682 he was appointed an organist of the Chapel Royal. His court appointments were renewed by James II in 1685 and by William III in 1689, and on each occasion he had the duty of providing a second organ for the coronation. The last royal occasion for which he provided music was Queen Mary's funeral in 1695. Before the year ended Purcell himself was dead; he was buried in Westminster Abbey on 26 November 1695.Purcell was one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period and one of the greatest of all English composers. His earliest surviving works date from 1680 but already show a complete command of the craft of composition. In time Purcell became increasingly in demand as a composer, and his theatre music in particular made his name familiar to many who knew nothing of his church music or the odes and welcome songs he wrote for the court. His only true opera (i.e. with music throughout) was Dido and Aeneas, written for a girls' school at Chelsea; despite the limitations of Nahum Tate's libretto it is among the finest of 17th-century operas. Back To List
Johann Josef Fux, was born of peasant stock at Hirtenfeld in Eastern Styria, Austria, about 1660. Little is known of his youth, except that he became a student at Graz University when he was about twenty. Again he disappears into obscurity, perhaps to study in Italy. When next heard of, he is the organist of the famous Scottish Church in Vienna, and on the highroad to imperial preferment. In 1696 he got married, and two years later was appointed Court Composer by the Emperor, an appointment usually reserved for Italian musicians.in 1701 Fux became Capellmeister at St. Stephen's Cathedral, and ten years later, in 1711, Music Director at the Imperial Court itself - the highest musical position in Europe. Fux filled the post with distinction, composing and directing many operas and oratorios, as well as dozens of smaller pieces. His most famous stage work was the festival opera Costanza e Fortezza, performed in the most sumptuous and spectacular manner in Prague Castle in 1723 when the Emperor Charles VI was crowned King of Bohemia. In 1725 Fux published his famous Gradus ad Parnassum, a textbook from which most of the composers of the next generation learnt their counterpoint - indeed Bach himself had a copy in his library. Some six years after the publication of the Gradus, Fux's wife died, and from then on he seems to have devoted himself more to sacred music. He himself died in 1741, at the age of 81.As a secular composer, he was soon neglected, but his sacred works continued to be performed for many years, and his book maintained its hold over several generations of composers. Back To List

Georg Philipp Telemann, Born in Magdeburg in 1681, Georg Philipp Telemann belonged to a family that had long been connected with the Lutheran Church. His father was a clergyman, his mother the daughter of a clergyman, and his elder brother also took orders, a path that he too might have followed had it not been for his exceptional musical ability. As a child he showed considerable musical talent, mastering the violin, flute, zither and keyboard by the age of ten and composing an opera (Sigismundus) two years later to the consternation of his family  who disapproved of music. After preparatory studies at the Hildesheim Gymnasium, he matriculated in law (at his mother's insistence) at Leipzig University in 1701. That he had little intention of putting aside his interest in music is evident from his stop at Halle, en route to Leipzig, in order to make the acquaintance of the young Handel.While at the University he involved fellow-students in a great deal of public performance, to the annoyance of the Thomaskantor, Bach's immediate predecessor, Kuhnau, who saw his prerogative now infringed. No doubt bored with the complaints of Kuhnau and impatient to make something more of his life, Telemann did not stay long in Leipzig. In 1705 he accepted an appointment as Kapellmeister to the cosmopolitan court of Count Erdmann II of Promnitz at Sorau (now Zary), where the vogue for the French and Italian styles provided him with a new challenge. His association with the Sorau Kantor and theorist Wolfgang Caspar Printz and the reformist poet Erdmann Neumeister as well as the proximity to Berlin and contact with Polish folk music all proved stimulating. But Telemann's tenure was cut short by the imminent prospect of invasion by the Swedish army, causing the Court to be hurriedly disbanded. He visited Paris in 1707.His next appointment was at Eisenach as court Konzertmeister in charge of singers, with Pantaleon Hebenstreit as leader of the orchestra.Telemann had every reason to assume that this would be a period of relative stability and accordingly plunged into composing church cantatas, occasional pieces, orchestral and instrumental chamber music. His marriage ended tragically with his wife's death in 1711.A change of scene became necessary and so he went to the free imperial city of Frankfurt-am-Main to take up duties as Director of Municipal Music and also as Kapellmeister of the Barfüßerkirche.During this period he was also appointed Kapellmeister to the Prince of Bayreuth. He married again (gaining citizenship through marriage) and became a family man. Then in 1721, the coveted post of Kantor of the Hamburg Johanneum, a post that traditionally carried with it teaching responsibilities and the directorship of Hamburg's five principal churches, became vacant, and Telemann was invited to succeed Joachim Gerstenbüttel. Here, at last, was a prestigious post that would provide him with seemingly unlimited opportunities to compose and perform.Telemann remained in Hamburg until his death in 1767, being succeeded in that position by his godson, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, son of Johann Sebastian. Though it is with Hamburg that we customarily associate his name, Telemann traveled widely, making many trips to Berlin where he was exposed to strains of Polish music imported from the East, and to Paris in 1737 where he absorbed much of the French idiom then current. Back To List
Domenico Scarlatti, Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples on October 26th, 1685.Domenico's musical gifts developed with an almost prodigious rapidity. At the age of sixteen he became a musician at the chapel royal, and two years later father and son left Naples and settled in Rome, where Domenico became the pupil of the most eminent musicians in Italy. He served for five years (1714-19) as maestro di cappella at the Cappella Giulia in the Vatican. He composed at least one oratorio (1709) and more than a dozen operas for his father's Neapolitan theatre, S Bartolomeo (1703-4), the Roman Palazzo Zuccari (1710-14), and Teatro Capranica (1715, 1718).Scarlatti was also a familiar figure at the weekly meetings of the Accademie Poetico-Musicali hosted by the indefatigable music-lover and entertainer Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, at which the finest musicians in Rome met and performed chamber music. There Scarlatti met Handel, who had been born in the same year as Scarlatti. At the time of their meeting, in 1708, they were both twenty-three, and were prevailed upon to compete together at the instigation and under the refereeship of Ottoboni; they were adjudged equal on the harpsichord, but Handel was considered the winner on the organ. Thenceforward they held each other in that mutual respect which forms the surest basis for a life friendship. Attracted by the unknown, Scarlatti abandoned the post of maestro di cappella at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Natural curiosity and the fascination of distant countries induced him to undertake a voyage to London, where his opera Narciso met with only a moderate success. From London Scarlatti went to Lisbon (1720-28). As a harpsichordist at the royal court he was entrusted with the musical education of the princesses. The death of his father recalled him to Naples in 1725, but he did not long remain in his native town. His old pupil, the Portuguese princess, who had married Ferdinand VI, invited him to the Spanish court. Scarlatti accepted and in 1733 after a period in Seville (from 1729-33) he went to Madrid, where he lived until his death. He died in Madrid on July 23, 1757. Back To List

