Background

• The Classical period spans less than a century. Musicologist have referred to this period as the Classical period because the music has been perceived as reflecting the balance, symmetry and proportion of the Ancient Greece and Roman art. This time period should not be confused with the term “classical music” referring to “art music”.

• The notion of universal ideals of beauty and universality through the representation of ideal forms becomes crucial in that period.

• Towards the end of the 16th century, the norms of traditional politics, distribution of wealth, aristocracy and governance start to be questioned by philosophers and theorists across Europe.

• The 18th century is traditionally called the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment Period. The ideals of reason, objectivity, and scientific knowledge found in the writings of Diderot, Voltaire (French) and Lessing will have an impact on all aspects of European society and culture.

• The idea of improving humanity’s condition through the use of reason and common sense for more freedom and justice for all is becoming more important.

• The concepts of human progress and natural rights though (the rights of the individual as opposed to the rights of the state embodied in a monarch) will be developed.

• The aesthetics of classicism and the Enlightenment world view will shape the art of the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Until the mid-1700s, music (but art in general) was controlled by the monarchy or aristocracy (unquestionable privilege founded on divine hereditary rights).

• With the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, the power shifts towards the middle class which becomes a major market for art and music.

  • This shift will allow greater public support through concerts and the publication of music.

  • This period sees a shift from musicians working for a patron to freelancer musicians.

• The Classical period sees an expansion of the orchestra to 30 or 60 players.

  • The individual tone of every instrument is explored.

  • The string section is still the heart of the orchestra.

  • First violins are still assigned the melody while the accompaniment is assigned to the lower strings.

  • Woodwinds are often used to provide different tone colors and as solo melodic passages.

  • Horns and trumpets are used to create louder dynamics and to fill out harmonies.

  • Volume highlights and rhythmical pulse is assigned to the timpani.

• The first pianos were developed in the first half of the 18th century. However, it is only during the second half of the 18th century that pianos started to overtake other keyboard instruments.

• Compared to the harpsichord, the piano (first called fortepiano, then pianoforte and finally piano) could produce dynamics from soft to loud by adjusting the weight on the keys.

• The string quartet is the most popular chamber music ensemble of the Classical period.

• Chamber music was generally performed in a chamber room or smaller room.

• Composers of the early classical period discarded complex textures, left compositional techniques such as fugal imitation, and grandeur in favor of transparent textures, a single melody supported by a subordinate accompaniment, and somewhat superficial sentiments.

A New Sound

• While the emphasis earlier was on work ethic and public good, people from the privileged class now start to profess sensuality and hedonism.

• Music sees a huge reshaping after the death of Bach (1750) and Handel (1759). Two of Bach’s sons, Johann Christian in London, and Carl Philip Emmanuel in Berlin, were pioneer in that new sound.

  • Their goal was to strip the multiple layers, ornamentations and counterpoint textures of their elders and to change what they saw as a complicated and serious style with a clearer and more elegant sound.

  • Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach which Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven revered, called this new style Empfindsamer, or sensitive style or galante applying a sense of rhetoric and drama in the musical structure.

• While Bach was writing music with the idea of piety and to glorify God, his sons were looking to create a more superficial sound world.

• In the music composed between 1750 and 1800, dissonance becomes rare. Besides, Bach’s and Handel’s rich palette of chords was stripped to just a handful.

• The idea and sense of “home, journey and return home” can be expressed with the chord progression I-IV-V-I or tonicsubdominant- dominant - tonic. Three chords. This chord progression became very popular during the Classical period.

• Even though composers were using simpler chord progressions, their compositions were still very complex. Composers were interested in creating the perfect balance in the form of music and its structure.

• Instrumental music slowly lost its purpose of simply accompanying a dance.

The Symphony

• Instrumental pieces lacking the purpose of dance were formless without some kind of map. The building of these musical maps has its most sophisticated manifestation in growth with the popularity of the symphony (agreement or concord of sound).

