Baroque
A historically grounded Western art-music label centered on the 17th and early 18th centuries, with Italy as the key point of origin and Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and Corelli among the most useful entry points for listeners.
Origins and context
Documented music-historical accounts place the style’s earliest development in Italy around 1600, before it spread throughout Europe.
The sound
Characteristics
- Ornamentation
- Counterpoint
- Basso continuo
- Harpsichord
- Organ
- Violin family
- Theorbo
- Strings
- Voices
History
Baroque music grew out of late-16th- and early-17th-century Italy, where composers in places such as Venice helped shape an expressive new musical language around 1600. It spread across Europe during the following decades, and by the time the style reached composers such as Corelli, Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach, it had become a broad musical world of opera, concerto, sonata, cantata, and richly worked keyboard writing. The term now covers a long stretch of Western art music, usually dated roughly from 1600 to 1750. That span is a historical label rather than a single unified sound, but the shared thread is easy to hear: elaborate melody, vivid contrast, and a constant conversation between independent lines, with basso continuo anchoring the texture beneath.
Notable artists
- JSJohann Sebastian Bach
- GFGeorge Frideric Handel
- AVAntonio Vivaldi
- ACArcangelo Corelli
Essential listening
- 1
- 2
Johann Sebastian Bach
Explore connected genres
Sources and further reading
- Baroque music
- classical.music.apple.com
Apple Music Classical describes Bach as a titan of the Baroque period.
- classical.music.apple.com
Apple Music Classical identifies Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major as a Bach work and provides a work page for it.
- Classical music genre overview