Increased (upper-class) market for both
“public” and “private” music; growth of an
“international” style
Shift to ideals of simple textures, “natural”
melodies, predictable forms
Amateur home performance rises in fashion
Teaching/composing opportunities for
instrumentalists
Key
genres
Sonata
(especially for keyboard, or
keyboard and violin/flute), associated
with cultivated women entertaining
guests in the home
String Quartet
(2 violins, viola, ’cello)
“a conversation between four
intelligent people”
Private Music in the Late 1700s
Sabatini (
18th century
) - The
Music
Lesson
•Operatic reforms •Comic opera •Ballad opera •Lyric drama Orpheus and Euridice (1762) Gluck (1714-1787) Nicolas Poussin, Paesaggio con Orfeo e Euridice, 1648 “Symplicity, truth, and naturalness are the great principles of beauty in all forms of art.”Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787)
Concert at Vauxhall pleasure gardens, where for a fee the public could enjoy music
and other entertainment outdoors
Vauxall
, watercolor by Thomas Rowlandson
According to leading critics of the time:
Timeline
1400
1600
1720
1800
1900
800
Middle Ages
Baroque
1720
1800
Classical
Renaissance
1740
Handel
Oratorios
1787
1792
1784
Mozart
Piano Concerto
In G major
1801
Beethoven
Piano Sonata
Moonlight
Haydn
Symphony 94
Mozart
Eine Kleine
Nachtmusik
Ancient Greece and Rome in the Classical Imagination
The Sounds of the Classical Era
Styles
BAROQUE
CLASSICAL
MELODY
Ornate, often asymmetrical;
Continuous; wide leaps;
chromatic tones for expressive
purposes
Simple melodies, often in 4
and 8 measure phrases;
Balanced cadences; tuneful;
diatonic, narrow leaps
RHYTHM
Varied, steady, energetic
pulse; varied tempos, freer in
vocal music
More consistent, regularly
recurring accents; less insistent
pulse,
