Editing Classical period (music) (section)

== History ==
=== Baroque/Classical transition c. 1750–1760 ===
{{See also|History of sonata form}}
[[File:Joseph Siffred Duplessis - Christoph Willibald Gluck - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|[[Christoph Willibald Gluck|
Gluck]], detail of a portrait by [[Joseph Duplessis]], dated 1775 ([[Kunsthistorisches Museum]], Vienna)]]

In his book ''[[The Classical Style]]'', author and pianist [[Charles Rosen]] claims that from 1755 to 1775, composers groped for a new style that was more effectively dramatic. In the High Baroque period, dramatic expression was limited to the representation of individual ''affects'' (the "doctrine of affections", or what Rosen terms "dramatic sentiment"). For example, in Handel's oratorio ''[[Jephtha (Handel)|Jephtha]]'', the composer renders four emotions separately, one for each character, in the quartet "O, spare your daughter". Eventually this depiction of individual emotions came to be seen as simplistic and unrealistic; composers sought to portray multiple emotions, simultaneously or progressively, within a single character or movement ("dramatic action"). Thus in the finale of act 2 of Mozart's ''[[Die Entführung aus dem Serail]]'', the lovers move "from joy through suspicion and outrage to final reconciliation."<ref name=Rosen>[[Charles Rosen|Rosen, Charles]]. ''[[The Classical Style]],'' pp. 43–44. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998</ref>

Musically speaking, this "dramatic action" required more musical variety. Whereas Baroque music was characterized by seamless flow within individual movements and largely uniform textures, composers after the High Baroque sought to interrupt this flow with abrupt changes in texture, dynamic, harmony, or tempo. Among the stylistic developments which followed the High Baroque, the most dramatic came to be called ''[[Empfindsamer Stil|Empfindsamkeit]]'', (roughly "[[sensitive style]]"), and its best-known practitioner was [[Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach]]. Composers of this style employed the above-discussed interruptions in the most abrupt manner, and the music can sound illogical at times. The Italian composer [[Domenico Scarlatti]] took these developments further. His more than five hundred single-movement keyboard sonatas also contain abrupt changes of texture, but these changes are organized into periods, balanced phrases that became a hallmark of the classical style. However, Scarlatti's changes in texture still sound sudden and unprepared. The outstanding achievement of the great classical composers (Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) was their ability to make these dramatic surprises sound logically motivated, so that "the expressive and the elegant could join hands."<ref name=Rosen />

Between the death of J. S. Bach and the maturity of Haydn and Mozart (roughly 1750–1770), composers experimented with these new ideas, which can be seen in the music of Bach's sons. Johann Christian developed a style which we now call ''Roccoco'', comprising simpler textures and harmonies, and which was "charming, undramatic, and a little empty." As mentioned previously, Carl Philipp Emmanuel sought to increase drama, and his music was "violent, expressive, brilliant, continuously surprising, and often incoherent." And finally Wilhelm Friedemann, J.S. Bach's eldest son, extended Baroque traditions in an idiomatic, unconventional way.<ref name=Rosen/>

At first the new style took over Baroque forms—the ternary ''[[da capo aria]]'', the ''[[sinfonia]]'' and the ''[[concerto]]''—but composed with simpler parts, more notated ornamentation, rather than the improvised ornaments that were common in the Baroque era, and more emphatic division of pieces into sections. However, over time, the new aesthetic caused radical changes in how pieces were put together, and the basic formal layouts changed. Composers from this period sought dramatic effects, striking melodies, and clearer textures. One of the big textural changes was a shift away from the complex, dense [[polyphony|polyphonic]] style of the Baroque, in which multiple interweaving melodic lines were played simultaneously, and towards [[homophony]], a lighter texture which uses a clear single melody line accompanied by chords.

Baroque music generally uses many harmonic fantasies and polyphonic sections that focus less on the structure of the musical piece, and there was less emphasis on clear musical phrases. In the classical period, the harmonies became simpler. However, the structure of the piece, the phrases and small melodic or rhythmic motives, became much more important than in the Baroque period.
[[File:Muzio Clementi - sonata in g minor no.3, op 50, 'didone abbandonata' - ii. adagio dolente.ogg|thumb|left|200px|[[Muzio Clementi]]'s Sonata in G minor, No.&nbsp;3, Op.&nbsp;50, "Didone abbandonata", adagio movement]]
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 ornaments and focused on the points of [[Modulation (music)|modulation]] and transition. By making these moments where the harmony changes more of a focus, he enabled powerful dramatic shifts in the emotional color of the music. To highlight these transitions, he used changes in instrumentation ([[orchestration]]), melody, and [[Musical mode|mode]]. Among the most successful composers of his time, Gluck spawned many emulators, including [[Antonio Salieri]]. Their emphasis on accessibility brought huge successes in opera, and in other vocal music such as songs, oratorios, and choruses. These were considered the most important kinds of music for performance and hence enjoyed greatest public success.

The phase between the Baroque and the rise of the Classical (around 1730), was home to various competing musical styles. The diversity of artistic paths are represented in the sons of [[Johann Sebastian Bach]]: [[Wilhelm Friedemann Bach]], who continued the Baroque tradition in a personal way; [[Johann Christian Bach]], who simplified textures of the Baroque and most clearly influenced Mozart; and [[Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach]], who composed passionate and sometimes violently eccentric music of the ''Empfindsamkeit'' movement. 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.

