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One of the founders of opera; significant contribution to monody and the recitative style
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English playwright and poet
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Most important composer of the Early Baroque era
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First modern keyboard virtuoso and composer
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Most important German composer of Middle Baroque
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A drama that is sung throughout, accompanied by instruments and theoretically staged.
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First extant Opera by Jacopo Peri, with additional music by Giulio Caccini. It is the earliest surviving opera, Peri's earlier Dafne being lost
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One of the greatest Italian composers of the 17th century, chiefly notable for his oratorios and secular cantatas.
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Opera by Monterverdi. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world.
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A 17th-century religious conflict fought primarily in central Europe. It remains one of the longest and most brutal wars in human history, with more than 8 million casualties resulting from military battles as well as from the famine and disease caused by the conflict.
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Virtuoso singer and most prolific composer of cantatas in the 17th century
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Italian composer, one of the greatest of the Venetian Baroque. His trio sonatas are among the best chamber music of the period before Arcangelo Corelli.
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Italian-born French court and operatic composer who from 1662 completely controlled French court music and whose style of composition was imitated throughout Europe.
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Teatro di San Cassiano in Venice was the first public opera house
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An aria is a long song accompanying a solo voice. An aria is usually in an opera.
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Monteverdi's final opera
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Composer of French opera; pupil of Carissimi; equal to Lully and extremely prolific
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Organist and composer, remembered for his church music and for Venus and Adonis, which is regarded as the earliest surviving English opera.
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English composer of odes
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Forbidden by the Puritans
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European politics, philosophy, science and communications were radically reoriented during the course of the “long 18th century” as part of a movement referred to by its participants as the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment.
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German composer known for his works for organ and one of the great organ masters of the generation before Johann Sebastian Bach.
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Italian composer and violinist who exercised a wide influence on his contemporaries and on the succeeding generation of composers
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A painting in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Its complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted
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Contributed the most to the development of the concerto around 1700; wrote for trumpet and strings; virtuoso violinist
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English composer most remembered for his more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas
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Important Italian composer; teacher in Naples; his death ends Baroque opera; teacher of many galant composers to come
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Italian composer; he laid the foundations for late Baroque instrumental music; teacher; pioneer of orchestral music; but, virtually forgotten by his contemporaries at his death
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German composer who wrote both sacred and secular music but was most admired for his church compositions, which ranged from small cantatas to large-scale works for soloists, chorus, and orchestra.
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French composer and theorist; known first as a theorist
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Although he was admired by his contemporaries primarily as an outstanding harpsichordist, organist, and expert on organ building, Bach is now generally regarded the greatest composer of all time and is celebrated as the creator of the Brandenburg Concertos, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B Minor, and numerous other masterpieces of church and instrumental music.
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German musician; lived in England, inventor of the English oratorio; Beethoven respected him above all others
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Italian composer noted particularly for his 555 keyboard sonatas, which substantially expanded the technical and musical possibilities of the harpsichord.
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An opera in a prologue and three acts, written by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell with a libretto by Nahum Tate.
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German composer; flutist and flute teacher for Frederick the Great in Berlin
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Ballets began to lose their sung pieces and were confined mostly to instrumental pieces and dances
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A collection of orchestral movements, often published as three suites, composed by George Frideric Handel.
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A collection of 48 preludes and fugues by Johann Sebastian Bach, published in two books (1722 and 1742). It explores the intricacies of each of the 12 major and 12 minor keys and constitutes the largest-scale and most-influential undertaking for solo keyboard of the Baroque era.
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A group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives a musical expression to a season of the year.
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The first movement of this piece, the rondeau, is widely known and commonly used in weddings, and notably on the PBS program Masterpiece. Mouret composed this piece in 1729, while being the director for the Concert Spirituel, which was one of the first concert series known in existence.