Wednes­day April 12th, and today we’re fea­tur­ing music of the Baroque era, with a par­tic­u­lar­ly exten­sive col­lec­tion of music by J S Bach.

Plus it’s your last chance to hear the cur­rent episode of “Where Have You Been?”, where we report on inter­est­ing things to see and do across the Sec­ond Life Grid, at noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT, where we vis­it Arm­strong Park in a vir­tu­al New Orleans; and don’t miss “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, every four hours from 4am Pacific.

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.