=== 1750–1775 ===
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{{See also|Symphony}}
[[File:Haydn portrait by Thomas Hardy (small).jpg|thumb|left|Haydn portrait by [[Thomas Hardy (English painter)|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 musical theatres. Opera or other vocal music accompanied by orchestra 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.
[[File:Divertimento in E-flat major - KV 113 - 2nd movement.oga|thumb|right|200px|Mozart wrote a number of divertimentos, light instrumental pieces designed for entertainment. This is the 2nd movement of his Divertimento in E-flat major, K. 113.]]
The "normal" orchestra ensemble—a body of [[String section|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" (musical mood) 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.

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 (''[[Symphony No. 6 (Haydn)|Morning]]'', ''[[Symphony No. 7 (Haydn)|Noon]]'', and ''[[Symphony No. 8 (Haydn)|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 scholars suggest that Haydn was later 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 the Baroque era's [[George Frideric Handel]]. Haydn 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 and dramatic emotionalism was a stylistic preference. Haydn accordingly wanted more dramatic contrast and more emotionally appealing melodies, with sharpened character and individuality in his pieces. 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 ''[[Symphony No. 45 (Haydn)|Farewell Symphony]]'', No. 45 in F{{music|sharp}} minor, exemplifies Haydn's integration of the differing demands of the new style, with surprising sharp turns and a long slow adagio to end the work. In 1772, Haydn completed his [[String Quartets, Op. 20 (Haydn)|Opus 20 set]] of six string quartets, in which he deployed the polyphonic techniques he had gathered from the previous Baroque era to provide structural coherence capable of holding together his melodic ideas. For some, this marks the beginning of the "mature" Classical style, a transitional period in which reaction against late Baroque complexity yielded to integration of Baroque and Classical elements.

=== 1775–1790 ===
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{{See also|Musical development}}
[[File:Wolfgang-amadeus-mozart 1.jpg|upright|thumb|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 other composers. His position also gave him the ability to shape the forces that would play his music, as he could select skilled musicians. This opportunity was not wasted, as Haydn, beginning quite early on his career, sought to press forward the technique of building and developing ideas in his music. His next important breakthrough was in the [[String Quartets, Op. 33 (Haydn)|Opus 33 string quartets]] (1781), in which 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.
[[File:Don Giovanni Commendatore.png|thumb|left|400px|The opening bars of the Commendatore's aria in Mozart's opera ''[[Don Giovanni]]''. The orchestra starts with a [[Consonance and dissonance|dissonant]] [[diminished seventh]] chord (G# dim7 with a B in the bass) moving to a [[dominant seventh chord]] (A7 with a C# in the bass) before resolving to the [[tonic chord]] (D minor) at the singer's entrance.]]
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, playing for the general public. This meant he needed to write operas and write and perform virtuoso pieces. 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 to achieve 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 [[J.S. Bach]], the means to discipline and enrich his artistic gifts.
[[File:Mozart Family Croce.jpg|thumb|250px|left|[[Portrait of the Mozart Family]], dated 1780-81]]
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 both directions. Mozart also had a great respect for the older, more experienced composer, and sought to learn from him.

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 that had been brewing for the previous 20 years. His own taste for flashy 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 economic 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 challenges—for example, scattering the melody across woodwinds, or using a melody harmonized in thirds. This process placed a premium on small ensemble music, called chamber music. It also led to a trend 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 high 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 that helped to redefine the genre, and a string of piano concerti that 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 on the piano 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 up possibilities. The importance of London in the Classical period is often overlooked, but it served as the home to the [[Broadwood and Sons|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.

=== Around 1790–1820 ===
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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, and concert societies formed. Notation became 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]].<!-- Mozart's reputation or Haydn's?--> Composers in Paris, Rome, and all over Germany turned to Haydn and Mozart for their ideas on form.
[[File:Joseph Karl Stieler's Beethoven mit dem Manuskript der Missa solemnis.jpg|thumb|Portrait of [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]], 1820]]

In the 1790s, a new generation of composers, born around 1770, emerged. While they had grown up with the earlier styles, they heard in the recent works of Haydn and Mozart a vehicle for greater expression. In 1788 [[Luigi Cherubini]] settled in Paris and in 1791 composed ''[[Lodoïska (Cherubini)|Lodoiska]]'', an opera that raised 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. The final push towards change came from [[Gaspare Spontini]], who was deeply admired by future romantic composers such as Weber, Berlioz and Wagner. The innovative harmonic language of his operas, their refined instrumentation and their "enchained" closed numbers (a structural pattern which was later adopted by Weber in Euryanthe and from him handed down, through Marschner, to Wagner), formed the basis from which French and German romantic opera had its beginnings.
[[File:Johann-nepomuk-hummel.jpg|thumb|upright|left|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 [[Franz 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 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 exemplars. Hummel, Beethoven, and Clementi were all renowned for their improvising.

<!-- provide reference...One explanation for the shift in style has been advanced by [[Arnold Schoenberg|Schoenberg]] and others:{{Citation needed|date=May 2007}} the increasing centrality of the idea of [[theme and variations]] in compositional thinking. Schoenberg argues that the Classical style was one of "continuing variation", where development was, in effect, a theme and variations with greater continuity. In any event, theme and variations replaced the [[fugue]] as the standard vehicle for improvising and was often included, directly or indirectly, as a movement in longer instrumental works. -->
The 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 making it the first symphony of the [[Romantic period (music)|Romantic era]].