The Significant Parallel Between Classical Era Music and Neoclassical Art Is

The Classical Catamenia

The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted every bit being between most 1750 and 1820. Even so, the term classical music is used in a vernacular sense equally a synonym for Western art music, which describes a diversity of Western musical styles from the 9th century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or seventeenth to the nineteenth. This article is almost the specific flow from 1730 to 1820.^[ane]

The Classical menstruation falls between the Bizarre and the Romantic periods. The best-known composers from this catamenia are Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert; other notable names include Luigi Boccherini, Muzio Clementi, Antonio Soler, Antonio Salieri, François Joseph Gossec,Johann Stamitz, Carl Friedrich Abel, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Christoph Willibald Gluck. Ludwig van Beethoven is also regarded either as a Romantic composer or a composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic.

Franz Schubert is as well something of a transitional effigy, as are Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Mauro Giuliani, Friedrich Kuhlau, Fernando Sor, Luigi Cherubini, Jan Ladislav Dussek, and Carl Maria von Weber. The period is sometimes referred to equally the era ofViennese Archetype or Classicism (German: Wiener Klassik ), since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Antonio Salieri, and Ludwig van Beethoven all worked at some time in Vienna, and Franz Schubert was born there.

Classicist door in Olomouc, The Czech Republic. An example of Classicist architecture.

Classicism

In the middle of the 18th century, Europe began to move toward a new style in compages, literature, and the arts, mostly known asClassicism. This way sought to emulate the ideals of Classical antiquity, especially those of Classical Greece. While still tightly linked to court culture and authoritarianism, with its formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, the new style was also "cleaner". It favored clearer divisions betwixt parts, brighter contrasts and colors, and simplicity rather than complexity. In addition, the typical size of orchestras began to increase.

The remarkable development of ideas in "natural philosophy" had already established itself in the public consciousness. In item,Newton's physics was taken as a paradigm: structures should be well-founded in axioms and be both well-articulated and orderly. This gustation for structural clarity began to affect music, which moved away from the layered polyphony of the Baroque flow toward a style known as homophony, in which the melody is played over a subordinate harmony. This move meant that chords became a much more prevalent feature of music, even if they interrupted the melodic smoothness of a unmarried part. As a result, the tonal structure of a piece of music became more aural.

The new style was besides encouraged by changes in the economic guild and social structure. Every bit the 18th century progressed, the nobility became the primary patrons of instrumental music, while public taste increasingly preferred comic opera. This led to changes in the way music was performed, the most crucial of which was the movement to standard instrumental groups and the reduction in the importance of thecontinuo—the rhythmic and harmonic ground of a piece of music, typically played by a keyboard (harpsichord or organ) and potentially past several other instruments. One way to trace the refuse of the continuo and its figured chords is to examine the disappearance of the termobbligato, meaning a mandatory instrumental part in a work of chamber music. In Baroque compositions, additional instruments could exist added to the continuo co-ordinate to preference; in Classical compositions, all parts were specifically noted, though non evernotated, so the term "obbligato" became redundant. By 1800, it was practically extinct.

Economic changes likewise had the effect of altering the rest of availability and quality of musicians. While in the late Baroque a major composer would have the entire musical resources of a town to draw on, the forces available at a hunting lodge were smaller and more stock-still in their level of ability. This was a spur to having primarily simple parts to play, and in the case of a resident virtuoso grouping, a spur to writing spectacular, idiomatic parts for certain instruments, every bit in the example of the Mannheim orchestra. In improver, the appetite for a continual supply of new music, carried over from the Baroque, meant that works had to exist performable with, at all-time, one rehearsal. Indeed, even later 1790 Mozart writes about "the rehearsal", with the implication that his concerts would have only one.

Since polyphonic texture was no longer the main focus of music (excluding the evolution section) just rather a single melodic line with accompaniment, there was greater emphasis on notating that line for dynamics and phrasing. The simplification of texture made such instrumental detail more important, and also made the use of feature rhythms, such as attending-getting opening fanfares, the funeral march rhythm, or the minuet genre, more important in establishing and unifying the tone of a single movement.

