2. The collegium musicum was a collection of university students from the …show more content…
Ritornellos are defined as instrumental refrains, instrumental recurring passages; they serve the purpose of providing a sense of unity through the recurring passages they elicit. What makes them peculiar is every instance the ritornello is referenced, it is at a different key, which helps in adding another level of depth to the form of a piece. Ritornellos became very important for Baroque music mostly because two of the Baroque Era’s most important composers, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, were quite fond of it and included them in many of their pieces. Two very famous pieces from these composers that used these ritornellos were Bach’s Cantata No. 140 Wachet auf and Handel’s Messiah; in both instances, ritornellos were used as a means to augment the form of the pieces, mainly by separating each of the parts (e.g. A-A-B) that made up the form. For example in Bach’s Cantata, the piece opens with a ritornello, and then goes on to refer back to it at 1:32, of course at a different key, this happens again at 3:04 and 5:32 and every time at a different key. Similarly, in Handel’s Messiah there is also a ritornello in the opening and again is referenced at various points of the piece, but what makes this one interesting is that the voice and ritornello alternate very quickly form each other, clearly augmenting this sense of unity that ritornellos seem to