1630-1680

The middle Baroque is separated from the early Baroque, because of the systematic thinking to the new style and a gradual institutionalization of the forms and norms, especially in Opera. This period in the Baroque is defined by the emergence in the cantata oratorio, and opera during the 1630s. The ways of the new concept of Baroque came from the melody and harmony that elevated the status of the music to one of equality with the words.

The florid, coloratura monody of the early Baroque gave way to simpler, more polished melodic style that was usually in a ternary rhythm. Those melodies were built from short, cadentially delimited ideas that were often based on stylized dance patterns drawn from the sarabande or the courante. The harmonies in those times were also simpler than in the Early Baroque Period. These harmonic simplifications also led to a new formal device of the differentiation of recitative and aria. The theory that was supported in the time was identified by the increasingly harmonic focus of musical practice and the creation of formal system of teaching.

Music was an art and it converted into one that needed to be taught in an orderly manner. This however had no bearing at all on the theoretical work of Johann Fux. He systematized the strict counterpoint characteristics of earlier ages in his Gradus ad Paranassum.