Rococo defines art and music of the 18th century. Artists were becoming increasingly asymmetrical with their craft in an attempt to create florid and ornate works of art and music. The word itself comes from a combination of the French "barocco," which refers to an imperfect shaped pearl, and the word "rocaille," which was a garden ornamentation that used pebbles. The combination of these words, some believe, is the basis for the word "baroque."
Ornamentation is the act of taking something simple and adding to it to make it more complex, for example, a Christmas tree with all of its decorations. In Baroque music, extra notes and swirling around the main melodic idea ornamented a basic melodic line. The melody served as the structure upon which the musician developed the music. In Baroque art, artists embellished a simple image with extraneous objects, scrolls and designs.
The Baroque period saw a rise in experimentation of new music. New methods of creating art such as the blending of multiple independent lines in music and the equivalent overlapping of objects in art, became prime elements. Rembrandt's "The Three Trees" is an example of trees that overlap as individual elements obscured by their relationship in distance to each other. The trees appear to be part of one large mass, but the tree trunks give away that they are three separate trees. The musical equivalent is counterpoint in which several independent melodies written simultaneously obscure the musical line.
Baroque art and music are both infused with emotionally charged works that invoked positive emotions and produce a sense of power and prestige. The Catholic Church and the aristocracy both encouraged the creation of Baroque art and music. They saw it as a way of impressing visitors and a way to return to spiritual practices within art and music. Art and music both shared a need for an emotional response to the music and art of the time.