Baroque music describes a style of European classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1750. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era. The word "baroque" came from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning "misshapen pearl", a strikingly[weasel words] fitting characterization of the architecture of this period; later, the name came to be applied also to its music. Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to. Composers of the baroque era include Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Arcangelo Corelli, Claudio Monteverdi, Jean-Philippe Rameau and Henry Purcell. The baroque period saw the development of functional tonality. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes in musical notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera as a musical genre. Many musical terms and concepts from this era are still in use today.

The term "Baroque" is used by music historians generally to describe a broad range of styles from a wide geographic region, mostly in Europe, composed during a period of approximately 150 years. Although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music, in an anonymous, satirical review of the premi√®re in October 1733 of RameauвАЩs Hippolyte et Aricie, printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734. The critic implied that the novelty in this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was filled with unremitting dissonances, constantly changed key and meter, and speedily ran through every compositional device.

The systematic application by historians of the term "baroque" to music of this period is a relatively recent development. It was in 1919 that Curt Sachs was the first to attempt to apply the five characteristics of Heinrich W√∂lfflinвАЩs theory of the Baroque systematically to music.[5] In English the term only acquired currency in the 1940s, in the writings of Lang and Bukofzer. Indeed, as late as 1960 there was still considerable dispute in academic circles, particularly in France and Britain, whether it was meaningful to lump together music as diverse as that of Jacopo Peri, Domenico Scarlatti and J.S. Bach with a single term; yet the term has become widely used and accepted for this broad range of music. It may be helpful to distinguish it from both the preceding (Renaissance) and following (Classical) periods of musical history...