Instrumental music rose in the 1600s as composers explored techniques and new instrumental forms. Monarchs built palaces where composers and musicians worked in orchestras, choirs, and opera houses.
The city administrations also joined the courtyards and churches as centers for music and culture. Audiences could hear secular music at these events and enjoyed hearing the works of local contemporary composers.
The Protestant church and chant were important because the Reformation had a great influence on church music. It was during this time that the sonata and the concerto emerged, and the growing virtuosity of the performance accompanied these forms. Keyboard music flourished, especially for harpsichord. In the baroque era, new vocal forms such as cantata, opera and oratorio emerged.
Antonio Vivaldi
1678 - 1741
Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer. He learned the violin from his father. He was ordained a priest in 1703 (and later became known as the "Red Priest" because of his red hair).
He spent most of his career teaching violin and directing the orchestra in a Venetian girls' orphanage. After 1718 he became more involved as a composer and impresario for the opera.
His concerts were very influential in defining the three-movement (fast-slow-fast) form of the genre with a recurring theme (ritornello) for the larger group triggered by contrasting material for the soloists, and he made effects like pizzicato and mute popular.
His L'estro armonico (1711), a collection of concerti grossi, attracted international attention. His La stravaganza (c. 1714) was eagerly awaited, as were its successors, including The Four Seasons (1725).
In total he wrote more than 500 concerts. His best-known sacred vocal work is the Gloria (1708). Although often accused of repeating himself, Vivaldi was actually very resourceful, and his works had a profound influence on Johann Sebastian Bach.
Georg Friedrich Händel
1685 - 1033
Born as the son of a barber in Halle, he showed a pronounced musical talent and studied organ, violin and composition.
In 1703 he moved to Hamburg and played in the opera orchestra under Reinhard Keizer (1674 - 1739); his first opera was staged there in 1705. A Medici prince invited him to Florence; there and in Rome he wrote oratorios, cantatas and other operas under the auspices of cardinals and nobility.
Employed by the Elector of Hanover (1710) as Kapellmeister, he asked permission to visit London before he took on his responsibility. His opera Rinaldo (1711) immediately made a name for itself there.
Leaving Hanover, he stayed in England for the rest of his life. In 1714, the German Elector George I of England was appointed; all anger at Handel's apostasy vanished, and the king became one of his patrons.
Handel was appointed music director of the new Royal Academy of Music, an opera house that flourished until public tastes turned away from Italian opera. In 1732 he revised his oratorio Esther for a public performance, the first public oratorio performance in England.
His success was followed by many other English-language oratorios, including his great Messiah (1741); by that time he had made oratorios and large choral works the most popular forms of music in
Johann Sebastian Bach
1685 - 1750
German composer. Born into a musical family, he became an outstandingly well-rounded musician; from 1700 he worked as a singer, violinist and organist.
His first significant job was in 1708 as an organist at the ducal court of Weimar. This was followed by a six-year stay (1717-23) as Kapellmeister at the royal court in Koethen, which in turn was followed by his appointment as cantor at the great St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
Imbued with the North German contrapuntal style (see counterpoint) from earliest childhood, he encountered the lively Italian style especially in the works of Antonio Vivaldi around 1710, and a large part of his music embodies an extremely convincing amalgamation of the two styles. In St. Thomas he wrote more than 200 church cantatas. His orchestral works include the six Brandenburg Concerts, four orchestral suites and many harpsichord concerts, a genre he invented.
His solo piano works include the great teaching work "The Well-Tempered Clavier" (1722 and 1742), the great Goldberg Variations (1742), the massive but unfinished Art of the Fugue (1749), numerous suites and many organ preludes and fugues .
His traditional choral works include (in addition to the sacred cantatas) more than 30 secular cantatas, two monumental passions and the B minor mass. His works, which were never widely known during his lifetime, fell into an almost complete solar eclipse after his death and were not revived to great acclaim until the early 19th century.
He was perhaps the most accomplished organist and harpsichordist of his time. Today Bach is considered the greatest composer of the Baroque and by many the greatest composer of all time.
Henry Purcell
1659 - 1695
British composer. Little is known about his origins, but he has been in the Chapel Royal choir since childhood and likely studied with Pelham Humfrey and John Blow.
His first known composition was composed at the age of eight. When his voice changed, he helped maintain the royal instruments and tune the organ at Westminster Abbey.
He became organist there in 1679 and at the Chapel Royal in 1682. He wrote music in a number of genres. He is considered the greatest English composer after William Byrd and before the 20th century
Georg Philipp Telemann
1681 - 1767
German composer. He had learned several instruments by the age of 10 and composed an opera by the age of 12, but his family discouraged him from pursuing a musical profession.
During his law studies at the University of Leipzig, he organized student music groups and became Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Opera (1702), organist at the New Church (1704) and Counts Kapellmeister (1705). Moved to Eisenach (around 1708), where he met Johann Sebastian Bach, where he composed instrumental music for French and German church music.
