Baroque Music

This week's free unit at CurrClick is an ebook called The Baroque Era: Art, Architecture and Music by Intellege Unit Studies. I downloaded it and I'm really impressed! We are on summer break, but I plan on seeing if Alexandra would like to do this study just for fun! (I also think their Great Lakes study looks WONDERFUL!)

As I've mentioned before, I'm taking piano lessons this year as an early advanced student playing classical music. I am currently learning my second Bach piece, Invention #14. This piece (and my other piece) includes a fugue. (And, it is amaing to me that Bach wrote these pieces for his children to SIGHT READ! They are HARD!!!)

Bach was famous for his fugues which are basically like rounds where different parts start a melody and then another part copies it. (Kind of like Row, Row, Row Your Boat) I'm doing 2 part fugues which are really pretty difficult but Bach also did 3 part and 4 part fugues. (Maybe even 5 part? I'll have to find out.)

I found this site by Capistrano School that explains fugues very well. They also cover the 3 composers covered in the free unit study: Vivaldi, Bach, and Handel. (The other piece I'm currently working on is by Handel! I love Baroque music and get to play on my piano teacher's keyboard using the harpsicord sound - it's amazing! Her other keyboard is a grand piano which I love as well.)

Besides the composers, the study also covers art and architecture. I would really love to dive into this study this summer as it doesn't fit very well with our "ancient" focus for next year!