rococo (music)

rococo in music, 18th-century reaction against the baroque style. Less formal and grandiose in structure, it was a graceful rather than a profound style, more hedonistic than venturesome. Extreme manifestations were in French keyboard music, the finest composer in the style being François Couperin (1668-1733). Jean Philippe Rameau represented the less frivolous French musical thought of the period. In Germany the style was adopted to some extent by Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), and the sons of J. S. Bach, and it was an element in the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti . Traces of rococo are present in the early works of Haydn and Mozart.

ro·co·co / rəˈkōkō; ˌrōkəˈkō/ • adj. (of furniture or architecture) of or characterized by an elaborately ornamental late baroque style of decoration prevalent in 18th-century Continental Europe, with asymmetrical patterns involving motifs and scrollwork. ∎  extravagantly or excessively ornate, esp. (of music or literature) highly ornamented and florid. • n. the rococo style of art, decoration, or architecture.

rococo (from Fr. rocaille, fancy rock-work in architecture). In visual arts term is applied to the delicate, diverting style of Watteau and his contemporaries. Mus. application refers to the decorative style e.g. of F. Couperin, and of certain works by Rameau and J. C. Bach. Musically it is a vague term, almost synonymous with galant and the 18th cent. and referring to works which are no longer baroque and not yet classical.