The word baroque was originally a Portuguese term for an irregularly shaped pearl, a label that would eventually define a musical revolution. In May 1734, a satirical review in the Mercure de France described the music of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie as du barocque, complaining that it lacked coherent melody and was filled with unremitting dissonances. Critics like Jean-Jacques Rousseau later used the term pejoratively to describe music that was confused, harsh, and unnatural, yet this very extravagance became the engine of a new artistic age. The systematic application of the term to music did not occur until 1919, when Curt Sachs adapted Heinrich Wölfflin's theories of the visual arts to describe the period between 1600 and 1750. Before this academic formalization, the era was simply a time of transition where composers sought to express human emotion with a new intensity that the Renaissance had not attempted. The history of the term itself reveals how the music was initially misunderstood as a mistake before being recognized as a deliberate, powerful style.
The Florentine Experiment
In late Renaissance Florence, a group of humanists, musicians, and poets gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to form the Florentine Camerata. They sought to revive the musical drama of ancient Greece, rejecting the complex polyphony of their contemporaries in favor of monody, a solo singing style accompanied by a kithara. This intellectual movement produced Jacopo Peri's Dafne and L'Euridice, marking the birth of opera and serving as the catalyst for the entire Baroque period. Claudio Monteverdi furthered this transition by developing two distinct styles: the heritage of Renaissance polyphony known as prima pratica, and the new basso continuo technique called seconda pratica. With the writing of operas such as L'Orfeo and L'incoronazione di Poppea, Monteverdi brought considerable attention to this new genre, which would eventually spread to Germany through Heinrich Schütz. The Florentine Camerata's rejection of polyphony in favor of a single melodic line with harmonic support laid the groundwork for the tonality that would dominate Western music for centuries.The Court and The Church
The rise of centralized courts during the Age of Absolutism, personified by Louis XIV of France, created a demand for organized public music and chamber music. Jean-Baptiste Lully became a pre-eminent court style composer, purchasing patents from the monarchy to be the sole composer of operas for the French king and preventing others from staging operas. He completed fifteen lyric tragedies and left unfinished Achille et Polyxène, establishing himself as an early example of a conductor who beat time with a large staff to keep his ensembles together. In contrast to these court composers, Dieterich Buxtehude was a church musician who held posts as organist and Werkmeister at the Marienkirche in Lübeck. His duties included acting as secretary, treasurer, and business manager of the church, while his position as organist required playing for all main services. Entirely outside his official church duties, he organized and directed a concert series known as the Abendmusiken, which included performances of sacred dramatic works regarded by his contemporaries as the equivalent of operas. This duality between the opulent court and the disciplined church defined the economic and political landscape of the middle Baroque period.