• Symphony: it usually refers to an extended musical composition, consisting of 4 related sections of instrumental music at slightly different speeds. The 4 sections are usually:

1. an opening sonata or allegro

2. a slow movement such as adagio

3. a minuet or scherzo (slow dance) with trio

4. an allegro, rondo or sonata.

• The form that underpins every symphony between 1750 and 1900 is called the “Sonata Form” which usually consists of an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It’s often used as the first movement of a symphony and sometimes as the last movement.

Mozart

• Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria. His father, Leopold Mozart was the violinist of the Archbishop of the court of Salzburg.

• He began his musical career at a very young age taught by his father. Piano and violin virtuoso, he started composing from the age of 5 and started to perform for the court at 6.

• Hard working and ambitious musician, he composed more than 600 works.

• He wrote his first symphony (Symphony N.1 in Eb major) at the age of 8. It was written for two oboes, two horns and a string section.

• Mozart subtly exposes emotional torment in his work. Even though his music follows the balanced and perfect symmetric structure mastered during that time, he creates subtle contrasting and opposing forces within the structure, exposing a more individual expression and sometimes inner turmoil.

  • He lost his best friend Thomas Linley (violin virtuoso) in 1778 and the same year his mother. A few musicologists have made that link with the contrasting forces found in his music.

Beethoven

• Beethoven was a German composer and pianist born in Bonn (Germany).

• He is a crucial figure in the transition between the classical and romantic eras.

• He gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist and was hired by Prince Lichnowsky to write compositions. For him, he wrote his Opus 1, a set of three piano trios written for pianos, violin and cello (1795).

• He was influenced for his piano pieces by Jan Dussek (Czek composer). He also composed 32 piano sonatas. One of them, called “Sonata Pathetique,” was dedicated to his patron Prince Lichnowsky. The sonata is in three movements:

1. Grave (in sonata form)

2. Adagio Cantabile (slowly in a singing style)

3. Rondo: Allegro (quickly)

• In this earlier work, Beethoven is greatly inspired by his predecessors Mozart, Haydn and Jan Dussek.

• Seven years after “Sonata Pathetique,” Beethoven starts to created beyond anything ever imagined before, with his own defined compositional direction.

• The first work showing this transition, is “Eroica” or Symphony N.3 in Eb major, composed in 1804.

  • This work follows the traditional Classical symphony but it stretches the boundaries of form, harmony, length and cultural expression or content.

  • This work was a challenge for the Vienna audience. It was long, unpredictable, noisy, alarming, dissonant.

  • The second movement of the symphony is called “Marcia Funebre” or “Funeral March”.

    • For the first time after Bach’s death, music is finally more accurately portraying what people are actually experiencing in their lives.

    • It’s about delivering the composer’s honest image of the world. That concept lay at the heart of the Romantic revolution, of which Beethoven was one of the early adherents.

    • It follows an A-B-A form which is typical for 18th century funeral march.

    • The movement seems to be restless, to be looking for a resolution that it never finds.

• In 1808, Beethoven finishes his 6th symphony “Pastoral”.

  • This was one of the first of Beethoven’s work using the concept of a program to narrate the work.

  • For the next 100 years this symphony will be used as a template for the new romantic movement where nature is used as a metaphor for humans’ feelings.

Genres During this Period

• Piano sonata: multi-movement work for solo piano. All composers of the period contributed to this genre.

• String quartet: four-movement work for two violins, viola, and cello favored by Haydn, who established the grouping as the premiere chamber medium.

• Symphony: four-movement work for orchestra. Haydn composed 104 symphonies, Mozart 41, and Beethoven 9.

• Opera: as in the baroque period, a drama set to music and staged. Mozart was the most important opera composer of the period.

• Concerto: instrumental work pitting a soloist against the orchestra. Mozart wrote a number of piano concertos featuring himself as the soloist