Baroque music is a style of Western art music composed from approximately to This era followed the Renaissance, and was followed in turn by the Classical era. Later, the name came to apply also to the architecture of the same period. The baroque period saw the creation of tonality. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes in musical notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera, cantata, oratorio, concerto, and sonata as musical genres. Many musical terms and concepts from this era are still in use today. All of these efforts resulted in appreciable disagreement about time boundaries of the period, especially concerning when it began. In English the term acquired currency only in the s, in the writings of Bukofzer and Paul Henry Lang.
What is “baroque,” and when was the Baroque period?
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The Baroque period is divided into three major phases: early, middle, and late. Overlapping in time, they are conventionally dated from to , from to , and from to Baroque music forms a major portion of the " classical music " canon , and is now widely studied, performed, and listened to. The term " baroque " comes from the Portuguese word barroco , meaning " misshapen pearl ". The Baroque period saw the creation of common-practice tonality , an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key ; this type of harmony has continued to be used extensively in Western classical and popular music. During the Baroque era, professional musicians were expected to be accomplished improvisers of both solo melodic lines and accompaniment parts.
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