Baroque music
Baroque music is a style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. This era followed the Renaissance, and was followed in turn by the Classical era. The word “baroque” comes from the Portuguese wordbarroco, meaning misshapen pearl,[2] a negative description of the ornate and heavily ornamented music of this period. Later, the name came to apply also to the architecture of the same period.
Baroque music forms a major portion of the “classical music” canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to. Composers of the Baroque era include Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Henry Purcell, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Arcangelo Corelli, Tomaso Albinoni, François Couperin, Denis Gaultier, Claudio Monteverdi, Heinrich Schütz, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Jan Dismas Zelenka, and Johann Pachelbel.
The Baroque period saw the creation of tonality. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes in musical notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera, cantata, oratorio,concerto, and sonata as musical genres. Many musical terms and concepts from this era are still in use today.
Binary form
Binary form is a musical form in two related sections, both of which are usually repeated. Binary is also a structure used to choreograph dance. In music this is usually performed as A-A-B-B
Binary form was popular in the Baroque period, often used to structure movements of keyboard sonatas. It was also used for short, one-movement works. Around the middle of the 18th century, the form largely fell from use as the principal design of entire movements as sonata form and organic development gained prominence. When it is found in later works, it usually takes the form of the theme in a set of variations, or the Minuet, Scherzo, or Trio sections of a Minuet and Trio or Scherzo and Trio movement in a sonata, symphony, etc. Many larger forms incorporate binary structures, and many more complicated forms (such as sonata forms) share certain characteristics with binary form.
Most strictly, a piece in binary form is characterized by two complementary, related sections of roughly equal duration, which come up frequently. The first section will start in a certain key, and will usually modulate to a related key:
- compositions in major keys will typically modulate to the dominant, the fifth scale degree above the tonic
- compositions in minor keys will typically modulate to the relative major, the major key centered on the third scale degree above the tonic; alternatively the first section could close in the dominant minor, or with an imperfect cadence in the original key.
The second section of the piece begins in the newly established key, where it remains for an indefinite period of time. After some harmonic activity, the piece will eventually modulate back to its original key before ending. More often than not, especially in 18th-century compositions, the A and B sections are separated by double bars with repeat signs, meaning both sections were to be repeated.
Binary form is usually characterised as having the form AB, though since both sections repeat, a more accurate description would be AABB. Others, however, prefer to use the label AA′. This second designation points to the fact that there is no great change in character between the two sections. The rhythms and melodic material used will generally be closely related in each section, and if the piece is written for a musical ensemble, the instrumentation will generally be the same. This is in contrast to the use of verse-chorus form in popular music—the contrast between the two sections is primarily one of the keys used.
Binary code
A binary code represents text or computer processor instructions using the binary number system’s two binary digits, 0 and 1. A binary code assigns a bit string to each symbol or instruction. For example, a binary string of eight binary digits (bits) can represent any of 256 possible values and can therefore correspond to a variety of different symbols, letters or instructions.
In computing and telecommunication, binary codes are used for various methods of encoding data, such ascharacter strings, into bit strings. Those methods may use fixed-width or variable-width strings. In a fixed-width binary code, each letter, digit, or other character is represented by a bit string of the same length; that bit string, interpreted as a binary number, is usually displayed in code tables in octal, decimal or hexadecimal notation. There are many character sets and many character encodings for them.
A bit string, interpreted as a binary number, can be translated into a decimal number. For example, the lower casea, if represented by the bit string 01100001 (as it is in the standard ASCII code), can also be represented as the decimal number 97.
The modern binary number system, the basis for binary code, was discovered by Gottfried Leibniz in 1679 and appears in his article Explication de l’Arithmétique Binaire. The full title is translated into English as the “Explanation of the binary arithmetic”, which uses only the characters 1 and 0, with some remarks on its usefulness, and on the light it throws on the ancient Chinese figures of Fu Xi.”1703). Leibniz’s system uses 0 and 1, like the modern binary numeral system. Leibniz encountered the I Ching through French Jesuit Joachim Bouvet and noted with fascination how its hexagrams correspond to the binary numbers from 0 to 111111, and concluded that this mapping was evidence of major Chinese accomplishments in the sort of philosophical mathematics he admired. Leibniz saw the hexagrams as an affirmation of the universality of his own religious beliefs.
‘Dominico Scarlatti’ in binary code
Da capo aria
The da capo aria is a musical form that was prevalent in the Baroque era. It is sung by a soloist with theaccompaniment of instruments, often a small orchestra. The da capo aria is very common in the musical genres ofopera and oratorio. According to Randel, a number of Baroque composers (he lists Hasse, Handel, Porpora, Leo, andVinci) composed more than a thousand da capo arias during their careers.
Form
A da capo aria is in ternary form, meaning it is composed of three sections. The first section is a complete musical entity, ending in the tonic key, and could in principle be sung alone. The second section contrasts with the first in its musical key, texture, mood, and sometimes also tempo. The third section was usually not written out by the composer, who rather simply specified the direction “da capo” (Italian for “from the head”) – meaning from the beginning, which meant that the first section should be repeated in full.
The text for a da capo aria was typically a poem or other verse sequence written in two strophes, the first for the A section (hence repeated later) and the second for B. Each strophe consisted of from three to six lines, and terminated in a line containing a masculine ending.
The singer was often expected to improvise variations and ornaments during the third section, to keep it from being a mere repetition of the first. This was especially so for da capo arias written in slower tempos, where the opportunity to improvise, as well as the risk of dullness, were greater. The ability to improvise variations and ornaments was a skill learned by, and expected of all solo singers. The decline in this ability following the Baroque era is perhaps the reason why the da capo aria ultimately acquired a reputation as a musically dull form. The authentic performance movement, starting in the mid twentieth century, restored improvisation to the performance of da capo arias, although the practice has yet to become universal even among authentic performance artists.
.
Sonata K. 27, in B minor
Sonata K. 81, in E minor
Domenico Scarlatti 