The Sound of Music: Baroque Art, Rock, Pop, and Eras of Ageless Excess
A journey throughout time, the baroque style influenced a heartfelt, unique pocket of music that is still evolving.
The Sound of Music breaks down how every little noise ― that instrument, that sample, that oh-so-significant pause ― makes a song special.
Written by Audrey Kendrick
Illustrated by Micaela Galvez
Unnecessarily dramatic, eye-catchingly grandiose, and mysteriously busy, baroque art and architecture has an unmistakable personality. Caravaggio’s contrast, Vermeer’s curiosity, and Bernini’s celestiality all exemplify a movement as rich as its colors. In an artistic world as large as baroque, its borders extend into other forms, including music. And as the art and architecture of the time continued to impress with excess, composers in the 1600s all had something to prove. Pushing musical limits with intricately intense arrangements or pulling at the heartstrings with romantically beautiful melodies motivated the style’s creators. Details meant respect. Drama meant praise. Although the baroque revolution happened centuries ago, its style compels creativity to this day.
Fresh from the imagination of an artistic era, original baroque music capitalized on varying the level of sound, stretching the length of phrases, and creating suspense through sudden changes in mood. Tension between light and darkness looms in Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. With six compositions, each for seven major and minor keys, it embodies the over the top nature of the baroque movement. Restless longing and gripping, simmering riffs fill up each song with a darkly sentimental, driven sound.
Another famed composer, Vivaldi, incorporated that ethos into his Four Seasons; each a grand landscape, journeying through different times of the year. With sunny, skipping sections that soar and imposing pieces that randomly snap into an urgent intensity, its emotions are contagious. With spacious string sections regal enough to be played at King Louis XV’s wedding and earn knightship from Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi was an esteemed baroque drama king. Traditional baroque music has an intentional route that pulls the listeners along, carrying them through uncertainty and celebration, despair and hope.
Though classical music continued to evolve past the movement, baroque’s gravestone does not read anytime in the 1700s. On the outskirts of 1960s soft rock and folk, the baroque personality was reintroduced — this time in fully formed harpsichord, with popular artists like The Mamas & The Papas and The Beatles pioneering the loose characteristics of a new subgenre.
Defined as a fusion genre that crosses classical and rock elements, baroque pop's qualifications are not completely restrictive. Full arrangements built by twisting melodies and irregular rhythms bridge together the unique, paradoxical sound. It’s equally airy and peppy, both respectfully formal and playfully irreverent.
A foundational example, The Beatles’ “In My Life,” breaks into an instrumental section that could easily be confused as a Renaissance piece with percussion. It’s wistful, sentimental, and reflective, mirroring the previous 1600s tradition while adding introspective lyricism that became a hallmark of the new style. Chord-heavy instrumental breaks that skip up and down in scale sequences that sway in between major and minor sounds were a baroque pop feature cemented by The Zombies. Odyssey and Oracle also characterized the new sound with songs like “Care of Cell 44” and “This Will Be Our Year.” Although less intricate, the uncontained joy and sometimes somber nature of the earlier era was carried into its later interpretation. Baroque pop kept the playful juxtaposition from before, drawing out multichromatic emotions through each varying verse.
As rock rolled into its own classical era, it again seemed like the time for baroque pop was over. After jumping three centuries from the 1650s to the ’60s, it seemed likely to be a novel, confusing blip in music history. But, the orchestral tsunami of baroque was again featured in another third wave: chamber pop (aka ork pop).
Chamber pop in the 1990s carried over the introspective thoughtfulness of its ancestors, with its origins credited to Belle and Sebastian and Elliot Smith. Although it maintained a soft voice, the introduction of horns alongside strings and piano and its off-centered rock influence separated it as a new subgenre. Slightly cinematic, Rufus Wainwright’s Want One begins each verse as a question, answered by a building chorus that flirts with denial and acceptance. Its composition is like a temporal ferris wheel, circling through with a controlled view of the past and future, suspended in the present. Another chamber pop staple, the eccentric group Grizzly Bear developed a sound that easily balanced multi-layered elements. Floating up to topless ceilings while keeping the grounding comfort of repeating chords, the weightless nature of ork pop started to bridge its way into 2000s indie.
In its most recent resurgence, baroque unsurprisingly went big, sneaking its way into multiple genres at once. Continuing the broad, whimsical style of chamber pop, indie folk adopted the baroque fashion. Sufjan Stevens’ cheery yet pensive tracks like “Chicago” and “Let’s hear that string part again...” are poetic earworms that build atmosphere through bright instrumentation. Adding onto the sugary, unafflicted sound with bells and high, hovering vocals, Father John Misty continued to pave a baroque path through the early 2010s. Bringing back the original intensity of its earliest form, indie rock’s dimensional multi-instrumental overlays and forward-facing energy gave way to another variation. Armed with picturesque, high-brow lyrics and chaotic, overlapping sounds that unexpectedly work, Vampire Weekend placed traditional piano right next to heavy percussion and modern lofi effects.
Baroque style developed into an inventive playground that hides elements in modern songs. Its roots extend across centuries and continue to grow upward, even now. From solemn men in powdered wigs to free spirits in tie dye to sentimental singers in suits and eclectically dressed indie rockers, an eccentric idea was adopted, expanded, and shared. Baroque pop and its successors are a blend of many things that produce one unique concept, an example of the diversity in what can be created. Because of its constant reinterpretation and encouraged individuality, it carves out its own, interesting space of music and continues to inspire.