One way to trace the decline of the continuo and its figured chords is to examine the disappearance of the term obbligato, meaning a mandatory instrumental part in a work of chamber music. This led to changes in the way music was performed, the most crucial of which was the move to standard instrumental groups and the reduction in the importance of the continuo-the rhythmic and harmonic ground of a piece of music, typically played by a keyboard (harpsichord or organ) and potentially by several other instruments.

As the 18th century progressed, the nobility became the primary patrons of instrumental music, while public taste increasingly preferred comic opera. The new style was also encouraged by changes in the economic order and social structure. As a result, the tonal structure of a piece of music became more audible. This taste for structural clarity began to affect music, which moved away from the layered polyphony of the Baroque period 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 single part. In particular, Newton’s physics was taken as a paradigm: structures should be well-founded in axioms and be both well-articulated and orderly. The remarkable development of ideas in “natural philosophy” had already established itself in the public consciousness. In addition, the typical size of orchestras began to increase. It favored clearer divisions between parts, brighter contrasts and colors, and simplicity rather than complexity. This style sought to emulate the ideals of Classical antiquity, especially those of Classical Greece. While still tightly linked to Court culture and absolutism, with its formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, the new style was also cleaner, that is to say more orderly. In the middle of the 18th century, Europe began to move toward a new style in architecture, literature, and the arts, generally known as Classicism. ClassicismĬlassicist door in Olomouc, The Czech Republic. The period is sometimes referred to as the era of Viennese Classic 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. Ludwig van Beethoven is also regarded either as a Romantic composer or a composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic.įranz Schubert is also something of a transitional figure, as are Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Mauro Giuliani, Friedrich Kuhlau, Fernando Sor,Luigi Cherubini, Jan Ladislav Dussek, and Carl Maria von Weber. The best-known composers from this period 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.

The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods. This chapter is about the specific period from 1730 to 1820, from the transition from Baroque to the eclipse of the Classical period by the Romantic era. However, the term is used in a colloquial sense as a synonym for Western art music, which describes a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or seventeenth to the nineteenth. The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 17. This preference for simplicity and homophonic texture over the complex counterpoint of Bach and Handel paved the way for a new musical era that we label as classical. Two of Bach’s sons were very successful composers in this newer “Gallant” style that had taken hold in the final decades of what we still consider the Baroque.

Bach’s death in 1750, musical tastes were changing.

Classical compositions timeline