{
  "slug": "baroque",
  "name": "Baroque",
  "aliases": [
    "baroque music",
    "basso continuo",
    "figured bass"
  ],
  "description": "A bass line with numbers under it, a soloist above, and the invention of the idea that a piece should be driven by harmony moving somewhere. Also the invention of opera, the concerto and the fugue, which is a fair century and a half of work.",
  "origin": {
    "place": "Italy, Germany and England",
    "year": 1600
  },
  "lineage": [
    {
      "genre": "renaissance",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/renaissance/",
      "inherited": "The counterpoint, kept, with the ground shifted underneath it. Baroque writing is Renaissance voice-leading over a continuo bass that now determines the harmony, which turns a web of equal lines into a hierarchy."
    }
  ],
  "bpm": null,
  "updated": "2026-08-30",
  "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/baroque/",
  "trackCount": 10,
  "curatedBy": [],
  "playlists": {},
  "tracks": [
    {
      "rank": 1,
      "trackKey": "johann-sebastian-bach--goldberg-variations",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/johann-sebastian-bach--goldberg-variations/",
      "title": "Goldberg Variations",
      "artist": "Johann Sebastian Bach",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/johann-sebastian-bach/",
      "year": 1741,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Thirty variations over a bass line, returning at the end to the aria unchanged. Glenn Gould recorded it twice, at opposite tempos, twenty-six years apart, and both are right.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Johann%20Sebastian%20Bach%20Goldberg%20Variations",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah392lnFHxM",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 2,
      "trackKey": "johann-sebastian-bach--mass-in-b-minor",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/johann-sebastian-bach--mass-in-b-minor/",
      "title": "Mass in B minor",
      "artist": "Johann Sebastian Bach",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/johann-sebastian-bach/",
      "year": 1749,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Assembled at the end of his life from music written across four decades, for a liturgy his own church did not use. The largest single achievement in Western music, put together from parts.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Johann%20Sebastian%20Bach%20Mass%20in%20B%20minor",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3FLbiDrn8IE",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 3,
      "trackKey": "henry-purcell--dido-and-aeneas",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/henry-purcell--dido-and-aeneas/",
      "title": "Dido and Aeneas",
      "artist": "Henry Purcell",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/henry-purcell/",
      "year": 1689,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Dido's Lament is five descending chromatic notes repeated eleven times while a woman decides to die. The most economical devastation anyone has written.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Henry%20Purcell%20Dido%20and%20Aeneas",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=uGQq3HcOB0Y",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 4,
      "trackKey": "antonio-vivaldi--the-four-seasons",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/antonio-vivaldi--the-four-seasons/",
      "title": "The Four Seasons",
      "artist": "Antonio Vivaldi",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/antonio-vivaldi/",
      "year": 1725,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Worn smooth by four hundred years of use, and still startling if you read the sonnets printed alongside it — barking dogs, drunk peasants, ice underfoot. Programme music before the term existed.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Antonio%20Vivaldi%20The%20Four%20Seasons",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=AIMFORGkRuA",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 5,
      "trackKey": "george-frideric-handel--messiah",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/george-frideric-handel--messiah/",
      "title": "Messiah",
      "artist": "George Frideric Handel",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/george-frideric-handel/",
      "year": 1741,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Written in twenty-four days, to a libretto assembled entirely from scripture, for a Dublin charity. Handel wrote for the theatre and it shows in the best possible way.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/George%20Frideric%20Handel%20Messiah",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=usfiAsWR4qU",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 6,
      "trackKey": "claudio-monteverdi--lorfeo",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/claudio-monteverdi--lorfeo/",
      "title": "L'Orfeo",
      "artist": "Claudio Monteverdi",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/claudio-monteverdi/",
      "year": 1607,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Not the first opera and the first good one. Monteverdi works out in a single evening that an orchestra can characterise, and the form never looks back.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Claudio%20Monteverdi%20L'Orfeo",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=jUep3sqe35o",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 7,
      "trackKey": "gregorio-allegri--miserere-mei-deus",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/gregorio-allegri--miserere-mei-deus/",
      "title": "Miserere mei, Deus",
      "artist": "Gregorio Allegri",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/gregorio-allegri/",
      "year": 1638,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "The Sistine Chapel forbade copies for over a century, until the fourteen- year-old Mozart heard it twice and wrote it out from memory. The high C is probably a transcription error, and nobody wants it corrected.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Gregorio%20Allegri%20Miserere%20mei%2C%20Deus",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=rs5bc_P1kKo",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 8,
      "trackKey": "johann-sebastian-bach--brandenburg-concerto-no-3",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/johann-sebastian-bach--brandenburg-concerto-no-3/",
      "title": "Brandenburg Concerto No. 3",
      "artist": "Johann Sebastian Bach",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/johann-sebastian-bach/",
      "year": 1721,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Nine string players, no soloist, and every one of them busy. Bach sent the set to a margrave who appears never to have had them played, which is the most Bach fact available.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Johann%20Sebastian%20Bach%20Brandenburg%20Concerto%20No.%203",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=pdsyNwUoON0",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 9,
      "trackKey": "heinrich-ignaz-franz-biber--rosary-sonatas",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/heinrich-ignaz-franz-biber--rosary-sonatas/",
      "title": "Rosary Sonatas",
      "artist": "Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/heinrich-ignaz-franz-biber/",
      "year": 1676,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Each sonata retunes the violin differently, so the player's fingers produce intervals they are not expecting. Devotional music that is also a physical ordeal, and it sounds like it.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Heinrich%20Ignaz%20Franz%20Biber%20Rosary%20Sonatas",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=WcRxH6LfMuE",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 10,
      "trackKey": "johann-pachelbel--canon-in-d",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/johann-pachelbel--canon-in-d/",
      "title": "Canon in D",
      "artist": "Johann Pachelbel",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/johann-pachelbel/",
      "year": 1680,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Two bars of bass, twenty-eight repetitions, three violins in strict canon above. Ubiquitous to the point of parody, and structurally the ancestor of every loop-based record on this site.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Johann%20Pachelbel%20Canon%20in%20D",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=lgh68Swuak0",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}