The Baroque
Age :
A Historical Study
The Baroque Age
was a period as well as a style of Art and Architecture
which prevailed in Europe during the 17th and 1st half of
the 18th centuries , characterized
by elaborate and
grotesque forms and ornamentation . It was also the musical
period
following the Renaissance ,
extending roughly from 1600 – 1760 . Baroque
period
was stylistically
complex , even contradictory.. Some of the qualities most
frequently associated with the Baroque are grandeur,
sensuous richness, drama, vitality, movement, tension,
emotional exuberance, and a tendency to blur distinctions
between the various
arts.
The term Baroque
probably ultimately derived from the Italian word barocco,
which was a term used by philosophers during the Middle
Ages to describe an obstacle in schematic logic.
Subsequently the word came to denote any contorted idea or
involuted process of thought.
Architecture during the Baroque Age
In this
period , architecture, painting, and sculpture were
integrated into decorative ensembles. Architecture and
sculpture became pictorial, and painting became
illusionistic. Baroque art was essentially concerned with
the dramatic and the illusory, with vivid colours, hidden
light sources, luxurious materials, and elaborate,
contrasting surface textures, used to heighten immediacy
and sensual delight. Ceilings of Baroque churches,
dissolved in painted scenes, presented vivid views of the
infinite to the worshiper and directed him through his
senses toward heavenly concerns. Seventeenth-century
Baroque architects made architecture a means of propagating
faith in the church and in the state. Baroque palaces
expanded to command the infinite and to display the power
and order of the state. Baroque space invited participation
and provided multiple changing views.A Baroque statue
either had a principal view with a preferred angle or was
definitely enclosed by a niche or frame . A Baroque
building expanded in its effect to include the square
facing it, and often the ensemble included all the
buildings on the square as well as the approaching streets
and the surrounding landscape.
Baroque buildings dominated
their environment; Renaissance buildings separated
themselves from it. Baroque architecture was taken up with
enthusiasm in central Germany ( e.g. Ludwigsburg Palace and
Zwinger Dresden), Austria and Poland ( e.g. Wilanow and
Bialystok Palaces). In England the culmination of Baroque
architecture was embodied in work by Sir Christopher Wren,
Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, from ca. 1660 to
ca. 1725.
Music
During the Baroque Age
One of the most
dramatic turning points in the history of music occurred at
the beginning of the 17th century , with Italy again
leading the way. While the stile antico, the universal
polyphonic style of the 16th century, continued, it was
henceforth reserved for sacred music, while the stile
moderno, or nuove musiche--with its emphasis on solo voice,
polarity of the melody and the bass line, and interest in
expressive harmony--developed for secular usage. The
expanded vocabulary allowed for a clearer distinction
between sacred and secular music as well as between vocal
and instrumental idioms, and national differences became
more pronounced. The Baroque period in music, as in other
arts, therefore, was one of stylistic diversity
Literature and
Philosophy of the Baroque Period
Baroque actually
expressed new values, which often are summarised in the use
of metaphor and allegory, widely found in Baroque
literature, and in the research for the "maraviglia"
(wonder, astonishment — as in Marinism), the use of
artifices. The psychological pain of Man -- a theme
disbanded after the Copernican and the Lutheran revolutions
in search of solid anchors, a proof of an "ultimate human
power" -- was to be found in both the art and architecture
of the Baroque period .The literature that may
specifically be called Baroque may be seen most
characteristically in the writings of Giambattista Marino
in Italy, Luis de Góngora in Spain, and Martin Opitz in
Germany. English Metaphysical poetry, most notably much of
John Donne's, is allied with Baroque literature .