What are the main differences between Baroque and Neoclassical music?
Although no periods really, truly just start and stop but instead overlap, the period “immediately following” the Baroque (c.1600-1750) period was the Classical (1750-c.1850) period (the NeoClassical period actually occurred later on in history as a throwback to the style of the original Classical period). The music of the Baroque era was typically highly ornamented and contrapuntal in which 2+ lines of equal importance existed simultaneously. These lines often contained sequences, inversions, and augmentation/diminution of the original material all while cycling through multiple key centers or tonal areas. Popular contrapuntal forms included the invention and the fugue. Music of this period was usually played on keyboard instruments like the organ or harpsichord or small chamber ensembles. The music of the Classical era was homophonic in texture meaning that there is only one melodic line that is more important than the other voices which simply support that one melodic line and often
