Baroque Off!

[Serial_Apologist]

Has anybody else found themselves whistling gavotes, madregals, Purcell settings etc....I certainly have

....and I'll tell you it's very difficult doing both sides of counterpoint with only one set of lips....

Fine-tuned, this could be one solution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixKopGjn5s

[teamsaint]

if you can't whistle both parts, you could always try baraoke

[Serial_Apologist]

if you can't whistle both parts, you could always try baraoke

[eighthobstruction]

[doversoul1]

Poor Baroque Music. What has it done to deserve all this…?

[ed] I don't mean this thread.

[EdgeleyRob]

I tuned in for a a short while while picking up Mrs ER from work,it's dreadful.

[jean]

What is it that you hate about baroque architecture?

Everything! It's fussy and overstuffed and curly and horrible. Especially the churches.

It's so disappointing when you see a lovely Romanesque facade and you rush inside full of expectation, only to find it's had the treatment.

[french frank]

I tuned in for a a short while while picking up Mrs ER from work,it's dreadful.

I have a friend who's always lamenting that there's usually so little baroque music on Radio 3; and so much 19th-c. I'm sure he'll be revelling in it .........

[french frank]

Everything! It's fussy and overstuffed and curly and horrible. Especially the churches.

I sort of agree, but for me one of the most breathtakingly beautiful sights was entering Varaždin cathedral in Croatia (even if it is everything you hate ):

[teamsaint]

Wow.

Somehow makes you want to light a candle !! (in a good way).

[Anna]

So, a simple question. What is really the difference between Baroque and Rococo? Just a few more or less fol-de-rols and cherubs?

[french frank]

So, a simple question. What is really the difference between Baroque and Rococco? Just a few more or less fol-de-rols and cherubs?

The definition I heard was that rococo is a sort of feminine baroque; and baroque is a sort of masculine rococo.

[Flosshilde]

Everything! It's fussy and overstuffed and curly and horrible. Especially the churches.

It's so disappointing when you see a lovely Romanesque facade and you rush inside full of expectation, only to find it's had the treatment.

There's baroque & then there's baroque. For me baroque architecture still has the order & discipline of the classical orders, but within that it has a vivid inventiveness & daring. Borromini, for example, is inventive within strict geometrical forms - although spatially his churches are complex in plan they are simple - intersecting ovals, or triangles, and while his facades undulate they also have stability.

The English baroque architects are perhaps more restrained - Vanbrugh, who I think is one of the greatest architects Britain has produced, was masterful in his use of mass, plane and space - just look at the entrance to Blenheim Palace, which could be likened to Handel's Zadok the Priest; the building up of the orders and pediments, the roof of the Great Hall appearing above them, & then passing through the door in to the space of the hall (the entry of the chorus) with the staircases glimpsed through arches on either side.

I'd agree that the Southern style is more 'curly', but it also has great spatial daring and theatricality, & still uses the classical orders as a framework. Rococo loses that, I think, & becomes just decoration - some of it very pretty, but it can be rather insipid.

Still, I doubt that I'll convert you , & I like Romanesque architecture too, although that can itself be quite 'baroque' & decorative - just look at Durham, perched above the river, & compare it with Melk Abbey. & of course the interior of Durham is a riot of decoration! As is Kirkwall cathedral, in luscious cream & pink sandstone. You would have got on with a friend of mine who thought that anything later than the 13th century wasn't worth bothering about.

[Flosshilde]

I sort of agree, but for me one of the most breathtakingly beautiful sights was entering Varaždin cathedral in Croatia (even if it is everything you hate ):

I haven't yet visited any of the Austrian baroque churches, but I'd love to see this one -



With St george riding out of a blaze of light, with the dragon on one side & the maiden on the other.

& Bernini's Ecstasy of St Theresa is pretty wonderful, too.

[Flosshilde]

So, a simple question. What is really the difference between Baroque and Rococo? Just a few more or less fol-de-rols and cherubs?

As I've hinted above, my personal definition is that the baroque is still firmly rooted in the classical orders & therefore has a fairly strong underlying structure & discipline (although, of course, contemporaries didn't see it like that, hence the perjorative name; rather as 'gothic' was so called becuase it was seen as being rather barbarous); rococo has lost that is has become rather formless.