It has been suggested that First Viennese School be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2011.

The dates of the Classical Period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 1750 and 1830. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or seventeenth to the nineteenth. This article is about the specific period from 1750 to 1830.^[1]

The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods. 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. Ludwig van Beethoven is also sometimes regarded either as a Romantic composer or a composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic.

Franz 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 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.

Classicism[link]

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

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, which sought to emulate the ideals of Classical antiquity and especially those of Classical Greece.^[2] While still tightly linked to the court culture and absolutism, with its formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, the new style was also a cleaner style—one that favored clearer divisions between parts, brighter contrasts and colors, and simplicity rather than complexity, and the typical orchestra size increased.^[3]

The remarkable development of ideas in "natural philosophy" had established itself in the public consciousness with Newton's physics taken as a paradigm: structures should be well-founded in axioms and be both well-articulated and orderly. This taste for structural clarity worked its way into the world of music, moving away from the layered polyphony of the Baroque period, towards a style where a melody over a subordinate harmony—a combination called homophony—was preferred.^[4] This meant that the playing of chords, even if they interrupted the melodic smoothness of a single part, became a much more prevalent feature of music. This, in turn, made the tonal structure of works more audible.

The new style was also pushed forward by changes in the economic order and in social structure. As the 18th century progressed, the nobility became the primary patrons of instrumental music, and there was a rise in the public taste for comic opera. 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 harmonic fill beneath the music, often played by several instruments. One way to trace this decline of the continuo and its figured chords is to examine the decline of the term obbligato, meaning a mandatory instrumental part in a work of chamber music. In the Baroque world, additional instruments could be optionally added to the continuo; in the Classical world, all parts were noted specifically, though not always notated, as a matter of course, so the word "obbligato" became redundant. By 1800, the term was practically extinct.

The changes in economic situation also had the effect of altering the balance 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 fixed in their level of ability. This was a spur to having primarily simple parts to play, and in the case of a resident virtuoso group, a spur to writing spectacular, idiomatic parts for certain instruments, as in the case of the Mannheim orchestra. In addition, the appetite for a continual supply of new music, carried over from the Baroque, meant that works had to be performable with, at best, one rehearsal. Indeed, even after 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 development section) but 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 characteristic rhythms, such as attention-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 heavily defined and given more specific rules, whereas the symphony was created in this period (this is popularly attributed to Joseph Haydn). The concerto grosso (a concerto for more than one musician) began to be replaced by the solo concerto (a concerto featuring only one soloist), and therefore began to place more importance on the particular soloist's ability to show off. There were, of course, some concerto grossos that remained, the most famous of which being Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola in E flat Major.

A string quartet

Main characteristics[link]

Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. It is mainly homophonic ^[5] — melody above chordal accompaniment (but counterpoint is by no means forgotten, especially later in the period).

Variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before. Variety of keys, melodies, rhythms and dynamics (using crescendo, diminuendo and sforzando), along with frequent changes of mood and timbre were more commonplace in the Classical period than they had been in the Baroque. Melodies tended to be shorter than those of Baroque music, with clear-cut phrases and clearly marked cadences. The Orchestra increased in size and range; the harpsichord continuo fell out of use, and the woodwind became a self-contained section. As a solo instrument, the harpsichord was replaced by the piano (or fortepiano). Early piano music was light in texture, often with Alberti bass accompaniment, but it later became richer, more sonorous and more powerful.

Importance was given to instrumental music—the main kinds were sonata, trio, string quartet, symphony, concerto, serenade and divertimento. Sonata form developed and became the most important form. It was used to build up the first movement of most large-scale works, but also other movements and single pieces (such as overtures).

History[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The Baroque/Classical transition c. 1730–1760[link]

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

At first the new style took over Baroque forms—the ternary da capo aria and the sinfonia and concerto—but composed with simpler parts, more notated ornamentation and more emphatic division into sections. However, over time, the new aesthetic caused radical changes in how pieces were put together, and the basic layouts changed. Composers from this period sought dramatic effects, striking melodies, and clearer textures. The Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti was an important figure in the transition from Baroque to Classical. His unique compositional style is strongly related to that of the early Classical period. He is best known for composing more than five hundred one-movement keyboard sonatas. In Spain, Antonio Soler also produced valuable keyboard sonatas, more varied in form than those of Scarlatti, with some pieces in three or four movements.

Another important break with the past was the radical overhaul of opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck, who cut 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 mode. Among the most 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 widely: songs, oratorios, and choruses. These were considered the most important kinds of music for performance and hence enjoyed greatest success in the public estimation.

The phase between the Baroque and the rise of the Classical, with its broad mixture of competing ideas and attempts to unify the different demands of taste, economics and "worldview", goes by many names. It is sometimes called Galant, Rococo, or pre-Classical, or at other times early Classical^{[citation needed]}. It is a period where some composers still working in the Baroque style flourish, though sometimes thought of as being more of the past than the present—Bach, Handel, and Telemann all composed well beyond the point at which the homophonic style is clearly in the ascendant. Musical culture was caught at a crossroads: the masters of the older style had the technique, but the public hungered for the new. This is one of the reasons C.P.E. 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 variety of form.

Circa 1750–1775[link]

Haydn portrait by Thomas Hardy, 1792

By the late 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 vocal 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 course of the Classical period, "symphonies" and concertos developed and were presented independently of vocal music.

