Baroque Art

Throughout history, we can observe that many movements within the music world often go hand in hand with what innovative techniques and ideas are simultaneously being explored within the visual arts. This month, let’s take a look at several of these movements found in both music and art, discussing how both composers and artists attempted to express these new ideas within their work. If you are interested in impressionism, expressionism, cubism, or minimalism, you may want to check out my Music and Art blogs from September 2014.

Today, let’s kick things off by looking at the term “Baroque” and what it means to the art world. Baroque is a French word that comes from the Portuguese “barroco” meaning a misshapen pearl. It applies to the abnormal or exaggerated and originally referred to ornate architecture in the mid-eighteenth century. Critics of the time preferred simpler styles thus, Baroque had a negative connotation. It wasn’t until the following century that people began to look upon this “Baroque” art in a positive light.

Though it is difficult to pin point exact stylistic features of Baroque art and music since it spans such a long period, it is best to loosely mention common traits of the time. Art tended to focus on the dramatic, containing deep color and focusing on light and shadow. The Renaissance period reflected things before an action takes place while the Baroque period showed the action itself. A great example is Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Man Rising from His Chair. This is on display at Cincinnati’s Taft Museum of Art. Have you seen it?

Rembrandt's Portrait of a Man Rising from His Chair
Courtesy of wikimedia.org

Next time we’ll look at how some of the dramatic and ornate features found in Baroque art map themselves onto Baroque music!

Cage's Bacchanale and Prepared Piano

This month, Clef Notes has looked at a variety of music set to dance. Let’s wrap things up with something a bit different than what we’ve seen so far.

You may remember my previous blog post on John Cage (1912–1992), an avant-garde and experimental composer of the twentieth century. He was known to use sounds and ideas that had not previously been used in music. One concept he became known for was the prepared piano. A prepared piano is the insertion of objects (pennies, bolts, wood, plastic, etc.) in between piano strings. The result is a percussive effect that creates various sounds, depending on the objects inserted, when the pianist plays from the keyboard. The piano is prepared in advance of the performance with detailed instructions provided within the score for which objects should be placed between which strings.

Prepared Piano
Courtesy of wikimedia.org

Cage’s Bacchanale was his first work written for prepared piano. He created it for dancer Syvilla Fort in 1938. Originally, he wanted to accompany her dance with percussion, but opted for the prepared piano concept because he was unable to use many instruments. You can watch this modern dance and piano performance below. Do you think the piano and dancers balance each other or does one seems to hold greater importance over the other?

Philip Glass' In the Upper Room

So far this month, we’ve focused our attention on famous ballets. What happens when you combine aspects of ballet and modern dance? The result is a stunning production choreographed by Twyla Tharp to the music of Philip Glass.

In the Upper Room premiered in 1986 and breaks down the barrier that began to form between ballet and modern dance in the twentieth century. Tharp incorporates two groups of dancers—modern dancers wearing tennis shoes and ballet dancers wearing pointe shoes. She referred to her modern dancers as “stompers” and the ballet dancers as the “bomb squad.” In the Upper Room incorporates a variety of dance types including boxing, yoga, ballet, and tap, set to the minimalistic music of Philip Glass. Costumes and lighting add to the experience, dancers moving in and out of a heavenly, fog-filled stage.

Below you can watch a few excerpts from In the Upper Room. What do you think? Do you prefer this type of modern dance over some of the more traditional ballets we talked about earlier this month?