Go Baroque

As you listen to and watch these videos, choose a page to color. The designs echo the busy ornate style of Baroque art and music characterized by great drama, rich, deep color, with intense light and dark shadows.

Chose a coloring page here: Patterns for Coloring

Note: this particular episode correlates with a studio-themed program called Go Baroque.

Learn how to Go Baroque in your studio with ON and OFF bench activities with this resource!

Part One

As you embark on another year of music lessons and music reading, here's a video that will make you stop and think how this grand staff originated.

Watch this to learn about the popular instruments of the time. Apparently, some were “more superior” than others. Do you agree? :-)

Learn how the harpsichord works in this video which gets under the lid of the instrument. Notice how the strings are plucked and NOT struck by a hammer like the piano.

The visual art of the Baroque reflects the intricate music of the period. Below is an expert carving wood for a Baroque-fashioned organ. This organ was the "king" of instruments" of the Baroque period and still is in the 21st century.

Listen to JS Bach’s Concerto in Am and marvel at the ornate cathedral housing the pipe organ.

Along with the organ, the harpsichord was a popular keyboard of the time. Notice the intricate designs painted on the instrument.

A Lego harpsichord? The unique model in the video below demonstrates how strings are plucked with a quill instead of struck by a hammer like the piano. The Lego construction does not reflect the elaborate elegance of the Baroque keyboard instrument as seen in the photo to the right.

Part Two

Just as the artwork was rhythmic and elaborate, the music included many voices and ornaments frequently adorned the melody lines. The video below demonstrates how ornaments like trills and turns decorate a melody.

The fugue form models the intricate style of the Baroque period. It is a contrapuntal or polyphonic (many voices) composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and imitated up by other voices and interwoven between the hands.

Part Three

The lute was the "guitar" of the Baroque period.

Pachelbel is a Baroque composer most known for his "Canon" —a piece that has a repeated bass online throughout. Mr. Pachelbel wrote his canon for strings, but here is a performance of the piece on organ. Notice how the organist’s feet play the SAME pattern throughout.

Part Four

Johann Sebastian's Cello Suite No 1 - Prelude played my Yo-Yo Ma, perhaps the most well-known and versatile cellists of our time.

The Piano Guys take on the same tune as above and prove that Bach is back and never left! in their cover "The Cello Song."

"Summer" from the Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" is from a set of four violin concertos orchestrated for solo violin,  string quartet and basso continuo. Notice the keyboard or harpsichord (you can't miss it!) that is played during the performance-- the common keyboard during the Baroque period.

Baroque music continues to be a favorite even among rock musicians. Here's Vivaldi's "Autumn" with a heavy-metal twist.

Part Five

G. F Handel's "Sarabande" is the background music to this collage of movie scenes featuring costumes and dances of the 18th century.

The minuet was a popular dance of noble kings and queens as well as peasants. Here's the ballroom scene from the movie "Marie-Antoinette."

Fact: When told that starving French peasants lacked any bread to eat, the queen is alleged to have callously declared, “Let them eat cake!” There is no evidence, however, that Marie Antoinette ever uttered that famous quip.

If you are going to a play a minuet which as a musician you will most likely do at some point, it's important to know how to dance it as well. Note that your feet step together on beats 2 and 6.

Pachelbel Bonus

Pachelbel's Canon in D was composed by a Baroque composer named Pachelbel around 1680, yet it did not become popular until the 1970s. The video below tells the story of this legendary repeated bass line.

A bass line is repeated over and over, and yet the piece never gets old to most.

However, it can quickly grow old for a cello player. Check out this video.