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

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

The first great master of the style was the composer Joseph Haydn. In the late 1750s he began composing symphonies, and by 1761 he had composed a triptych (Morning, Noon, and Evening) solidly in the "contemporary" mode. As a vice-Kapellmeister and later Kapellmeister, his output expanded: he composed 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 suggest that he was overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven, it would be difficult to overstate Haydn's centrality to the new style, and therefore to the future of Western art music as 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 place in music that set 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 "father of the string quartet."

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

The Farewell 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 work. In 1772, Haydn completed his Opus 20 set 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 beginning of the "mature" Classical style, where the period of reaction against the complexity of the late Baroque began to be replaced with a period of integration of elements of both Baroque and Classical styles.

Circa 1775–1790[link]

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 resources and scope for composing than most and also the ability to shape the forces that would play his music. This opportunity was not wasted, as Haydn, beginning quite early on his career, sought to press forward the technique of building ideas in music. His next important breakthrough was in the Opus 33 string quartets (1781), where the melodic and the harmonic roles segue among the instruments: it is often momentarily unclear what is melody and what is harmony. This changes the way the ensemble works its way between dramatic moments of transition and climactic sections: the music flows smoothly and without obvious interruption. He then took this integrated style and began applying it to orchestral and vocal music.

Haydn's gift to music was a way of composing, a way of structuring works, which was at the same time in accord with the governing aesthetic of the new style. However, a younger contemporary, 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 not 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 large audience. Mozart wanted both. Moreover, Mozart also had a 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 as a whole. He found, in Haydn's music and later in his study of the polyphony of Bach, the means to discipline and enrich his gifts.

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

Mozart rapidly came to the attention of Haydn, who hailed the new composer, studied his works, and considered the younger man his only true peer in music. In Mozart, Haydn found a greater range of instrumentation, dramatic effect and melodic resource; the learning relationship moved in two directions.

Mozart's arrival in Vienna in 1780 brought an acceleration in the development of the Classical style. There Mozart absorbed the fusion of Italianate brilliance and Germanic cohesiveness which had been brewing for the previous 20 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. It is at this point that war and inflation halted a trend to larger orchestras and forced the disbanding or reduction of many theatre orchestras. This pressed the Classical style inwards: towards seeking greater ensemble and technical challenge—for example, scattering the melody across woodwinds, or using thirds to highlight the melody taken by them. This process placed a premium on chamber music for more public performance, giving a further 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 composition. By the time Mozart arrived at age 25, in 1781, the dominant styles of Vienna were recognizably connected to the emergence in the 1750s of the early Classical style. By the end of the 1780s, changes in performance practice, the relative standing of instrumental and vocal 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 most famous operas, his six late symphonies which helped to redefine the genre, and a string of piano concerti which still stand at the pinnacle of these forms.

One composer who was influential in spreading the more serious style that Mozart and Haydn had formed is Muzio Clementi, a gifted virtuoso pianist who tied with Mozart in a musical "duel" before 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 time was Jan Ladislav Dussek, who, like Clementi, encouraged piano makers to extend the range and other features of their instruments, and then fully exploited the newly opened possibilities. The importance of London in the Classical period is often overlooked, but it served as the home to the Broadwood's factory for piano manufacturing and as the base for composers who, while less notable than the "Vienna School", had a decisive influence on what came later. They were composers of many fine works, notable in their own right. London's taste for virtuosity may well have encouraged the complex passage work and extended statements on tonic and dominant.

Circa 1790–1820[link]

When Haydn and Mozart began composing, symphonies were played as single movements—before, between, or as interludes within other works—and many of them lasted only ten or twelve minutes; instrumental groups had varying standards of playing, and the continuo was a central part of music-making. In the intervening years, the social world of music had seen dramatic changes: international publication and touring had grown explosively, concert societies were beginning to be formed, notation had been made more specific, more descriptive, and schematics for works had been simplified (yet became more varied in their exact working out). In 1790, just before Mozart's death, with his reputation spreading rapidly, Haydn was poised for a series of successes, notably his late oratorios and "London" symphonies. Composers in Paris, Rome, and all over Germany turned to Haydn and Mozart for their ideas on form.

Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820

The moment was again ripe for a dramatic shift. During the 1790s, there emerged of a new generation of composers, born around 1770, who, while they had grown up with the earlier styles, found in the recent works of Haydn and Mozart a vehicle for greater expression. In 1788 Luigi Cherubini settled in Paris and in 1791 composed Lodoiska, an opera that rose him to fame. Its style is clearly reflective of the mature Haydn and Mozart, and its instrumentation gave it a weight that had not yet been felt in the grand opera. His contemporary Étienne Méhul extended instrumental effects with his 1790 opera Euphrosine et Coradin, from which followed a series of successes.

Hummel in 1814

The most 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, was Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Hummel studied under Haydn as well; he was a friend to Beethoven and Schubert. He concentrated more on the piano than any other instrument, and his time in London in 1791 and 1792 generated the composition and publication in 1793 of three piano sonatas, opus 2, which idiomatically used Mozart's techniques of avoiding the expected cadence, and Clementi's sometimes modally uncertain virtuoso figuration. Taken together, these composers can be seen as the vanguard of a broad change in style and the center of music. They studied one another's works, copied one another's gestures in music, and on occasion behaved like quarrelsome rivals.

