Giovanni Gabrieli experimented with multiple choirs and was the first to orchestrate works by assigning specific parts to specific instruments -- a necessity in the emerging complexities of his music. In the early sixteenth century Claudio Monteverdi's combination of music and drama produced the opera form in which the range of human passion could be represented.
In the Northern parts of Europe, where Protestantism dominated, the arts of the Baroque era tended to turn inward -- the opposite of the spectacular art of the Counter-Reformation which was meant to overwhelm the viewer. Northern Baroque art was intended to be conducive to private religious devotionalism. Bible study, encouraged by the Pietist movement in the northern countries, provided one of the major impulses behind art and literature. The other principal force was the emerging prosperity of the merchant classes in these countries which resulted in art that gratified their "keen interests in secular life" (27).
In England the dramatic struggles between Protestant and Catholic forces
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