by Anouk
The age of enlightenment is a period of major transformation for the intellectual and artistic life in Europe. This is the time of experimentation and discovery and of a new philosophical, medical, aesthetic discourse.
The 18th century testifies to a change in music as well. It marks a hyphen between two musical styles, Baroque and Classical.
In the history of music, the Baroque style covers the beginning of the 17th century until the revolution. The Classic style stretches from the mid-18th to the early 19th, announces the beginning of Romantic music.
It would be impossible here to give an exhaustive view of the music of the 18th century because of the huge musical creation that has occurred in all the countries of Europe. That's why we'll focus on the Baroque part of music in the Enlightenment.
Between the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789 musical creation and its practice undergoes a great transformation. Expressing, provoking passions or relaying emotion, is the essential subject of music in the Baroque age.
The instrumental music is no longer used to accompany. The progress of the instruments allows to develop more virtuosity and initiates a new development of instrumental music with a multiplicity of sonatas and concertos.
The considerable development of harpsichord music in the 17th and 18th centuries was explained by the fact that the instrument, at the height of its technical development, offered composers the opportunity to use new musical forms such as temperament and counterpoint, thus allowing a single musician to play polyphonic music everywhere because, in a small and decorative way, the harpsichor easily found its place in all salons.
On this occasion, the innovation in musical theories ignite many quarrels about aesthetic. The most famous was “the quarrel of the Bouffons” between the defenders of French music represented by Rameau and those, supporters of the Italian style, ranked behind Rousseau. Rameau's harmony theory is the pinnacle of the art of counterpoint marking the music posterity.
To the Enlightenment, sung music is the preferred vehicle for affects. The metaphysical preoccupation and the religious sensibility reactivated by the Reformation, are expressed in oratorios, true spiritual operas. Bach's Passions are emblematic between 1724 and 1742.
Lyric music feeds many operas that graft the musical discourse on philosophical concerns including existential harmony embodied by the royal figure and a new transcription of the Greco-Roman myths.
Baroque opera opens to a wide variety of interpretations. Here, Les Indes Galantes by Rameau at the Paris Opera House with the National Dance Center and its krump workshop.
The Baroque opera stands out for a taste for movement, dramatization and decorative exuberance, with an exaggerated aesthetic made to surprise the spectators and to entertain the court.
Baroque aesthetic has no boundaries. There is no difference between entertaining music and religious music in its form, only the texts change. Composers use secular music into religious pieces and vice versa. By the way, the impact on the public is equivalent, generating enthusiasm as censorship.
During the second post-revolutionary part of the 18th century, the music changes. The evolution of instruments (for example, the introduction of piano-forte in the keyboard repertoire) and of the musical theories, the intellectual concerns and no doubt, the erudition of a wider audience give the musical expression even more sophisticated forms requiring even more virtuosity. The compositions become more complex; the orchestras unfold at the same time as the music expresses itself with more individuality.
Drawing up a complete list of the composers of the 18th century is not our point.
However, to get an overview of this, here's a very useful timeline of classical composers between 1700 and 1800 :
Because music is also a historical marker, it cannot be apart from the march of history, not only it accompanies it but it is depending on it and constantly renews itself.