The crucial differences with the previous wave can be seen in the downward shift in melodies, increasing durations of movements, the acceptance of Mozart and Haydn as paradigmatic, the greater use of keyboard resources, the shift from "vocal" writing to "pianistic" writing, the growing pull of the minor and of modal ambiguity, and the increasing importance of varying accompanying figures to bring "texture" forward as an element in music. In short, the late Classical was seeking a music that was internally more complex. The growth of concert societies and amateur orchestras, marking the importance of music as part of middle-class life, contributed to a booming market 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 as a means of holding performance together, the performance practices of the mid 18th century continued to die out. However, at the same time, complete editions of Baroque masters began to become available, and the influence of Baroque style continued to grow, particularly in the ever more expansive use of brass. Another feature of the period is the growing number of performances where the composer was not present. This led to increased detail and specificity in notation; for example, there were fewer "optional" parts that stood separately from the main score.

The force of these shifts became apparent with Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, given the name Eroica, which is Italian for "heroic", by the composer. As with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, it may not have been the first in all of its innovations, but its aggressive use of every part of the Classical style set it apart from its contemporary works: in length, ambition, and harmonic resources as well.

First Viennese School[link]

View of Vienna in 1758, by Bernardo Bellotto

The First Viennese School is a name mostly used to refer to three composers of the Classical period in late-18th-century Vienna: W. A. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Franz Schubert is occasionally added to the list.

In German speaking countries, the term Wiener Klassik (lit. Viennese classical era/art) is used. That term is often more broadly applied to the Classical era in music as a whole, as a means to distinguish it from other periods that are colloquially referred to as classical, 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 suit, and eventually Beethoven was added to the list.^[6] The designation "first" is added today to avoid confusion with the Second Viennese School.

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 effort in the sense that one would associate with 20th century schools such as the Second Viennese School, or Les Six. Nor is there any significant sense in which one composer was "schooled" by another (in the way that Berg and Webern were taught by Schoenberg), though it is true that Beethoven for a time received lessons from Haydn.

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

Classical influence on later composers[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

1875 oil painting of Franz Schubert by Wilhelm August Rieder, after his own 1825 watercolor portrait

Musical eras seldom disappear at once; instead, features are replaced over time, until the old is simply felt as "old-fashioned". The Classical style did not "die" so much as transform under the weight of changes.

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

One crucial change was the shift towards harmonies centering around "flatward" keys: shifts in the subdominant direction. In the Classical style, major key was far more common than minor, chromaticism being moderated through the use of "sharpward" modulation, and sections in the minor mode were often merely for contrast. Beginning with Mozart and Clementi, there began a creeping colonization of the subdominant region. With Schubert, subdominant moves flourished after being 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 structure harder to maintain. Beethoven contributed to this by his increasing use of the fourth as a consonance, and modal ambiguity—for example, the opening of the D Minor Symphony.

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

However, the forces destined to end the hold of the Classical style gathered strength in the works of each of the above composers. The most commonly cited one 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 pieces—where the shifting movement 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 variety 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 two styles is impossible: there are sections of Mozart's works which, taken alone, are indistinguishable in harmony and orchestration from music written 80 years later, and composers continue to write in normative Classical styles into the 20th century. Even before Beethoven's death, composers such as Louis Spohr were self-described Romantics, incorporating, for example, more extravagant chromaticism in their works. However, generally the fall of Vienna as the most important musical center for orchestral composition is felt to be the occasion of the Classical style's final eclipse, along with its continuous organic development of one composer learning in close proximity to others. Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin visited Vienna when young, but they then moved on to other vistas. Composers such as Carl Czerny, while deeply influenced by Beethoven, also searched for new ideas and new forms to contain 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 style, which numbered Stravinsky and Prokofiev among its proponents, at least at certain times in their careers.

Classical period instruments[link]

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

[edit] Strings

[edit] Woodwinds

• Basset clarinet
• Basset horn
• Clarinette d'amour
• Classical clarinet
• Chalumeau

[edit] Keyboards

• Clavichord
• Fortepiano
• Harpsichord

[edit] Brasses

• Buccin
• Ophicleide -- Serpent replacement, precursor of tuba

Timeline of Classical composers[link]

