Early Baroque Music

After having taken multiple history courses throughout high school and now in college, I was pleasantly surprised at how Humanities 103 has been able to teach history while immersing us in that time period. The early baroque period in music introduced ideas that are now commonplace. Gabrieli’s use of dynamics and contrasting these dynamics has led to music today that can have forte brass fanfares to piano woodwind responses. Similarly, Gabriel’s use of tonality and chromaticism has helped to define later musical periods. Basing a piece around a base or tone note and then building chords from the scale around it adds resonance to any held notes. Gabrieli was also fond of brass instruments and brass instruments were first introduced during the early baroque period and to this I am grateful because I could not play my instrument today if it had not been introduced during this time. Our ability to learn beyond the history and actually study the art, architecture, and music of a time period allows us to immerse ourselves in history and see how history has influenced the present.