Baroque

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General: World View

The passions of man

Attitude to life, and views are reflected in all expressions of an era. In the Baroque, Man no longer sees himself only as the image of God (the measuring stick and beauty ideal) as in the Renaissance, but also as a feeling being with passions (affect, pathos) and fantasies.

Overabundance and extremes

In the baroque, man strives for pomp and circumstance, he loves overabundance and extremes, and expands the borders of reality with brilliant illusions. If the Renaissance can be described as Apollo-like (Apollo: God of light, poetry, music, and healing) in its emulation of the ancients, then the Baroque must be termed Dionysian (Dionysus: Greek God of wine, fruitfulness and vegetation, worshipped in orgiastic rites. He was also known as the bestower of ecstasy, God of drama, and identified with Bacchus) with all its feeling and expression-orientated impulses, before the classic period achieved a synthesis of the two.

An ordered world-view

The world view of the Baroque is harmonically and rationally ordered. This is reflected in music: in the practice of speculative numerology, in the concept of 'basso continuo', and in man's all-encompassing relationship with God.

This famous quote (1738) from J.S. Bach , sums up his philosophy concerning the role of music as primarily a homage to God. In his eyes, the fundament of all music is the basso continuo, because it creates the harmonic base of any composition (like the earth from which the music grows):

Basso Continuo is the most complete fundament of music and is played with both hands: the left hand plays the notes written on the page, and the right hand adds consonant and dissonant chords to it, wherewith a pleasing harmony is created to the honor of God and for the appropriate delight of the senses. The basso continuo, just as all other music has no other ultimate goal than to honor God and for the diversion of the mind. When this is not taken into account, there is no music, but the devils whining and droning].

Human passions set into an ordered system

Heresies, the power struggle between the aristocrats and the thirty-years war disturb the world-order, but strengthen the longing for it. Human passions (Hobbes: the man as Wolf) are also set into an ordered system. As a result, many aspects of life and art become highly stylized.

Empiricism and critical views

The new self consciousness also affects the relationship to nature: instead of tradition and belief, empiricism and critical views become part of the world picture. Copernicus, Galilei and Kepler prove that the earth is not the central point of the galaxy - Descartes, Pascal and Spinoza propagate an ethic characterized by human experience and thinking. Scientific and art academies are set up to improve the levels of professional and arts skills.

Music symbolizes the order of the cosmos

Science dominates, because the theory of numbers is all-decisive. The harmony of the spheres is music, therefore all music symbolizes the order of the cosmos.