Classical: How the Baroque Era Changed Music

Provided by Milwaukee Musaik. The Milwaukee Musaik chamber orchestra promises sparkling strings, virtuosic winds, infectious rhythms and musical fireworks when it opens its season with Baroque Brilliance, a celebration of composers who transformed instrumental music during the Baroque period (1600 to 1750). The concert will be performed on Tuesday evening, Nov. 17. Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi is recognized as the bridge between Renaissance and Baroque musical styles. In 1605, he proposed grouping music into two categories: prima pratica (first practice) and seconda pratica (second practice). Prima pratica was “the perfection of 16th-century counterpoint…the music of the divine,” writes James Stewart for Vermont Public Radio. But the second practice “allows for these [Renaissance] rules of counterpoint and melody to be broken …” Thus began a period marked by new forms of composition, technological advancement in instruments, and imaginative performance practices. Musaik’s prog