Classical Music

The classical music period extends from 1740 to 1810, which includes the music of Haydn, Mozart, and the first period of Beethoven. The classical period of music combined harmony, melody, rhythm, and orchestration more effectively than earlier periods of music. With the natural evolution of music slowly changing with the culture, the baroque era had ended. That era had left a structure, articulation and periodic phrasing of music which would shape classical music.

Among the many musical types of the period, the classical period is best known for the symphony, a form of a large orchestral ensemble. The symphonic pieces generally had three movements, the sonata, the minuet and the finale. Building of the achievements of earlier composers, Haydn, and Mozart brought the symphony to its peak in the last twenty years of the 18th century. Haydn excelled in rhythmic drive and development of theme-based music. Mozart also added to the symphony by contrasting memorable lyric themes in full sounding orchestral settings.

“The elements in the formation of the early classical style are in short, periodic, articulated phrase. Articulated, periodic phrasing brought about two fundamental alterations in the nature of the eighteenth-century music: one was a heightened, sensitivity to symmetry, and the second was a rhythmic texture of great variety, with the different rhythms not contrasted or super-imposed, but passing logically and easily into each other” (Rosen 58).

The classical characteristics didn’t appear one by one, but at different times during this important period in history. The classical era, with the progress of the classical music, at times was, irregular. The final result, however, was a logical order which made sense. Once the...

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...ury, where the music had become a series of clear events and not merely a cumulative flow, a powerful emotion or dramatic intensity could no longer rely on High Baroque (Rosen 154). Haydn learned from opera a style that could concentrate that force as he had never been able to do in the 1760’s.

Mozart brought up in the more comfortable style and already the composer of music whose prettiness along amounted to his genius, arrived at the same point form the opposite direction (Rosen 154). If the works of either Haydn or Mozart should be lost, we wouldn’t have the same structure achieved by Haydn or the soft, feminine, playful, and graceful music that has shaped the evolution of music in our history of music from Mozart. The style from either wouldn’t have been, and we would have lost two amazing composers with an impact on music in not only one way but a number.