ABSTRACT
Period terms such as 'Renaissance' and 'Baroque' are part of 'a construction that is surely an artefact of writing music history, not a given about the historical world.' 'Baroque' had, however, been used in music criticism from as early as 1734: an anonymous writer described Rameau's opera Hippolyte et Aride as 'du barocque' and incoherent. The term 'Baroque' probably stems from the French baroque which in turn derived from the Portuguese barroco, a word that refers to pearls that are irregular in shape and inferior in quality. In traditional music historiography, the other important signifier of the beginnings of the 'Baroque' is the invention of opera. Only time will tell whether the terms 'Renaissance' and 'Baroque' continue to be applied in the history of music in the traditional pre- and post-1600 polarization. The word 'Baroque' is rarely used in relation to early-seventeenth-century English music and only begins to appear, in studies of music of the Restoration period.
