Question

What did the word baroque originally mean? how do modern historians use the term baroque? how did the aristocracy live in the baroque? how did the general population live during the baroque? what is the "age of absolutism"? what did the duke of weimar do to bach? how did the church use music during the baroque? who were some of the great scientist of?

Answer 1

The word baroque originally meant something of an irregular shape. It worked well to describe music because the artistic tendency of the time was to create music that didn't have much cohesiveness and coherency with the common thing being changing key and meter all the time in order to convey an artistic expression.

Modern historians use it to describe an entire artistic period that was common in the 17th and the 18th century and is generally understood as something grand and flamboyant. It is also highly ornate and was about achieving a sense of awe, which was opposite to the simplicity of the previous era.

Aristocracy lived like they were gods. They would build huge ornate mansions with corridors covered in gold with loads of paintings with golden frames and would dress in wild colors with numerous layers of outfits. Everything needed to give of a sense of wealth and grandeur.

The ordinary population was heavily dissatisfied because of this. A great example of this was France where the kings did what they wanted in order to live the baroque lifestyle and took enormous taxes that the people couldn't afford. Eventually, this kind of lifestyle led to the French revolution where such behavior was banned.

The age of absolutism is the time period between the 16th and the 19th century in which the European monarchs reigned supreme and had huge empires where they had absolute power. They would take as many taxes as they wanted, would fight wars with anyone they wanted, and would punish anyone in the way they wanted.

The Duke made Bach the concert master of the country and when Bach declined an even better promotion, the duke was angry because he felt humiliated that his wish was denied to him so he put Bach in prison for a month. Because Bach was such a famous person, he had to let him go in the end.

Music had a religious role because the music was used to convey the meaning of religious themes. For example, if the piece was about the glory of god and heaven it would be extremely complex and would include happy tunes that would inspire awe. If they were about concepts like hell then they would be scary and the idea behind it was to associate the feeling you got from music to the religious thing in question.

There were numerous great scientists of the era who were often clashing with the church because they claimed other things from what was preached. Some of the most famous ones include Copernicus, Galileo, who had a lot of trouble with the church and was almost executed for it, and Isaac Newton, who is maybe one of the most famous scientists ever.