Today, Sat­ur­day August 7, we explore the music of the Baroque era. We’ll be includ­ing the work of a wide range of com­posers. Many will be famil­iar; oth­er per­haps less so; or they may have writ­ten pieces that we know well but have no idea of who com­posed them — for exam­ple Eng­lish com­pos­er Thomas Arne, who wrote Rule Bri­tan­nia but also a range of oth­er pieces which deserve more inter­est than is usu­al­ly paid to them. And on this occa­sion we are also explor­ing a range of works by J S Bach — some well-known and oth­ers less familiar.

Then at 12 noon and 4pm Pacif­ic / 8pm or mid­night UK time, there’s anoth­er chance to hear Episode 13 of “Where’ve You Been?”, our twice-month­ly show on places to vis­it and things to do around the Sec­ond Life Grid. This time we’re pay­ing a return vis­it to the Sec­ond Life Endow­ment for the Arts (SLEA), focus­ing on the near­ly-com­plet­ed Bridge Project.  You’ll find more details here. And every four hours from 4am Pacific/noon in the UK, tune in for “The Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity”, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, about the machines that make our civ­i­liza­tion run and the peo­ple whose inge­nu­ity cre­at­ed them.

Says Wikipedia on the music of the Baroque:

Baroque music is a peri­od or style of West­ern music com­posed from approx­i­mate­ly 1600 to 1750. This era fol­lowed the Renais­sance music era, and was fol­lowed in turn by the Clas­si­cal era, with the galant style mark­ing the tran­si­tion between Baroque and Clas­si­cal eras.

The Baroque peri­od is divid­ed into three major phas­es: ear­ly, mid­dle, and late. Over­lap­ping in time, they are con­ven­tion­al­ly dat­ed from 1580 to 1650, from 1630 to 1700, and from 1680 to 1750.

Baroque music forms a major por­tion of the “clas­si­cal music” canon, and is now wide­ly stud­ied, per­formed, and lis­tened to. The term “baroque” comes from the Por­tuguese word bar­ro­co, mean­ing “mis­shapen pearl”.

Key com­posers of the Baroque era include Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, Anto­nio Vival­di, George Frid­er­ic Han­del, Clau­dio Mon­tever­di, Domeni­co Scar­lat­ti, Alessan­dro Scar­lat­ti, Hen­ry Pur­cell, Georg Philipp Tele­mann, Jean-Bap­tiste Lul­ly, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marc-Antoine Char­p­en­tier, Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li, François Couperin, Giuseppe Tar­ti­ni, Hein­rich Schütz, Jan Pieter­szoon Sweel­inck, Dieterich Bux­te­hude, and oth­ers, and you will hear many of them today.