Forms such as the concerto and sonata were more than heavily defined and given more specific rules, whereas the symphony was created in this period (this is popularly attributed to Joseph Haydn). Theconcerto grosso (a concerto for more than i musician) began to exist replaced by thesolo concerto (a concerto featuring but one soloist), and therefore began to place more than importance on the item soloist'due south ability to show off. There were, of form, someconcerti grossi that remained, the most famous of which being Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola in E apartment Major.

A string quartet. From left to right: violin 1, violin 2, cello, viola

Main characteristics

Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. Information technology is mainly homophonic—melody above chordal accessory (but counterpoint is past no ways forgotten, peculiarly later in the menstruation). Information technology too make use of Style gallant in the classical catamenia which was drawn in opposition to the strictures of the Baroque manner, emphasizing lite elegance in place of the Baroque's dignified seriousness and impressive grandeur.

Variety and contrast inside a piece became more pronounced than before. Variety of keys, melodies, rhythms and dynamics (usingcrescendo, diminuendo andsforzando), forth with frequent changes of mood and timbre were more commonplace in the Classical menstruation than they had been in the Baroque. Melodies tended to be shorter than those of Baroque music, with lucent phrases and clearly marked cadences. The orchestra increased in size and range; the harpsichord continuo vicious out of apply, and the woodwind became a self-contained section. As a solo instrument, the harpsichord was replaced by the pianoforte (or fortepiano). Early pianoforte music was calorie-free in texture, often with Alberti bass accessory, merely it later became richer, more sonorous and more powerful.

Importance was given to instrumental music—the main kinds were sonata, trio, cord quartet, symphony, concerto, serenade and divertimento. Sonata form adult and became the well-nigh of import form. Information technology was used to build up the start movement of most big-scale works, but also other movements and unmarried pieces (such as overtures).

History

The Bizarre/Classical transition c. 1730–1760

Gluck, detail of a portrait by Joseph Duplessis, dated 1775 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

At first the new style took over Baroque forms—the ternaryda capo aria and thesinfonia andconcerto—but equanimous with simpler parts, more notated ornament and more emphatic division into sections. However, over fourth dimension, the new aesthetic caused radical changes in how pieces were put together, and the basic layouts changed. Composers from this menstruum sought dramatic effects, hit melodies, and clearer textures. The Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti was an of import effigy in the transition from Bizarre to Classical. His unique compositional style is strongly related to that of the early Classical menstruum. He is best known for composing more than five hundred ane-move keyboard sonatas. In Kingdom of spain, Antonio Soler also produced valuable keyboard sonatas, more varied in form than those of Scarlatti, with some pieces in three or four movements.

Baroque music generally uses many harmonic fantasies and does not concentrate that much on the construction of the musical piece, musical phrases and motives. In the classical period, the harmonic functions are simpler. However, the structure of the piece, the phrases and motives, are much more important in the tunes than in the Baroque catamenia.

Another important suspension with the by was the radical overhaul of opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck, who cutting away a great deal of the layering and improvisational ornament and focused on the points of modulation and transition. By making these moments where the harmony changes more focal, he enabled powerful dramatic shifts in the emotional color of the music. To highlight these episodes he used changes in instrumentation, melody, and manner. Among the virtually successful composers of his time, Gluck spawned many emulators, one of whom was Antonio Salieri. Their emphasis on accessibility brought huge successes in opera, and in vocal music more than widely: songs, oratorios, and choruses. These were considered the nearly of import kinds of music for performance and hence enjoyed greatest success in the public interpretation.

The phase between the Bizarre and the rise of the Classical, with its broad mixture of competing ideas and attempts to unify the dissimilar demands of taste, economics and "worldview", goes by many names. Information technology is sometimes calledGalant,Rococo, orpre-Classical, or at other timesearly on Classical ^{[citation needed]}. It is a flow where some composers still working in the Bizarre fashion flourish, though sometimes idea of as being more of the past than the present—Bach, Handel, and Telemann all equanimous well beyond the point at which the homophonic manner is clearly in the ascendant. Musical civilization was caught at a crossroads: the masters of the older mode had the technique, just the public hungered for the new. This is one of the reasons C. P. Due east. Bach was held in such high regard: he understood the older forms quite well and knew how to present them in new garb, with an enhanced multifariousness of grade.

