Baroque❷

Baroque music

What is a Baroque dance suite?
    
     Usually begins with a Prelude/Overture/Sinfonia type introductory movement. It is then followed by dance movements.


Four main movements:

Allemande: a stately dance in a quadruple metre of German origin, usually with an upbeat.

Courante/Corrente: a lively dance of Frence origin usually in a triple metre(3/2, 3/4)


Sarabande: this has a slow triple metre(usually 3/4 or 3/2), usually with an emphasis on the 2nd beat


Gigue/Giga: its origin is the British jig. It has in a lively compound metre(6/8, 6/16, 6/4, 9/8)but could also be 3/8 simple triple. This is usually the final movement.
    
     These dance suites could be written for solo instruments, such as keyboard, lute, wind and string instruments.Also, these dance suites could be written for ensembles.
     Composer of Baroque dance suites include Handel, Bach, Telemann, Couperin, Rameau, etc.




Instrumental music

Sarabande and Gigue from Partita in D--by Bach


     These works were not intended for actual dancing, but to be played at home, usually on the harpsichord.
     Here there are no dynamics or marks of articulation, both of them are in the same key and each is in binary form, which means this consists of two repeated sections.
     In sarabande, he uses rounded binary form, the first ending with a perfect cadence in D, the second with an imperfect cadence. The texture of this piece is homophonic.
     As many baroque gigues, the usual time signature is  in compound tine.The first 21 bars are in a fugal texture, the opening melody is known as the fugal subject and is followed by a fugal answers in the left hand, above which the right hand part is known as the countersubject. But Bach does not intend this to be a full-down,serious fugue.
     Unlike the sarabande, the two sections of the gigue are of equal length, but the tonal plan is similar,the first section ends in the dominant and the second passes through a variety of related keys before ending in the tonic. 


Q&A：


Q: What is a rounded binary form?
A: A/Opening theme returns hear the end.




Fugue


What is a fugue?
    
     An imitative polyphonic composition in which a theme or themes are stated successively in all of the voices of the contrapuntal structure.



     In the opening section, the ‘exposition’, the main theme or ‘subject’ is announced in the tonic, after which the second ‘voice’ enters with the Answer, i.e. the same theme at the dominant (or subdominant) pitch while the first may proceed to a Countersubject. This procedure is repeated at different octaves until all the voices have entered and the exposition is complete.

Its main elements are:

(1) a theme, or subject, stated first in one voice alone and then successively in all voices;

(2) the continuation of a voice after the subject, forming an accompaniment to the subject statements in the other voices and sometimes assuming sufficiently distinct character as to be called a countersubject;

(3) passages that are built on a motive or motives derived from the subject or the countersubject but in which these themselves do not appear.

     Those sections in which the subject appears at least once in all voices are called expositions; those in which it does not appear at all are called episodes. Expositions other than the opening one often modulate. The formal structure of any fugue is an alternation of exposition and episode, and an infinite variety of formal scheme is possible. The term fugue designates a contrapuntal texture which may be in any formal design. Imitation as the systematic basis for musical texture was first applied during the generation of Josquin Desprez, Loyset Compère, and others, c.1500. During the 16th cent. the technique was further developed in the instrumental ricercare and canzone. In Germany in the 17th cent. composers such as Sweelinck, Froberger, and Buxtehude developed contrapuntal pieces based on one subject, which led to the fugal style exemplified in the Art of the Fugue, the Goldberg Variations, and the Well-tempered Clavier of J. S. Bach, the master of fugue.

Development of fugue:

     After J.S Bach's fugue was adapted by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven to the classical style. Brahms was the chief composer to make use of the fugue in the romantic period. A contemporary volume of preludes and fugues is Paul Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis (1943).




Works cited page:
http://www.answers.com/topic/fugue

Bibliography

See A. Mann, The Study of Fugue (1958), R. Bullivant, Fugue (1971).