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 from:1730 till:1784 text:"Wilhelm Friedemann Bach"          #from 1710
 # from:1730 till:1788 text:"Giuseppe Bonno"                   #from 1711
 from:1730 till:1774 text:"Niccolò Jommelli"                 #from 1714
 from:1730 till:1787 text:"Christoph Willibald Gluck" $bold  #from 1714
 from:1730 till:1788 text:"Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach" $bold  #from 1714
 from:1730 till:1777 text:"Georg Christoph Wagenseil"        #from 1715
 from:1730 till:1757 text:"Johann Stamitz"                   #from 1717
 from:1730 till:1787 text:"Leopold Mozart"                   #from 1719
 from:1730 till:1788 text:"Carlo Antonio Campioni"           #from 1720
 from:1730 till:1799 text:"Pieter Hellendaal"                #from 1721
 from:1730 till:1787 text:"Carl Friedrich Abel"              #from 1725
 from:1730 till:1795 text:"François-André Danican Philidor"  #from 1726
 from:1730 till:1779 text:"Tommaso Traetta"                  #from 1727
 from:1730 till:1783 text:"Antonio Soler"                    #from 1729
 from:1732 till:1809 text:"Joseph Haydn" $bold
 from:1734 till:1825 text:"François-Joseph Gossec"           
 from:1735 till:1767 text:"Johann Schobert"
 from:1735 till:1782 text:"Johann Christian Bach"
 from:1737 till:1781 text:"Josef Mysliveček"
 from:1737 till:1806 text:"Michael Haydn"
 from:1739 till:1799 text:"Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf"
 from:1741 till:1801 text:"Andrea Luchesi"  
 from:1741 till:1813 text:"André Ernest Modeste Grétry"     
 from:1741 till:1816 text:"Giovanni Paisiello"       
 from:1743 till:1805 text:"Luigi Boccherini" $bold
 from:1745 till:1801 text:"Carl Stamitz"
 from:1746 till:1800 text:"William Billings"
 from:1749 till:1801 text:"Domenico Cimarosa"
 from:1750 till:1825 text:"Antonio Salieri"                  
 # from:1751 till:1820 text:"Bartolomeo Campagnoli"
 from:1752 till:1829 text:"Muzio Clementi"                   #till 1832
 from:1754 till:1806 text:"Vicente Martín y Soler"
 from:1755 till:1824 text:"Giovanni Battista Viotti"
 from:1756 till:1791 text:"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" $bold
 from:1756 till:1792 text:"Joseph Martin Kraus"
 from:1757 till:1830 text:"Ignaz Pleyel"                     #till 1857
 from:1760 till:1812 text:"Jan Ladislav Dussek"
 from:1760 till:1830 text:"Luigi Cherubini"                  #till 1842
 from:1763 till:1826 text:"Franz Danzi"                      
 from:1765 till:1807 text:"Anton Eberl"
 from:1766 till:1830 text:"Samuel Wesley"                    #till 1837
 from:1770 till:1827 text:"Ludwig van Beethoven" $bold       
 from:1770 till:1830 text:"Anton Reicha"                     #till 1836
 from:1778 till:1830 text:"Johann Nepomuk Hummel"            #till 1837
 from:1778 till:1830 text:"Fernando Sor"                     #till 1839
 from:1781 till:1830 text:"Mauro Giuliani"                   
 from:1782 till:1830 text:"John Field" #till 1837
 from:1784 till:1830 text:"Louis Spohr"                      #till 1859
 from:1797 till:1828 text:"Franz Schubert" $bold             

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See also[link]

• List of Classical era composers

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Kennedy, Michael (2006), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 985 pages, ISBN 0-19-861459-4

Further reading[link]

• Rosen, Charles (1972 expanded 1997) - The Classical Style. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-04020-3 (expanded edition with CD, 1997)
• Downs, Philip G. (1992) - Classical Music: The Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, 4th vol of Norton Introduction to Music History. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-95191-X (hardcover).
• Lihoreau, Tim; Fry, Stephen (2004) - Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music. Boxtree. ISBN 978-0-7522-2534-0
• Taruskin, Richard (2005, rev. Paperback version 2009) - Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press (USA). ISBN 978-0-19-516979-9 (Hardback), ISBN 978-0-19-538630-1 (Paperback)
• Hanning, Barbara Russano; Grout, Donald Jay (1998 rev. 2006)- Concise History of Western Music. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-92803-9 (hardcover).
• Grout, Donald Jay; Palisca, Claude V. (1996) - A History of Western Music, Fifth Edition. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-96904-5 (hardcover).

External links[link]

• Pandora Radio: Classical Period
• Classical Net – 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 Project

Montage of great classical music composers. From left to right:
Top row – Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven;
second row – Gioachino Rossini, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi;
third row – Johann Strauss II, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák;
bottom row – Edvard Grieg, Edward Elgar, Sergei Rachmaninoff, George Gershwin, Aram Khachaturian

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times.^[1] The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period. It should not be confused with the Classical Era.

European music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century.^[2] Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music. This leaves less room for practices such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music and popular music.^[3][4][5]

The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to "canonize" the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Beethoven as a golden age.^[6] The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836.^[1][7]

Characteristics[link]

Given the extremely broad variety of forms, styles, genres, and historical periods generally perceived as being described by the term "classical music," it is difficult to list characteristics that can be attributed to all works of that type. Vague descriptions are plentiful, such as describing classical music as anything that "lasts a long time," a statement made rather moot when one considers contemporary composers who are described as classical; or music that has certain instruments like violins, which are also found in other genres. However, there are characteristics that classical music contains that few or no other genres of music contain.^{[examples needed][8]}

Literature[link]

The most outstanding and particular characteristic of classical music is that the repertoire tends to be written down. Composers and performers alike are typically highly literate in understanding notation. The written quality of the music has, in addition to preserving the works, led to a high level of complexity within them.

Instrumentation[link]

The Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra performs Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

The instruments used in most classical music were largely invented before the mid-19th century (often much earlier), and codified in the 18th and 19th centuries. They consist of the instruments found in an orchestra, together with a few other solo instruments (such as the piano, harpsichord, and organ). The symphony orchestra is the most widely known medium for classical music.^[9] The orchestra includes members of the string, woodwind, brass, and percussion families.

Electric instruments such as the electric guitar appear occasionally in the classical music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Both classical and popular musicians have experimented in recent decades with electronic instruments such as the synthesizer, electric and digital techniques such as the use of sampled or computer-generated sounds, and the sounds of instruments from other cultures such as the gamelan.

None of the bass instruments existed until the Renaissance. In Medieval music, instruments are divided in two categories: loud instruments for use outdoors or in church, and quieter instruments for indoor use. The Baroque orchestra consisted of flutes, oboes, horns and violins, occasionally with trumpets and timpani.^[9] Many instruments which are associated today with popular music used to have important roles in early classical music, such as bagpipes, vihuelas, hurdy-gurdies and some woodwind instruments. On the other hand, instruments such as the acoustic guitar, which used to be associated mainly with popular music, have gained prominence in classical music through the 19th and 20th centuries.