Tomaso Albinoni, eldest son of a wealthy paper merchant, was born in Venice in 1671. At an early age he became proficient as a singer and, more notably, as a violinist, soon turning his hand to composition. Until his father's death in 1709, he was able to cultivate music more for pleasure than for profit, referring to himself as "dilettante" - a term which in 18th century Italy was totally devoid of unfavorable connotations. Under the terms of his father's will he was relieved of the duty (which he would normally have assumed as eldest son) to take charge of the family business, and this task devolved on to his younger brothers. Henceforth he was to be a full-time musician, who according to one report, at one time ran a successful academy of singing. He resided in Venice all his life, though visits to Florence (1703) and Munich (1722) are recorded. After a long period of inactivity he died in 1751 (the oft-quoted date of 1750 is incorrect). When one compares Albinoni's oboe concertos with the many examples by Vivaldi composed around the same time (some perhaps earlier), one is struck by an important difference in the manner of writing for the solo instrument. To a large extent Vivaldi transfers the idiom of the violin to the oboe, making only scant concession to the player's need to draw breath frequently. Albinoni, however, models his style of writing for the oboe on the vocal idiom, of which he was an established master. One observes that the oboe normally moves by small intervals, often by step, eschewing the "violin leaps" (as Mattheson termed them) found in Vivaldi. Back To List

Arcangelo Corelli, Born in Fusignano, Italy, in 1653, a full generation before Bach or Handel, he studied in Bologna, a distinguished musical center, then established himself in Rome in the 1670s. By 1679 had entered the service of Queen Christina of Sweden, who had taken up residence in Rome in 1655, after her abdication the year before, and had established there an academy of literati that later became the Arcadian Academy. Thanks to his musical achievements and growing international reputation he found no trouble in obtaining the support of a succession of influential patrons. His contributions can be divided three ways, as violinist, composer, and teacher. It was his skill on the new instrument known as the violin and his extensive and very popular concert tours throughout Europe which did most to give that instrument its prominent place in music. It is probably correct to say that Corelli's popularity as a violinist was as great in his time as was Paganini's during the 19th century. Yet Corelli was not a virtuoso in the contemporary sense, for a beautiful singing tone alone distinguished great violinists in that day, and Corelli's tone quality was the most remarkable in all Europe according to reports. In addition, Corelli was the first person to organize the basic elements of violin technique. Although Corelli was not the inventor of the Concerto Grosso principle, it was he who proved the potentialities of the form, popularized it, and wrote the first great music for it. Through his efforts, it achieved the same pre-eminent place in the baroque period of musical history that the symphony did in the classical period. Without Corelli's successful models, it would have been impossible for Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach to have given us their Concerto Grosso masterpieces.Of all his compositions it was upon his Opus 6 that Corelli labored most diligently and devotedly. Even though he wouldn't allow them to be published during his lifetime, they still became some of the most famous music of the time. The date of composition is not certain, for Corelli spent many years of his life writing and rewriting this music, beginning while still in his twenties. Corelli occupied a leading position in the musical life of Rome for some thirty years, performing as a violinist and directing performances often on occasions of the greatest public importance. His style of composition was much imitated and provided a model, both through a wide dissemination of works published in his lifetime and through the performance of these works in Rome. Corelli died a wealthy man on January 19, 1713.

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Copyright© Donna Cobb 2002   07/25/2002 04:46:10 PM