Symphony

Author: Hu Qipeng, Liu Hongmo / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-02-01
Features: Symphony is highly captivating and refined music. It is vast, profound, and deeply meaningful, always bringing immense spiritual enjoyment. This book is like a competent guide, leading you into the garden of symphony and exploring its picturesque "scenic spots": the Baroque period, the Classical period, the Romantic period, the Nationalist School, and Modernism. It will introduce you to dozens of music masters from different eras, helping you understand their lives and appreciate the magical charm of their works, allowing you to become deeply immersed in the world of symphonic music.
Chapter 1: Baroque Symphony (17th Century to the First Half of the 18th Century)
Overview of Baroque Symphony
In the history of European music, the period from 1600 (the birth of opera) to 1750 (the death of J.S. Bach) is generally referred to as the Baroque music period. As with any historical period, the boundaries of this era are relative. Some characteristics of Baroque music had already appeared in the late Renaissance, and they persisted into the early Classical period before gradually fading away. However, over the course of these 150 years, the musical art itself did indeed exhibit a certain internal stylistic unity.
Generally, the term "Baroque" is believed to originate from the Portuguese word "barrocco," which originally referred to oddly shaped pearls. It was later used by literary theorists of the late 18th century to dismiss the artistic style that emerged in Italy from the 17th century onward in architecture, sculpture, and painting. This somewhat derogatory term was also widely used to describe the music of this period. Compared to the Renaissance, which revered the formal beauty of ancient Greece and Rome, Baroque art was more expressive and free—it was willing to break away from formal harmony to enhance emotional impact. In 1888, art historian Alois Riegl first restored the reputation of the term "Baroque" in his work Renaissance and Baroque, after which it was used specifically to denote a period in art history. In 1915, in another work Principles of Art History, he distinguished between the Renaissance style and the Baroque style in the visual arts. In 1919, German musicologist Curt Sachs first applied Riegl's theory of Baroque art to music research. However, his analogies between musical art and the visual arts were generally considered somewhat rigid.
Overall, by the 20th century, the art of Baroque was no longer mocked, and people began to develop new and deeper understandings of it. The Baroque visual arts originated in late Renaissance Italy. For the purpose of displaying wealth, buildings of this period extensively used expensive materials, featuring lavish forms and bright colors, giving the structures a sense of dynamism and restlessness. The domes of churches combined architecture, painting, and sculpture; operas integrated music, literature, painting, and architecture. While emphasizing the decorative and dramatic aspects of art, there was also a tendency to blend different art forms as much as possible. The same trend was observed in the visual arts of the same era. In painting, while the Renaissance used perspective and the concept of balance and harmony to depict nature and the human body, the Baroque period delved into the infinite world of human emotions from limited spatial perspectives. Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens rendered intense anxiety and unease through distorted figures, while Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini used dynamic figures to express scenes of excitement and joy. His sculpture David is full of restless energy, strengthened through exaggeration and distortion to enhance emotional expression, forming a stark contrast with Michelangelo's serene and balanced work on the same theme from a century earlier. Compared to the linear and balanced imagery of the Renaissance, Baroque art underwent significant changes. Artists favored dramatic effects along the diagonals of their compositions, so figures in their works were often tilted and twisted. In architecture, the grandeur of St. Peter's Basilica, the detailed decorations in the French Palace of Versailles, especially the volutes and scroll capitals, all demonstrated the Baroque style's characteristics of magnificence, strangeness, and exaggeration. In music, the ornate decoration of vocal and instrumental melodies also reflected the era's distinctive features.
In summary, Baroque art was not bound by conventional beauty; it was expressive and free, willing to break away from formal harmony to refine and emphasize emotional impact. The emergence of this intense period of artistic rebellion was not only organically linked to the visual arts of the time but also related to significant changes in religion, politics, economics, and science during the same era, all of which had a profound impact on the development of musical art.
