The concerto arrived in the last two decades of the seventeenth century. It became one of the most important types of Baroque orchestral music after the 1700s. The concerto began as a composition in which a small group of musicians was set to play alongside a larger group. “The concerto permitted composers to combine in one work several recent developments: the concertato medium and its contrasts; the texture of a firm bass and a florid treble; musical organization based on the major-minor key system; and the building of a long work out of separate autonomous movements” 1 (Donald Jay Grout, A history of western music, page 472).
The two most important, in retrospect, types of concerto were the ‘concerto grosso’ and the ‘solo concerto’. Both…show more content… Each of the six concerti is distinct and can stand alone from one another as individual pieces, not to be seen as a set of works to some respect. Listening to the 5th concerto in comparison from the rest shows us clearly that Bach was a brilliant contrapuntist. Brandenburg concerto no.5 was written for solo violin, flute, harpsichord and strings. This concerto is the only one out of the six to include a solo part for the harpsichord. Listening to a harpsichord solo in modern times is strange, but realizing that this feeling is shared throughout the centuries as this had never been done before, makes this concerto much more interesting to listen to and can be appreciated more, this fact also makes this concerto the most historically important out of the six concertos. “No.5 represents an important departure. Usually the role of the keyboard in orchestral or chamber music was to play a filling-in continuo part, but here the harpsichord is one of the solo team. It even has a lengthy cadenza before the final tutti of the first movement. This work is one of the very earliest keyboard concertos” 4 (Stanley Sadie, The Cambridge music guide, page