Circa 1750–1775

Haydn portrait past Thomas Hardy, 1792

By the belatedly 1750s there were flourishing centers of the new style in Italy, Vienna, Mannheim, and Paris; dozens of symphonies were composed and there were bands of players associated with theatres. Opera or other song music was the feature of most musical events, with concertos and symphonies (arising from the overture) serving as instrumental interludes and introductions for operas and church services. Over the class of the Classical catamenia, symphonies and concertos adult and were presented independently of vocal music.

The "normal" ensemble—a body of strings supplemented past winds—and movements of particular rhythmic character were established by the late 1750s in Vienna. However, the length and weight of pieces was nonetheless set with some Baroque characteristics: individual movements even so focused on one "affect" or had simply one sharply contrasting middle department, and their length was non significantly greater than Baroque movements. At that place was not yet a clearly enunciated theory of how to compose in the new mode. It was a moment ripe for a breakthrough.

Many consider this quantum to have been made by C. P. E. Bach, Gluck, and several others. Indeed, C. P. E. Bach and Gluck are often considered founders of the Classical way.

The first great master of the mode was the composer Joseph Haydn. In the late 1750s he began composing symphonies, and by 1761 he had equanimous a triptych (Morning,Noon, andEvening) solidly in the contemporary way. As a vice-Kapellmeister and later Kapellmeister, his output expanded: he equanimous over forty symphonies in the 1760s alone. And while his fame grew, as his orchestra was expanded and his compositions were copied and disseminated, his voice was only one among many.

While some advise that he was overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven, it would be hard to overstate Haydn'due south axis to the new way, and therefore to the future of Western art music equally a whole. At the time, before the pre-eminence of Mozart or Beethoven, and with Johann Sebastian Bach known primarily to connoisseurs of keyboard music, Haydn reached a identify in music that ready him above all other composers except perhaps George Frideric Handel. He took existing ideas, and radically altered how they functioned—earning him the titles "father of the symphony" and "male parent of the string quartet".

One of the forces that worked as an impetus for his pressing forward was the kickoff stirring of what would later be called Romanticism—theSturm und Drang, or "storm and stress" phase in the arts, a short flow where obvious emotionalism was a stylistic preference. Haydn accordingly wanted more dramatic contrast and more emotionally appealing melodies, with sharpened grapheme and individuality. This flow faded abroad in music and literature: however, it influenced what came afterward and would eventually be a component of aesthetic sense of taste in later decades.

TheFarewell Symphony, No. 45 in F♯ Minor, exemplifies Haydn's integration of the differing demands of the new style, with surprising sharp turns and a long adagio to end the piece of work. In 1772, Haydn completed his Opus 20 prepare of six string quartets, in which he deployed the polyphonic techniques he had gathered from the previous era to provide structural coherence capable of holding together his melodic ideas. For some, this marks the outset of the "mature" Classical style, in which the period of reaction against late Bizarre complexity yielded to a flow of integration Baroque and Classical elements.

Circa 1775–1790

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, posthumous painting by Barbara Krafft in 1819

Haydn, having worked for over a decade as the music director for a prince, had far more resource and telescopic for composing than almost and also the power to shape the forces that would play his music. This opportunity was not wasted, equally Haydn, beginning quite early his career, sought to printing forrad the technique of edifice ideas in music. His adjacent important breakthrough was in the Opus 33 cord quartets (1781), in which the melodic and the harmonic roles segue amidst the instruments: it is frequently momentarily unclear what is tune and what is harmony. This changes the mode the ensemble works its way between dramatic moments of transition and climactic sections: the music flows smoothly and without obvious interruption. He and so took this integrated fashion and began applying it to orchestral and vocal music.

