what is the importance of the tonal system that developed during the baroque era
Baroque music Concerning music theory, the more widespread use of figured bass (also known as thorough bass) represents the developing importance of harmony as the linear underpinnings of polyphony.[10] Harmony is the end result of counterpoint, and figured bass is a visual representation of those harmonies commonly employed in musical performance. With figured bass, numbers, accidentals or symbols were placed above the bassline that was read by keyboard instrument players such as harpsichord players or pipe organists (or lutenists). The numbers, accidentals or symbols indicated to the keyboard player what intervals she should play above each bass note. The keyboard player would improvise a chord voicing for each bass note.[11] Composers began concerning themselves with harmonic progressions,[12] and also employed the tritone, perceived as an unstable interval,[13] to create dissonance (it was used in the dominant seventh chord and the diminished chord. An interest in harmony had also existed among certain composers in the Renaissance, notably Carlo Gesualdo;[14] However, the use of harmony directed towards tonality (a focus on a musical key that becomes the "home note" of a piece), rather than modality, marks the shift from the Renaissance into the Baroque period.[15] This led to the idea that certain sequences of chords, rather than just notes, could provide a sense of closure at the end of a piece—one of the fundamental ideas that became known as tonality.[citation needed]