While equal temperament became gradually accepted as the dominant musical temperament during the 18th century, different historical temperaments are often used for music from earlier periods. For instance, music of the English Renaissance is often performed in meantone temperament. Keyboards almost all share a common layout (often called the piano keyboard).

Form[link]

Whereas the majority of popular styles lend themselves to the song form, classical music can also take on the form of the concerto, symphony, sonata, opera, dance music, suite, étude, symphonic poem, and others.

Classical composers often aspire to imbue their music with a very complex relationship between its affective (emotional) content and the intellectual means by which it is achieved. Many of the most esteemed works of classical music make use of musical development, the process by which a musical idea or motif is repeated in different contexts or in altered form. The sonata form and fugue employ rigorous forms of musical development.

Technical execution[link]

Along with a desire for composers to attain high technical achievement in writing their music, performers of classical music are faced with similar goals of technical mastery, as demonstrated by the proportionately high amount of schooling and private study most successful classical musicians have had when compared to "popular" genre musicians, and the large number of secondary schools, including conservatories, dedicated to the study of classical music. The only other genre in the Western world with comparable secondary education opportunities is jazz.

Complexity[link]

Performance of classical music repertoire demands a significant level of technical mastery on the part of the musician; proficiency in sight-reading and ensemble playing, thorough understanding of tonal and harmonic principles, knowledge of performance practice, and a familiarity with the style/musical idiom inherent to a given period, composer or musical work are among the most essential of skills for the classically trained musician.

Works of classical repertoire often exhibit artistic complexity through the use of thematic development, phrasing, harmonization, modulation (change of key), texture, and, of course, musical form itself. Larger-scale compositional forms (such as that of the symphony, concerto, opera or oratorio, for example) usually represent a hierarchy of smaller units consisting of phrases, periods, sections, and movements. Musical analysis of a composition aims at achieving greater understanding of it, leading to more meaningful hearing and a greater appreciation of the composer's style.

Society[link]

Classical music regularly features as background music for movies, television programmes, advertisements and events. Nessun dorma from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot for example was the theme tune for the 1990 FIFA World Cup.

History[link]

The major time divisions of classical music are the early music period, which includes Medieval (500–1400) and Renaissance (1400–1600), the Common practice period, which includes the Baroque (1600–1750), Classical (1750–1830) and Romantic (1804–1949) periods, and the modern and contemporary period, which includes 20th century (1900–2000) and contemporary (1975–current).

The dates are generalizations, since the periods overlapped and the categories are somewhat arbitrary. For example, the use of counterpoint and fugue, which is considered characteristic of the Baroque era, was continued by Haydn, who is classified as typical of the Classical period. Beethoven, who is often described as a founder of the Romantic period, and Brahms, who is classified as Romantic, also used counterpoint and fugue, but other characteristics of their music define their period.

The prefix neo is used to describe a 20th century or contemporary composition written in the style of an earlier period, such as Classical or Romantic. Stravinsky's Pulcinella, for example, is a neoclassical composition because it is stylistically similar to works of the Classical period.

Roots[link]

The roots of Western classical music lie in early Christian liturgical music, and its influences date back to the Ancient Greeks. Development of individual tones and scales was done by ancient Greeks such as Aristoxenus and Pythagoras.^[10] Pythagoras created a tuning system and helped to codify musical notation. Ancient Greek instruments such as the aulos (a reed instrument) and the lyre (a stringed instrument similar to a small harp) eventually led to the modern-day instruments of a classical orchestra.^[11] The antecedent to the early period was the era of ancient music from before the fall of the Roman Empire (476 AD). Very little music survives from this time, most of it from Ancient Greece.

Early period[link]

A musician plays the vielle in a fourteenth-century Medieval manuscript.

The chanson Belle, bonne, sage by Baude Cordier, an ars subtilior piece included in the Chantilly Codex.

Johannes Ockeghem, Kyrie "Au travail suis," excerpt.

The Medieval period includes music from after the fall of Rome to about 1400. Monophonic chant, also called plainsong or Gregorian Chant, was the dominant form until about 1100.^[12] Polyphonic (multi-voiced) music developed from monophonic chant throughout the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, including the more complex voicings of motets. The Renaissance period was from 1400 to 1600. It was characterized by greater use of instrumentation, multiple interweaving melodic lines, and the use of the first bass instruments. Social dancing became more widespread, so musical forms appropriate to accompanying dance began to standardize.

It is in this time that the notation of music on a staff and other elements of musical notation began to take shape.^[13] This invention made possible the separation of the composition of a piece of music from its transmission; without written music, transmission was oral, and subject to change every time it was transmitted. With a musical score, a work of music could be performed without the composer's presence.^[12] The invention of the movable-type printing press in the 15th century had far-reaching consequences on the preservation and transmission of music.^[14]

Typical stringed instruments of the Early Period include the harp, lute, vielle, and psaltery, while wind instruments included the flute family (including recorder), shawm (an early member of the oboe family), trumpet, and the bagpipe. Simple pipe organs existed, but were largely confined to churches, although there were portable varieties.^[15] Later in the period, early versions of keyboard instruments like the clavichord and harpsichord began to appear. Stringed instruments such as the viol had emerged by the 16th century, as had a wider variety of brass and reed instruments. Printing enabled the standardization of descriptions and specifications of instruments, as well as instruction in their use.^[16]

Common practice period[link]

The common practice period is when many of the ideas that make up western classical music took shape, standardized, or were codified. It began with the Baroque era, running from roughly 1600 to the middle of the 18th century. The Classical era followed, ending roughly around 1820. The Romantic era ran through the 19th century, ending about 1910.

