The Great Musical Adventure part 4

Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre

The Baroque era was between 1600 and 1750. The composers that I will elaborate on in this post are Dietrich Buxtehude, Tomaso Albinoni, and Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. If you have listened to many genres of music, you would be able to tell with no problem that these composers were from the Baroque period. Because of its extreme ornamentation and counterpoint melodies. Also, most of the music from the period was composed for organs and harpsichords. Because of the instruments that the music was to be composed for, there were little dynamics in the scores. The only dynamics for the harpsichord, in particular, were forte and piano, it was incapable of crescendos or decrescendos. Keep in mind this was only for the harpsichord, not so much for the organ, orchestra, and choirs.

Let us look at our first composer in this period, Dietrich Buxtehude. Dietrich Buxtehude lived between 1637 and 1707. He was an organist-composer in the Baroque era. He was an organist in Helsingborg at Mariekirke between the years 1658 and 1660. He was in between the excellent H. Schütz and the magnificent J. S. Bach. Because he was a half a century after the "father of German Musicians," and before the "Father of all Music," he was able to compose many great works alone with no competition in his life. One of his works is called Prelude, Fuge, and Chaconne in C Major. This piece has a grand, majestic, and stately structure to it. Along with his organ compositions, he wrote much vocal church music works in his life. There are around 120 of his vocal works and quite a handful of his organ works still sung and played.

Our next composer is Tomaso Albinoni. He lived from 1671 to 1751, around the same time that Bach was born and died. In the Baroque era, he was well known for being an opera composer, today he is well known for his instrumental music. He had a beautiful voice and was an accomplished violinist. However, he was more the composer for instruments than the performer of music. Imagine this: You hear an organ winding in and through the strings. There are dramatic and minor melodies are surrounded by the mysterious shimmer of the violins at times. There is a steady beat created by the bass and celli. All of a sudden, there is a solo violin playing a sad and haunting line. Then, all the strings come together to play the haunting melody, all the time the organ is playing the chords of the piece. Then, the organ shines with a high flute stop as the strings pluck the beats. It ends with a violin making the grinding climb of a G minor arpeggio.

This is a dramatic narrative of Tomaso Albinoni's Adagio for Strings and Organ in G Minor. Albinoni's music was more for pleasure than for profit. He was an independent composer and never sought a post in either the church or court as his fellow composers did. Unfortunately, many of his works were lost in World War II. It is said that there was a bass line found among some ruins which were the foundation of his famous Adagio. Supposedly, Albinoni would hardly recognize the work which we all love so much.

Our last composer is a lady whose name is Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. Quite a mouthful! She lived between 1665 and 1729. She was a French composer and a harpsichordist. She played and sang for Louis XIV at a very young age of five and, at age 15, she became a court musician under the care of the king's mistress, Madame de Montespan. It was somewhat unusual for a female to be such a profound accomplished harpsichordist. In 1684, she left the court and married her husband, the organist Marin de la Guerre, in the fall of that year. She wrote a mysteriously haunting sonata in D minor for the harpsichord which consists of nine movements. (Click the picture of this post to listen to some of her sonatas or click here to listen to some.)After the death of her only son and husband1704, she shifted her musical focus to giving concerts in her home. Her last work was Te Deum composed for Louis XV for his recovery in 1721. She died eight years later with only a handful of her compositions around.

As you read, there were other amazing composers in the Baroque Era. The next era to discover will be the Classical Era, which might take a couple weeks to unpack. We'll see!

Cheers,

Chloe Elizabeth