First, the rise of absolute monarchies and unified nations promoted the emergence and development of new artistic genres. For example, the flourishing court music life directly led to the birth of opera. Second, the colonization and exploration of the Americas allowed the middle class to rise rapidly, and their accumulated wealth provided greater opportunities for artistic development. The first commercial opera houses in Venice and Hamburg in the 17th century are prominent examples. Third, the Thirty Years' War between Catholicism and Protestantism in the first half of the 17th century had a significant impact on art. Both the Protestant middle class, representing the interests of the middle class, and the Catholic old regime, representing feudalism, used the popular Baroque style to serve their own purposes, although the church's patronage of music was no longer as important as it was during the Renaissance. Finally, during the Baroque period, science made great strides, with giants like Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Descartes, and Spinoza emerging in fields such as astronomy, physics, mathematics, and philosophy. Scientific achievements also influenced music, such as J.S. Bach's application of the equal temperament tuning, Rameau's Treatise on Harmony, advancements and refinements in the construction of string families of instruments, and improvements in performance techniques—all reflecting the demand for systematization and scientific rigor in musical art.
As a crucial transitional period in European music from antiquity to modernity, with the rise of secular art in the late 16th century, music reflected a significant shift in content. It moved from the Renaissance's rejection of abstract "divine will" and emphasis on concrete "human emotions" to a new level. Baroque art presented complex and diverse forms, delving deeper into human emotions. Moreover, this artistic style not only spread across Europe but also influenced Latin American countries. If Renaissance painters, sculptors, and composers, from Raphael's paintings to Palestrina's unaccompanied choral masses, could dedicate themselves to the clear and pure Greek ideals, moving from "divine" to "human" (i.e., restoring the true nature of human emotions), then during the Baroque period, the main contradiction in artistic development was no longer, as in the Renaissance, the conflict between secularism and religion. Instead, the focus shifted to whether art should reflect urban life and the emotions of the common people or court life and aristocratic tastes. This was because art was no longer confined to churches; courts had also become centers of artistic activity.
In summary, Baroque musical art was in a rapidly developing stage, and its influence spread across Europe. However, its development in each country was closely tied to the local social, economic, and cultural backgrounds, resulting in variations. The development of Baroque music can be divided into three stages: early (1600–1650), middle (1651–1700), and late (1701–1750). In terms of the symphony genre and its conceptual attributes, it is accurate to say that the Baroque period did not yet produce standardized symphonies with specified formal structures for each movement. However, during these three stages, many of the symphonic concepts, forms, contents, genres, and techniques that we recognize today gradually took shape. For example, Renaissance polyphonic music (which consists of several equally important independent voices) gradually gave way to a new musical style—homophony (which consists of a main melody accompanied by harmonic accompaniment). Church modes were replaced by major and minor modes, and the use of figured bass introduced new concepts in harmony, with the major and minor tonal systems reaching maturity in the mid-Baroque period. When composing for emotional expression, a work was typically built on a single emotion. Music often featured dynamic rhythms and continuous melodies, with changes in dynamics generally occurring in steps (emphasizing contrasts between sections). Composers most frequently used binary forms, which consist of two sections (A and B) structured in a question-and-answer format. Another common technique was basso continuo, where musicians improvised freely over a repeated bass pattern in the lower voices, creating magnificent counterpoint. The emergence, development, and maturation of numerous pure instrumental genres—such as French and Italian overtures, trio sonatas, concerti grossi, solo concerti, and orchestral suites—were closely associated with the names of composers like Lully from France, the Scarlattis and Sammartini from Italy, Corelli, Vivaldi from Bohemia, and Monn from Austria. It was their relentless efforts that propelled instrumental music from its previously subordinate position to rival vocal music. Meanwhile, vocal music flourished with Monteverdi's operas, accompanied by the rise of large-scale vocal genres like oratorios and cantatas, all competing for attention—marking the establishment of the new Baroque musical style.