Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - The Early Classic Period
  - Vocal Music
  - Instrumental Music
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century
The Early Classic Period
  1. Terminology for Musical Style in the 1730s and 1740s

    1. Classic
      1. The narrowest definition denotes the style associated with the mature styles of Haydn and Mozart.
      2. The term was applied to music as an analogy to Greek and Roman art.
      3. The "Classic Period" in music is approximately 1730 to 1815.

    2. Rococo is an architectural term for an ornamented French style incorporating delicate, curved embellishments.

    3. Galant was a term for everything modern and sophisticated.
      1. It was characterized by an emphasis on melodies built up from repeated small motives organized into short phrases.
      2. Harmony was simple, with frequent cadences.

    4. Empfindsamkeit translates as "sentimentality" or "sensibility"
      1. Restrained passion and melancholy
      2. Used especially in slow movements
      3. Characterized by surprising turns of harmony, chromaticism, and free rhythms.

  2. Enlightenment

    1. Humanitarian and cosmopolitan movement
      1. Social reform promoted by enlightened despots
      2. Freemasonry promoted humanitarian ideals
        1. Influenced kings and poets
        2. Influenced composers

    2. Love of learning
      1. Middle class interested in the arts, philosophy, and science
      2. Treatises written for ordinary citizens, not just specialists

    3. Public concerts
      1. In Paris the Concert spirituel series ran from 1725–1790.
      2. Other concert series soon began in other major European cities.
      3. Instrumental music for concerts became more popular than opera.

    4. Changes in musical ideals
      1. Music should have international (universal) appeal.
      2. Music should be noble as well as entertaining.
      3. Music should be natural and uncomplicated.

  3. General Characteristics of the New Style

    1. Phrasing
      1. Periodicity was breaking up melodic flow with a succession of short distinct phrases of two to four measures in length.
      2. Antecedent and consequent phrases were typical forms.
      3. Principles of rhetoric and grammar were applied to music (see Forkel vignette in CHWM).

    2. Harmony
      1. Slower harmonic motion than in the music of the late Baroque
      2. The Alberti bass set chords in repeating patterns to animate the simple harmonies without distracting from the melodies (CHWM, ex. 13.1).

    3. Music and rhetoric
      1. Contrasts gave the listener opposing affects or ideas.
      2. Musical form included intellectual or emotional dialogs, expanding the concept of rhetoric in music.
      3. Writers compared musical works to speeches (see vignette in CHWM).

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