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    Chapter 10

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    HEVER TORRES
    The late Baroque period saw refinement rather than innovation in music. Johann Sebastian Bach was a highly influential composer, largely self-taught, who mastered counterpoint and wrote many fugues. His Organ Fugue in G minor from 1710 demonstrates typical fugue structure, beginning with the subject presented in different voices and alternating with episodes of free counterpoint. It makes use of increasing note values and a pedal point to build intensity before ending in a major key.

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    Chapter 10

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    HEVER TORRES
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    The late Baroque period saw refinement rather than innovation in music. Johann Sebastian Bach was a highly influential composer, largely self-taught, who mastered counterpoint and wrote many fugues. His Organ Fugue in G minor from 1710 demonstrates typical fugue structure, beginning with the subject presented in different voices and alternating with episodes of free counterpoint. It makes use of increasing note values and a pedal point to build intensity before ending in a major key.

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    The late Baroque period saw refinement rather than innovation in music. Johann Sebastian Bach was a highly influential composer, largely self-taught, who mastered counterpoint and wrote many fugues. His Organ Fugue in G minor from 1710 demonstrates typical fugue structure, beginning with the subject presented in different voices and alternating with episodes of free counterpoint. It makes use of increasing note values and a pedal point to build intensity before ending in a major key.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    29 views16 pages

    Chapter 10

    Uploaded by

    HEVER TORRES
    The late Baroque period saw refinement rather than innovation in music. Johann Sebastian Bach was a highly influential composer, largely self-taught, who mastered counterpoint and wrote many fugues. His Organ Fugue in G minor from 1710 demonstrates typical fugue structure, beginning with the subject presented in different voices and alternating with episodes of free counterpoint. It makes use of increasing note values and a pedal point to build intensity before ending in a major key.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 16

    Chapter 10

    The Late Baroque


    • The late Baroque period (1710–1750), represented
    by the two great figures Johann Sebastian Bach and
    George Frideric Handel, stands as a high-water
    mark in Western musical culture.
    • The late Baroque, by contrast, is not a period of
    musical innovation, but one of refinement.
    • Rhythm in late Baroque music is also ruled by the
    principle of progressive development.
    • A piece typically begins with one prominent
    rhythmic idea.
    • A complementary one continues uninterrupted to
    the very end of the movement, pushed along by a
    strong, clearly audible beat.
    Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) (Hev if naa
    pa pwede ma add sa life ni Bach pami apil nalang
    thaaanks.)
    • For a period of more than 200 years, roughly 1600
    to 1800, nearly 100 musicians with the name of
    Bach worked in central Germany—the longest of all
    musical dydynasties.
    • To google "Bach" meant "a musician"
    • Bach was largely self-taught.
    • To learn his craft, he studied, copied, and arranged
    the compositions of Corelli, Vivaldi, Pachelbel, and
    even Palestrina.
    • He also learned to play the organ, in part by
    emulating others.
    • Bach’s first position of importance was in the town
    of Weimar, Germany, where he served as organist
    to the court between 1708 and 1717.
    • It was here that he wrote many of his finest works
    for organ and that his reputation for extraordinary
    improvisations on that instrument became the stuff
    of legend.
    • the organ is the most suitable for playing polyphonic
    counterpoint. Most organs have at least two separate
    keyboards for the hands, in addition to one placed on the
    floor, which the performer plays with the feet. (Pls ko add sa
    pic Hev.t Thaaanks💖)
    • This gives the instrument the capacity to play several lines
    simultaneously.
    • Each of these keyboards can be set to engage a different
    group (rank) of pipes, each with its own color, making it
    easier for the listener to hear individual musical lines.
    • For these reasons, the organ is the instrument par excellence
    for playing fugues.
    Fugue
    • Uses a type of musical technique called counterpoint,
    where multiple melodic lines can be followed
    independently but together form harmony.
    • A Polyphonic Texture
    • Fugues can also be composed for solo instruments like
    the piano, organ, or guitar, which have the capacity to
    play
    several “voices” simultaneously.
    Parts of Fugue
    • The theme in a fugue is called the subject.
    • At the outset,
    each voice presents the subject in turn, and this
    successive presentation is called the exposition of the
    fugue
    • These freer sections, where the subject is not heard in
    its entirety, are called episodes.
    Episodes and further presentations of the subject
    alternate throughout
    the remainder of the fugue .
    Organ Fugue in G minor (c. 1710)

    • The organ was Bach’s favorite instrument, and in


    his day, he was known more as a
    performer and improviser on it than as a composer
    —his fame as a composer came,
    ironically, years after his death.
    • Bach composed his G minor organ fugue early in his
    career, when he was in Weimar.
    • It starts moderately with quarter notes and then seems
    to gain
    speed as eighth notes and finally sixteenth notes are
    introduced. This, too, is typical of fugue subjects. After
    the soprano introduces the subject, it is then presented,
    in turn, by the alto, the tenor, and the bass. The voices
    need not appear in any particular order; here, Bach
    simply decided to have them enter in succession from
    top
    to bottom.
    • When each voice has presented the subject and
    joined the polyphonic complex,
    Bach’s exposition is at an end. Now a short passage
    of free counterpoint follows—
    the first episode—which uses only bits and pieces of
    the subject.
    • Bach’s G minor fugue unfolds in the usual alternation
    of
    episodes and statements of the subject.
    • Because Bach wrote many fugues for organ, they often
    make use of a device particularly well suited to the organ
    —the pedal point. A pedal point is a note, usually in
    the bass, that is sustained (or repeated) for a time while
    harmonies change around
    it.
    • Notice that, although this
    fugue is in a minor key, Bach puts the last chord in major.
    This is common in Baroque
    music, with composers preferring the brighter, more
    optimistic, sound of the major
    mode at the very end.

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