many terms now used to designate historical periods in music were first applied by art historians and subpsequently adopted by music historians. Among these are gothic, romanesque, renaissance, rococo,and impressionist.Baroque, however, is not one of these.It was applied to music as early ar to any of the other arts. At first it had a restrictive and derogatory connotation. But in the literature on music since the late nineteenth century it has denoted comprehensively the music of the period from approximately 1580 to 1750