Baroque music[link]

Baroque instruments including hurdy gurdy, harpsichord, bass viol, lute, violin, and baroque guitar.

Baroque music is characterized by the use of complex tonal counterpoint and the use of a basso continuo, a continuous bass line. Music became more complex in comparison with the songs of earlier periods.^[9] The beginnings of the sonata form took shape in the canzona, as did a more formalized notion of theme and variations. The tonalities of major and minor as means for managing dissonance and chromaticism in music took full shape.^[17]

During the Baroque era, keyboard music played on the harpsichord and pipe organ became increasingly popular, and the violin family of stringed instruments took the form generally seen today. Opera as a staged musical drama began to differentiate itself from earlier musical and dramatic forms, and vocal forms like the cantata and oratorio became more common.^[18] Vocalists began adding embellishments to melodies.^[9] Instrumental ensembles began to distinguish and standardize by size, giving rise to the early orchestra for larger ensembles, with chamber music being written for smaller groups of instruments where parts are played by individual (instead of massed) instruments. The concerto as a vehicle for solo performance accompanied by an orchestra became widespread, although the relationship between soloist and orchestra was relatively simple. The theories surrounding equal temperament began to be put in wider practice, especially as it enabled a wider range of chromatic possibilities in hard-to-tune keyboard instruments. Although Bach did not use equal temperament, as a modern piano is generally tuned, changes in the temperaments from the meantone system, common at the time, to various temperaments that made modulation between all keys musically acceptable, made possible Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.^[19]

Classical period music[link]

Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) ca. 1770.

The Classical period, from about 1750 to 1820, established many of the norms of composition, presentation, and style, and was also when the piano became the predominant keyboard instrument. The basic forces required for an orchestra became somewhat standardized (although they would grow as the potential of a wider array of instruments was developed in the following centuries). Chamber music grew to include ensembles with as many as 8–10 performers for serenades. Opera continued to develop, with regional styles in Italy, France, and German-speaking lands. The opera buffa, a form of comic opera, rose in popularity. The symphony came into its own as a musical form, and the concerto was developed as a vehicle for displays of virtuoso playing skill. Orchestras no longer required a harpsichord (which had been part of the traditional continuo in the Baroque style), and were often led by the lead violinist (now called the concertmaster).^[20]

Wind instruments became more refined in the Classical period. While double reeded instruments like the oboe and bassoon became somewhat standardized in the Baroque, the clarinet family of single reeds was not widely used until Mozart expanded its role in orchestral, chamber, and concerto settings.

Romantic era music[link]

The music of the Romantic era, from roughly the first decade of the 19th century to the middle 20th century, was characterized by increased attention to an extended melodic line, as well as expressive and emotional elements, paralleling romanticism in other art forms. Musical forms began to break from the Classical era forms (even as those were being codified), with free-form pieces like nocturnes, fantasias, and preludes being written where accepted ideas about the exposition and development of themes were ignored or minimized.^[21] The music became more chromatic, dissonant, and tonally colorful, with tensions (with respect to accepted norms of the older forms) about key signatures increasing.^[22] The art song (or Lied) came to maturity in this era, as did the epic scales of grand opera, ultimately transcended by Richard Wagner's Ring cycle.^[23]

In the 19th century, musical institutions emerged from the control of wealthy patrons, as composers and musicians could construct lives independent of the nobility. Increasing interest in music by the growing middle classes throughout western Europe spurred the creation of organizations for the teaching, performance, and preservation of music. The piano, which achieved its modern construction in this era (in part due to industrial advances in metallurgy) became widely popular with the middle class, whose demands for the instrument spurred a large number of piano builders. Many symphony orchestras date their founding to this era.^[22] Some musicians and composers were the stars of the day; some, like Franz Liszt and Niccolò Paganini, fulfilled both roles.^[24]

The family of instruments used, especially in orchestras, grew. A wider array of percussion instruments began to appear. Brass instruments took on larger roles, as the introduction of rotary valves made it possible for them to play a wider range of notes. The size of the orchestra (typically around 40 in the Classical era) grew to be over 100.^[22] Gustav Mahler's 1906 Symphony No. 8, for example, has been performed with over 150 instrumentalists and choirs of over 400.

European cultural ideas and institutions began to follow colonial expansion into other parts of the world. There was also a rise, especially toward the end of the era, of nationalism in music (echoing, in some cases, political sentiments of the time), as composers such as Edvard Grieg, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Antonín Dvořák echoed traditional music of their homelands in their compositions.^[25]

20th-century, modern, and contemporary music[link]

Modernism (1905–1985) marked a period when many composers rejected certain values of the common practice period, such as traditional tonality, melody, instrumentation, and structure. Composers, academics, and musicians developed extensions of music theory and technique.^{[citation needed]} 20th century classical music, encompassing a wide variety of post-Romantic styles composed through the year 1999, includes late Romantic, Modern and Postmodern styles of composition. The term "contemporary music" is sometimes used to describe music composed in the late 20th century through to the present day.