He moved to Gotha (1717) and then to Hamburg (1721), where he served as musical director of the opera (1722–38), for which he wrote several dozen Italian-influenced works.
He wrote about 600 cantatas and a total of about 2,000 pieces, many of them of high quality.
Johann Pachelbel
1653 - 1706
Johann Pachelbel German composer and organist. In 1669 he entered the Altdorf University, where he was organist at the Lorenz Church, but left it after less than a year for lack of money and enrolled at the Poeticum Gymnasium in Regensburg in 1670, where he continued his musical training with Kaspar Prentz.
After about five years as deputy organist at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna and one year as court organist in Eisenach, Pachelbel was appointed organist at the Predigerkirche in Erfurt in June 1678, where he stayed for 12 years.
During this time he was extremely successful as an organist, composer and teacher (J.S. Bach's older brother Johann Christoph was one of his students) and was married twice. In 1690 he left Erfurt and after short stays in Stuttgart and Gotha returned to Nuremberg, where he was organist at St. Sebald until his death.
Arcangelo Corelli
1653 - 1713
Italian composer and violinist. He studied in Bologna before settling in Rome. He became widely known as a violinist, director and teacher and lived with his family in the palaces of Cardinals Pamphili and Ottoboni.
His numerous students included Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762) and Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764).
As a violinist, he had a significant influence on the development of the violin style. As the first composer whose fame was based solely on his instrumental music, his reputation is based primarily on his sonatas and his 12 Concerti Grossi, which established the Concerto grosso form.
He wrote four movements of 12 trio sonatas each (1681-95), one movement of 12 solo sonatas (1700) and the Concerti grossi (1714).
Long after his death, his works were extensively studied and imitated because of their classical equilibrium and serenity. With his music, the ideal of full-fledged tonality has first and foremost firmly established itself.
Alessandro Scarlatti
1660 - 1725
Alessandro Scarlatti. Composer, particularly important for the development of opera and is considered the founder of the so-called Neapolitan school.
Brought to Rome in 1672, is said to have studied with Carissimi and wrote his first opera there in 1679. From 1708 for the rest of his life alternately between Rome and Naples, in various courtly and ecclesiastical offices.
The contribution to opera was the liberation of dramatic expression. His greatest opera is Mitridate Eupatore (1707), composed for Prince Ferdinando de 'Medici, but a failure in Venice.
In his late years in Rome, the general enthusiasm for opera inspired by Scarlatti overcame all ecclesiastical objections.
His 115 operas including a comic opera, Il trionfo dell'onore (Naples 1718). Sixty-four have survived in whole or in part, perhaps the most famous being the last, La Griselda (1721).
Jean-Philippe Rameau
1683 - 1764
French composer and music theorist. As the son of an organist, he held the post of organist until he was 49 years old.
His treatise on harmony (1722) made him an important music theorist. In it, he claimed that harmony is the foundation of music and that chords that were primarily understood as collections of intervals above a bass should instead be viewed as inversions of more fundamental harmonic units.
From 1733 he wrote a number of very successful operas, including Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) and The Gallant Indies (1735), which secured his place as the most important French opera composer since Jean-Baptiste Lully.
He also became known for his many piano pieces, most of which were composed for harpsichord.
François Couperin
1668 - 1733
François Couperin Couperin was born in Paris. He was tutored by his father Charles Couperin, who died when François was 10 years old, and by Jacques Thomelin.
In 1685 he became organist at the Saint-Gervais church in Paris, a position he inherited from his father and passed on to his cousin Nicolas Couperin. Other family members later assumed the same position.
In 1693 Couperin followed his teacher Thomelin as organist at the Chapelle Royale (Royal Chapel) with the title organiste du Roi, organist after the appointment of Louis XIV. In 1717 Couperin became court organist and composer with the title ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du Roi .
Couperin gave a weekly concert with his colleagues, typically on Sundays. Many of these concerts were suites for violin, viol, oboe, bassoon and harpsichord, on which he played with virtuosity.
Jean-Baptiste Lully
1632 - 1687
French composer. After the death of his mother he was appointed ward of the court and at the age of 13 sent to a French aristocratic household as a valet.
There he learned the guitar, organ, violin and dance and got to know the composer Michel Lambert (1610-96), who introduced him to society and later became his father-in-law.
Lully became a dancer and musician for the king and at the age of 30 he became responsible for all royal music.
In the 1660s he composed the incidental music for Molière's pieces as well as those of the great French tragedians.
In the early 1670s he was granted the sole patent for the presentation of operas and produced the series of "lyrical tragedies" - most with librettos by Philippe Quinault (1635-88) - for which he is known, including Alceste (1674), Atys ( 1676) and Armide (1686).
The orchestra he developed was an important forerunner of the modern orchestra. A self-inflicted toe injury with his heavy baton led to his death. His compositional style was imitated across Europe.