Haydn'due south souvenir to music was a way of composing, a manner of structuring works, which was at the aforementioned time in accordance with the governing aesthetic of the new style. Notwithstanding, a younger gimmicky, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, brought his genius to Haydn's ideas and applied them to two of the major genres of the day: opera, and the virtuoso concerto. Whereas Haydn spent much of his working life as a court composer, Mozart wanted public success in the concert life of cities. This meant opera, and it meant performing as a virtuoso. Haydn was non a virtuoso at the international touring level; nor was he seeking to create operatic works that could play for many nights in front of a big audience. Mozart wanted both. Moreover, Mozart likewise had a sense of taste for more chromatic chords (and greater contrasts in harmonic language generally), a greater love for creating a welter of melodies in a single work, and a more Italianate sensibility in music every bit a whole. He establish, in Haydn's music and after in his study of the polyphony of Bach, the means to field of study and enrich his gifts.

The Mozart family unit circa 1780. The portrait on the wall is of Mozart'southward mother.

Mozart quickly came to the attending of Haydn, who hailed the new composer, studied his works, and considered the younger man his but true peer in music. In Mozart, Haydn institute a greater range of instrumentation, dramatic effect and melodic resource; the learning relationship moved in ii directions.

Mozart's arrival in Vienna in 1780 brought an acceleration in the development of the Classical way. There Mozart absorbed the fusion of Italianate luminescence and Germanic cohesiveness that had been brewing for the previous twenty years. His own taste for brilliances, rhythmically complex melodies and figures, long cantilena melodies, and virtuoso flourishes was merged with an appreciation for formal coherence and internal connectedness. Information technology is at this point that war and inflation halted a trend to larger orchestras and forced the disbanding or reduction of many theater orchestras. This pressed the Classical style inwards: toward seeking greater ensemble and technical challenge—for example, handful the melody across woodwinds, or using thirds to highlight the melody taken past them. This process placed a premium on chamber music for more public operation, giving a farther boost to the string quartet and other small ensemble groupings.

It was during this decade that public taste began, increasingly, to recognize that Haydn and Mozart had reached a higher standard of limerick. By the fourth dimension Mozart arrived at age 25, in 1781, the dominant styles of Vienna were recognizably connected to the emergence in the 1750s of the early on Classical style. Past the end of the 1780s, changes in functioning practise, the relative standing of instrumental and song music, technical demands on musicians, and stylistic unity had become established in the composers who imitated Mozart and Haydn. During this decade Mozart composed his well-nigh famous operas, his six late symphonies that helped to redefine the genre, and a string of pianoforte concerti that nevertheless stand up at the height of these forms.

One composer who was influential in spreading the more than serious mode that Mozart and Haydn had formed is Muzio Clementi, a gifted virtuoso pianist who tied with Mozart in a musical "duel" earlier the emperor in which they each improvised and performed their compositions. Clementi's sonatas for the piano circulated widely, and he became the most successful composer in London during the 1780s. Also in London at this fourth dimension was Jan Ladislav Dussek, who, like Clementi, encouraged piano makers to extend the range and other features of their instruments, and and so fully exploited the newly opened possibilities. The importance of London in the Classical period is often overlooked, simply it served as the dwelling to the Broadwood's factory for piano manufacturing and as the base for composers who, while less notable than the "Vienna Schoolhouse", had a decisive influence on what came later on. They were composers of many fine works, notable in their own correct. London's taste for virtuosity may well accept encouraged the complex passage work and extended statements on tonic and ascendant.

Circa 1790–1820

When Haydn and Mozart began composing, symphonies were played as unmarried movements—earlier, betwixt, or as interludes within other works—and many of them lasted merely x or twelve minutes; instrumental groups had varying standards of playing, and the continuo was a central role of music-making.

In the intervening years, the social world of music had seen dramatic changes. International publication and touring had grown explosively, and concert societies formed. Notation became more than specific, more descriptive—and schematics for works had been simplified (notwithstanding became more varied in their exact working out). In 1790, but before Mozart'southward death, with his reputation spreading chop-chop, Haydn was poised for a series of successes, notably his tardily oratorios and "London" symphonies. Composers inParis, Rome, and all over Germany turned to Haydn and Mozart for their ideas on form.

Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820

The time was again ripe for a dramatic shift. In the 1790s, a new generation of composers, built-in around 1770, emerged. While they had grown up with the earlier styles, they heard in the contempo works of Haydn and Mozart a vehicle for greater expression. In 1788 Luigi Cherubini settled in Paris and in 1791 equanimousLodoiska, an opera that raised him to fame. Its mode is clearly reflective of the mature Haydn and Mozart, and its instrumentation gave it a weight that had non yet been felt in the grand opera. His contemporary Étienne Méhul extended instrumental effects with his 1790 operaEuphrosine et Coradin, from which followed a series of successes.

Hummel in 1814

The nigh fateful of the new generation was Ludwig van Beethoven, who launched his numbered works in 1794 with a set of three piano trios, which remain in the repertoire. Somewhat younger than the others, though equally accomplished because of his youthful study under Mozart and his native virtuosity, wasJohann Nepomuk Hummel. Hummel studied under Haydn likewise; he was a friend to Beethoven andFranz Schubert. He concentrated more on the piano than any other instrument, and his time in London in 1791 and 1792 generated the limerick and publication in 1793 of 3 piano sonatas, opus 2, which idiomatically used Mozart's techniques of avoiding the expected cadence, and Clementi'due south sometimes modally uncertain virtuoso figuration. Taken together, these composers tin be seen equally the vanguard of a wide alter in style and the center of music. They studied one another'southward works, copied ane another's gestures in music, and on occasion behaved like quarrelsome rivals.

The crucial differences with the previous moving ridge can be seen in the downwardly shift in melodies, increasing durations of movements, the acceptance of Mozart and Haydn as paradigmatic, the greater use of keyboard resources, the shift from "song" writing to "pianistic" writing, the growing pull of the minor and of modal ambivalence, and the increasing importance of varying accompanying figures to bring "texture" forward as an chemical element in music. In short, the late Classical was seeking a music that was internally more complex. The growth of concert societies and apprentice orchestras, marking the importance of music equally function of middle-class life, contributed to a booming marketplace for pianos, piano music, and virtuosi to serve as examplars. Hummel, Beethoven, and Clementi were all renowned for their improvising.

Direct influence of the Baroque continued to fade: the figured bass grew less prominent every bit a means of holding performance together, the performance practices of the mid-18th century continued to die out. However, at the same fourth dimension, complete editions of Baroque masters began to become available, and the influence of Bizarre style connected to abound, peculiarly in the ever more expansive use of brass. Another characteristic of the menstruum is the growing number of performances where the composer was not nowadays. This led to increased particular and specificity in notation; for example, at that place were fewer "optional" parts that stood separately from the principal score.

The force of these shifts became apparent with Beethoven's third Symphony, given the nameEroica, which is Italian for "heroic", by the composer. As with Stravinsky'due southThe Rite of Jump, information technology may non have been the beginning in all of its innovations, but its ambitious use of every office of the Classical style gear up it autonomously from its contemporary works: in length, ambition, and harmonic resource likewise.

Kickoff Viennese School

View of Vienna in 1758, by Bernardo Bellotto

The First Viennese Schoolhouse is a name mostly used to refer to three composers of the Classical menstruation in tardily-18th-centuryVienna: Due west. A. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Franz Schubert is occasionally added to the listing.

In German speaking countries, the termWiener Klassik (lit.Viennese classical era/art) is used. That term is oft more than broadly applied to the Classical era in music as a whole, as a means to distinguish information technology from other periods that are colloquially referred to asclassical, namely Baroque and Romantic music.

The term "Viennese School" was first used by Austrian musicologist Raphael Georg Kiesewetter in 1834, although he only counted Haydn and Mozart as members of the school. Other writers followed adjust, and eventually Beethoven was added to the list. The designation "first" is added today to avoid confusion with the 2d Viennese Schoolhouse.

Whilst, Schubert apart, these composers certainly knew each other (with Haydn and Mozart even being occasional chamber-music partners), there is no sense in which they were engaged in a collaborative endeavor in the sense that one would associate with 20th-century schools such as the 2nd Viennese School, or Les Six. Nor is at that place any meaning sense in which one composer was "schooled" past some other (in the mode that Berg and Webern were taught by Schoenberg), though information technology is true that Beethoven for a fourth dimension received lessons from Haydn.