Significance of written notation[link]

Modernist view of the significance of the score[link]

The modernist views hold that Classical music is considered primarily a written musical tradition, preserved in music notation, as opposed to being transmitted orally, by rote, or by recordings of particular performances. While there are differences between particular performances of a classical work, a piece of classical music is generally held to transcend any interpretation of it. The use of musical notation is an effective method for transmitting classical music, since the written music contains the technical instructions for performing the work. The written score, however, does not usually contain explicit instructions as to how to interpret the piece in terms of production or performance, apart from directions for dynamics, tempo and expression (to a certain extent). This is left to the discretion of the performers, who are guided by their personal experience and musical education, their knowledge of the work's idiom, their personal artistic tastes, and the accumulated body of historic performance practices.

Criticism of the modernist view[link]

Some critics express the opinion that it is only from the mid 19th century, and especially in the 20th century, that the score began to hold such a high significance. Previously, improvisation, rhythmic flexibility, improvisatory deviation from the score and oral tradition of playing was integral to style of music. Yet in the 20th century, this oral tradition and passing on of stylistic features within classical music disappeared. Instead, musicians use the score to play music, yet even given the score, there is considerable controversy about how to perform the works. Some of this controversy relates to the fact that this score-centric approach has led to performing styles that emphasize metrically strict block-rhythms (just as the music is notated in the score).

Some quotes that highlight this criticism of modernist overvaluing of the score:

• [...] one of the most stubborn modern misconceptions concerning baroque music is that a metronomic regularity was intended (Baroque Interpretation in Grove 5th edition by Robert Donington)
• [...] The history of this particular idea is littered with dead ends and failed projects. It is high time these misconceptions are addressed with academic rigour. History of Metaphysics by Andrew Pyle
• Too many teachers, conditioned to 20th Century ideas, teach Bach and other Baroque music exactly the wrong way. This leads to what musicologist Sol Babitz calls "sewing machine Bach."^[26]
• [...] tendency to look alike, sound alike and think alike. The conservatories are at fault and they have been at fault for many years now. Any sensitive musician going around the World has noted the same thing. The conservatories, from Moscow and Leningrad to Juilliard, Curtis and Indiana, are producing a standardized product.
  [...] clarity, undeviating rhythm, easy technique, "musicianship". I put the word musicianship in quotes, because as often as not, it is a false kind of musicianship – a musicianship that sees the tree and not the forest, that takes care of the detail but ignores the big picture; a musicianship that is tied to the printed note rather than to emotional meaning of a piece.
  The fact remains that there is a dreadful uniformity today and also an appalling lack of knowledge about the culture and performance traditions of the past. (Music Schools Turning out Robots?^[26] by Harold C. Schonberg)

Improvisation[link]

Improvisation once played an important role in classical music. A remnant of this improvisatory tradition in classical music can be heard in the cadenza, a passage found mostly in concertos and solo works, designed to allow skilled performers to exhibit their virtuoso skills on the instrument. Traditionally this was improvised by the performer; however, it is often written for (or occasionally by) the performer beforehand. Improvisation is also an important aspect in authentic performances of operas of Baroque era and of bel canto (especially operas of Vincenzo Bellini), and is best exemplified by the da capo aria, a form by which famous singers typically perform variations of the thematic matter of the aria in the recapitulation section ('B section' / the 'da capo' part). An example is Beverly Sills' complex, albeit pre-written, variation of Da tempeste il legno infranto from Händel's Giulio Cesare.

Its written transmission, along with the veneration bestowed on certain classical works, has led to the expectation that performers will play a work in a way that realizes in detail the original intentions of the composer. During the 19th century the details that composers put in their scores generally increased. Yet the opposite trend – admiration of performers for new "interpretations" of the composer's work – can be seen, and it is not unknown for a composer to praise a performer for achieving a better realization of the original intent than the composer was able to imagine. Thus, classical performers often achieve very high reputations for their musicianship, even if they do not compose themselves. Generally however, it is the composers who are remembered more than the performers.

The primacy of the composer's written score has also led, today, to a relatively minor role played by improvisation in classical music, in sharp contrast to the practice of musicians who lived during the baroque, classical and romantic era. Improvisation in classical music performance was common during both the Baroque era and in the nineteenth, yet lessened strongly during the 2nd half of the 19th and in the 20th centuries. Recently the performance of such music by modern classical musicians has been enriched by a revival of the old improvisational practices. During the classical period, Mozart and Beethoven often improvised the cadenzas to their piano concertos (and thereby encouraged others to do so), but they also provided written cadenzas for use by other soloists. In opera, the practice of singing strictly by the score i.e. come scritto, is famously propagated by Maria Callas, who called this practice 'straitjacketing' and implied that it allows the intention of the composer to be understood better, especially during studying the music for the first time.

