Baroque era vs. Romantic era

A lot of the aspects of either of the pieces can be explained based on the time period in which the composers were alive and wrote the scores. Watts was alive from 1674-1748, during the Baroque era and wrote Joy to the World during the late Baroque era. Tchaikovsky was alive from 1840-1893, during the Romantic era and wrote Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy during the late Romantic era. One of the reasons that Tchaikovsky’s piece became so popular was due to the time in which he wrote it, this was when nationalist Russia was really becoming a force to be reckoned with musically and really began to grow and expand musically. During the late Baroque era, composers began their attempts to branch out musically and change the way that music was both written and performed, but a lot of composers were still sticking with the old basic styles and ways of writing music that had been done for centuries. The late Baroque era, when Watts wrote Joy to the World is when the real divide between homophonic and polyphonic pieces was beginning to be seen. Watts was decidedly on the homophonic side with the basics of that era that he demonstrates with his piece. Tchaikovsky contrasts the differences in the era’s by writing a piece that is clearly polyphonic and widely accepted by not just his own culture but my others all around the world, as Watts’ was when it was first written and continues to be so. In the Baroque era, the church was still a large part of the culture, especially the British culture, so a piece such as Watts’ about a religious holiday that could be easily performed by many during a service and on the holiday was of course very popular and also explains why Watts would have written the piece that way. However, in the Romantic era, the Russian nation was calling for their own identity and hoping for something that could make them noticed as a nation in the form of art, amongst other things. The Romantic era, as mentioned before, called for music that was much more polyphonic in texture, whereas previous era’s had been more about pieces with the monophonic and homophonic textures. Thus, explaining why Tchaikovsky would have written a more intricate piece than Watts.