Attempts to extend the First Viennese School to include such after figures as Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms, and Gustav Mahler are merely journalistic, and never encountered in bookish musicology.

Classical influence on later on composers

1875 oil painting of Franz Schubert past Wilhelm Baronial Rieder, afterward his ain 1825 watercolor portrait

Musical eras seldom disappear at in one case; instead, features are replaced over time, until the old is simply felt as "onetime-fashioned". The Classical manner did non "die" so much as transform under the weight of changes.

Felix Mendelssohn

Portrait of Mendelssohn past the English miniaturist James Warren Childe (1778–1862), 1839

One crucial change was the shift towards harmonies centering effectually "flatward" keys: shifts in thesubdominant direction. In the Classical way, major key was far more common than minor, chromaticism being chastened through the use of "sharpward" modulation, and sections in the minor manner were often merely for contrast. Beginning with Mozart and Clementi, there began a creeping colonization of the subdominant region. With Schubert, subdominant moves flourished afterward existence introduced in contexts in which earlier composers would have confined themselves to dominant shifts. This introduced darker colors to music, strengthened the minor mode, and made construction harder to maintain. Beethoven contributed to this past his increasing employ of the fourth every bit a consonance, and modal ambiguity—for example, the opening of the D Small-scale Symphony.

Franz Schubert, Carl Maria von Weber, and John Field are among the virtually prominent in this generation of "Classical Romantics", forth with the immature Felix Mendelssohn. Their sense of form was strongly influenced by the Classical style, and they were not still "learned" (imitating rules which were codified by others), but they straight responded to works by Beethoven, Mozart, Clementi, and others, as they encountered them. The instrumental forces at their disposal were too quite "Classical" in number and variety, permitting similarity with Classical works.

However, the forces destined to end the hold of the Classical fashion gathered strength in the works of each of the above composers. The well-nigh commonly cited i is harmonic innovation. Also important is the increasing focus on having a continuous and rhythmically uniform accompanying figuration:Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata was the model for hundreds of later on pieces—where the shifting move of a rhythmic figure provides much of the drama and interest of the work, while a melody drifts above it. Greater knowledge of works, greater instrumental expertise, increasing multifariousness of instruments, the growth of concert societies, and the unstoppable domination of the piano—which created a huge audience for sophisticated music—all contributed to the shift to the "Romantic" style.

Drawing the line between these 2 styles is impossible: some sections of Mozart'due south works, taken alone, are indistinguishable in harmony and orchestration from music written 80 years afterward—and composers continue to write in normative Classical styles into the 20th century. Even before Beethoven'south death, composers such as Louis Spohr were self-described Romantics, incorporating, for example, more extravagant chromaticism in their works.

Notwithstanding, Vienna'due south autumn as the most important musical centre for orchestral limerick is generally felt to mark the Classical manner's last eclipse—and the terminate of its continuous organic evolution of 1 composer learning in shut proximity to others. Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin visited Vienna when young, just they and then moved on to other vistas. Composers such every bit Carl Czerny, while securely influenced by Beethoven, also searched for new ideas and new forms to incorporate the larger world of musical expression and performance in which they lived.

Renewed interest in the formal balance and restraint of 18th century classical music led in the early 20th century to the development of so-called Neoclassical mode, which numbered Stravinsky and Prokofiev among its proponents, at least at certain times in their careers.

Classical period instruments

Fortepiano by Paul McNulty after Walter & Sohn, ca. 1805

Strings

Violin
Viola
Cello
Contrabass

Woodwinds

Basset clarinet
Basset horn
Clarinette d'amour
Classical clarinet
Chalumeau

Keyboards

Clavichord
Fortepiano
Harpsichord

Brasses

Buccin
Ophicleide – snake replacement, precursor of tuba
French horn

Timeline of Classical composers

External links

Pandora Radio: Classical Menstruum
Classical Cyberspace – Classical Music Reference Site
Directories of composers and performers of classical.music
NMA (Neue Mozart-Ausgabe) Online – Mozart's scores
Free scores by various classical composers at the International Music Score Library Projection

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicapp_historical/chapter/history-of-classical-music/