Relationship to other music traditions[link]

Popular music[link]

Classical music has often incorporated elements or material from popular music of the composer's time. Examples include occasional music such as Brahms' use of student drinking songs in his Academic Festival Overture, genres exemplified by Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, and the influence of jazz on early- and mid-20th century composers including Maurice Ravel, exemplified by the movement entitled "Blues" in his sonata for violin and piano.^[27] Certain postmodern, minimalist and postminimalist classical composers acknowledge a debt to popular music.^[28]

There are numerous examples of influence in the opposite direction, including popular songs based on classical music, the use to which Pachelbel's Canon has been put since the 1970s, and the musical crossover phenomenon, where classical musicians have achieved success in the popular music arena.^[29]

Folk music[link]

Composers of classical music have often made use of folk music (music created by musicians who are commonly not classically trained, often from a purely oral tradition). Some composers, like Dvořák and Smetana,^[30] have used folk themes to impart a nationalist flavor to their work, while others (like Bartók) have used specific themes lifted whole from their folk-music origins.^[31]

Commercialism[link]

Certain staples of classical music are often used commercially (either in advertising or in movie soundtracks). In television commercials, several passages have become clichéd, particularly the opening of Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra (made famous in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the opening section "O Fortuna" of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana; other examples include the Dies Irae from the Verdi Requiem, Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt, the opening bars of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee", and excerpts of Aaron Copland's Rodeo. Shawn Vancour argues that the commercialization of classical music in the early 20th century served to harm the music industry through inadequate representation. ^[32]

Similarly, movies and television often revert to standard, clichéd snatches of classical music to convey refinement or opulence: some of the most-often heard pieces in this category include Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain (as orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov), and Rossini's William Tell Overture.

Education[link]

Throughout history, parents have often made sure that their children receive classical music training from a young age. Some parents pursue music lessons for their children for social reasons or in an effort to instill a sense of self-discipline.^{[citation needed]} Some believe that knowledge of important works of classical music is part of a good general education.

During the 1990s, several research papers and popular books wrote on what came to be called the "Mozart effect": an observed temporary, small elevation of scores on certain tests as a result of listening to Mozart's works. The approach has been popularized in a book by Don Campbell, and is based on an experiment published in Nature suggesting that listening to Mozart temporarily boosted students' IQ by 8 to 9 points.^[33] This popularized version of the theory was expressed succinctly by a New York Times music columnist: "researchers... have determined that listening to Mozart actually makes you smarter."^[34] Promoters marketed CDs claimed to induce the effect. Florida passed a law requiring toddlers in state-run schools to listen to classical music every day, and in 1998 the governor of Georgia budgeted $105,000 per year to provide every child born in Georgia with a tape or CD of classical music. One of the co-authors of the original studies of the Mozart effect commented "I don't think it can hurt. I'm all for exposing children to wonderful cultural experiences. But I do think the money could be better spent on music education programs."^[35]

In 1996–1997, a research study was conducted on a large population of middle age students in the Cherry Creek School District in Denver, Colorado, USA. The study showed that students who actively listen to classical music before studying had higher academic scores. The research further indicated that students who listened to the music prior to an examination also had positively elevated achievement scores. Students who listened to rock-and-roll or country had moderately lower scores. The study further indicated that students who used classical during the course of study had a significant leap in their academic performance; whereas, those who listened to other types of music had significantly lowered academic scores. The research was conducted over several schools within the Cherry Creek School District and was conducted through University of Colorado. This study is reflective of several recent studies (i.e. Mike Manthei and Steve N. Kelly of the University of Nebraska at Omaha; Donald A. Hodges and Debra S. O'Connell of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; etc.) and others who had significant results through the discourse of their work.^[36]

See also[link]

Classical music portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Classical music

• List of classical music composers
• List of classical and art music traditions

Nation specific:

• American classical music
• Australian classical music
• Canadian classical music
• French classical music
• Indian classical music
• Iranian classical music
• Italian classical music
• Ottoman classical music
• Russian classical music
• Classical music of the United Kingdom

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Lebrecht, Norman (1996). When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the Corporate Murder of Classical Music. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-01025-6. 
• Grout, Donald Jay (1973). A History of Western Music. Norton. ISBN 0-393-09416-2. 
• Grout, Donald J.; Palisca, Claude V. (1988). A History of Western Music. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-95627-6. 
• Kennedy, Michael (2006), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 985 pages, ISBN 0-19-861459-4
• Swafford, Jan (1992). The Vintage Guide to Classical Music. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72805-8. 

Further reading[link]

• Copland, Aaron (1957) What to Listen for in Music; rev. ed. McGraw-Hill. (paperback).
• --"-- (1988) --"--; with an introduction by William Schuman. McGraw-Hill ISBN 0-07-013091-4
• --"-- (2002) --"--; with a foreword and epilogue by Alan Rich; with an introduction by William Schuman. New American Library ISBN 0-451-52867-0 (reissued 2009 with new appreciation by Leonard Slatkin)
• Grout, Donald Jay; Palisca, Claude V. (1996) A History of Western Music, Fifth edition. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-96904-5 (hardcover).
• Hanning, Barbara Russano; Grout, Donald Jay (1998 rev. 2009) Concise History of Western Music. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-92803-9 (hardcover).
• Johnson, Julian (2002) Who Needs Classical Music?: cultural choice and musical value. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514681-6.
• Kamien, Roger (2008) Music: an appreciation; 6th brief ed. McGraw-Hill ISBN 978-0-07-340134-8
• Lihoreau, Tim; Fry, Stephen (2004) Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music. Boxtree. ISBN 978-0-7522-2534-0
• Scholes, Percy Alfred; Arnold, Denis (photographer) (1988) The New Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-311316-3 (paperback).
• Taruskin, Richard (2005, rev. Paperback version 2009) Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press (USA). ISBN 978-0-19-516979-9 (Hardback), ISBN 978-0-19-538630-1 (Paperback)
• Sorce Keller, Marcello (2011) What Makes Music European. Looking Beyond Sound. Latham, NJ: Scarecrow Press (USA).

External links[link]

• Historical classical recordings from the British Library Sound Archive (available only to users in the member countries of the European Union)
• Chronological list of recorded classical composers