To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
—Isaac Newton (1642–1727), in Principia Mathematica (1687)
L’etat, c’est moi. (I am the state.)
—Louis XIV (1638–1715), king of France, on assuming the throne in 1651 at the age of 13.
The first of the remarks above is from a common citizen gifted with uncommon powers of observation; the second is from the most opulent of monarchs, certain that his supreme authority came directly from God. Together they say much about the climate of the 150 years that stretched from 1600 to 1750. Extending from the precipitous decline of Roman Catholicism in the late sixteenth century through
the dawn of the industrial and political revolutions that concluded the eighteenth, the Baroque was a period of drastic change in the way people thought about themselves and the laws of their universe.
Saying of an epoch that it is a time of great contrasts is too commonplace, for a close look at any particular era or region will reveal all sorts of inconsistencies. But here the antitheses are particularly striking: the emergence, for example, of a powerful middle class alongside the consolidating of empires by the great feudal monarchies. Gradually the religious confrontations of the previous century were subsiding into a measure of coexistence between the largely Protestant north and Catholic south, but at the expense of endless warring over seemingly insignificant territories and succes-sions—the Thirty Years War (1618–48), for instance. Scientists and philosophers took the opportunity to refashion their understanding of natural principles; artists responded to the modern secular climate with all manner of entertainments for a new public of ticket holders.
Galileo’s experiments come from the early 1600s; Molière’s timeless comedies come between 1660 and his death in 1673. Yet for the most part the thinkers of the Baroque continued to be pious and God-fearing, and their religious art stands in good company with that of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
In music the modern Italian style was exported to Germany, France, and England as talented composers who had gone to study in Italy returned home. Among these were the German master Heinrich Schütz, Handel, and later Mozart and many others. Likewise the Italian composers took to the road, Lully to France, Corelli and Vivaldi to Vienna. Just as influential were foreign publications of the Italian repertoire, as (we have seen) with Musica transalpina and, later, the great commercial success of the Amsterdam publications of Corelli’s and Vivaldi’s instrumental music. Both Germany and France developed strong national styles based on techniques that had been acquired from Italy.
The look of Europe changed greatly through the work of the Baroque architects. In 1541 Michelangelo had completed his frescoes for the pope’s private place of worship, the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican,
generally considered one of the triumphs of Renaissance art. He then went on to begin the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, the pope’s much larger public church alongside. But completing St. Peter’s took more than a century, so the finished edifice has less to do with Renaissance ideals than the later passion for vista and spectacle. The dome, great piazza, and grandly curved quadruple colonnades are those of the architect Bernini, completed in the 1660s. This is a Baroque structure: ornate, gilded, spectacular, occasionally deceiving to the eye, and based on the most modern science of the time.
Not long afterward there rose from a swamp by Versailles outside Paris the grandest of all palaces, built for Louis XIV, king of France since 1661. From every vantage point it, too, was a masterpiece of perspectives—terraces giving onto formal gardens, statuary and fountains of mythical deities, reflecting ponds, and grand avenues for horseback recreation. Within there was gilding everywhere, lacquered timepieces, ornate fabrics and carpets, and for a throne room the great Hall of Mirrors. Versailles, and the extravagant life that went on there, was the epitome of all things Baroque (the word refers, it appears, to the pearly inner surface of the oyster shell). And what eyes jaundiced by the excess of its extravagance once found overdone we can now see as exceptional and even stirring.
ILLUSTRATION: LOUIS XIV, KINGOF FRANCE
Baroque thinking grew from the struggle between the serene purity of the sacred styles and the expressive freedoms of the secular. During the early Baroque (c. 1600–50) this dialogue was centered in northern Italy. The mid-Baroque (c. 1650–1700) is the period where the principles of the new music radiate outward across Europe. The late, or high, Baroque (c. 1700–50), represented notably by the music of Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach, shows a fully matured style where technical problems have been overcome and the possibilities seem limitless. The central accomplishment of the era was the perfection of major/minor tonality and a corresponding way of thinking about chords and modern harmonic progression. Contrapuntal equality of
voices as an ideal gave way to a sharp focus on the outer lines: the uppermost voice (or melody) and lowermost (or bass). The Baroque era saw the crafting of an impressive body of purely instrumental music, and the birth and runaway popularity of opera.
These developments began to coalesce into a new style just about the time Claudio Monteverdi arrived to take a new job in Venice.