The Classical period was a time in music history from about 1750 to 1820. It came after the Baroque period and before the Romantic period. During this time, most music used a clear melody with chords in the background, but music with multiple melodies (called counterpoint) was still used, especially in religious vocal music and later in secular instrumental music. A style called galant became popular, which focused on lightness and elegance instead of the serious and grand style of the Baroque period. Music became more varied and contrasted more within a single piece, and orchestras grew larger, louder, and more powerful.

The harpsichord, a keyboard instrument that plucked strings with quills, became less important and was replaced by the piano (also called the fortepiano). Unlike the harpsichord, the piano uses hammers covered in leather to strike strings when keys are pressed. This allows musicians to play softly or loudly, giving more expression to their music. The force used to press the harpsichord’s keys did not change the sound. Composers of the Classical period valued instrumental music, including sonatas, trios, string quartets, quintets, symphonies (played by orchestras), and solo concertos, where a skilled performer played a solo piece for an instrument like the violin or piano, accompanied by an orchestra. Vocal music, such as songs for a singer and piano, choral works, and opera (a dramatic performance with singers and an orchestra), was also important during this time.

This period is sometimes called the era of Viennese Classicism because many composers, including Christoph Willibald Gluck, Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Georg Matthias Monn, Joseph Haydn, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Johann Baptist Wanhal, Antonio Salieri, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert, worked in Vienna.

Classicism

In the middle of the 18th century, Europe started to adopt a new style in architecture, literature, and the arts, called Neoclassicism. This style tried to copy the ideals of Classical antiquity, especially those from Classical Greece. Classical music focused on order, hierarchy, and a "clearer" and "cleaner" style. It used clear, single melodies with chords, brighter contrasts, and changes in sound quality (called "timbre") achieved through dynamic shifts and key changes. Compared to the complex, layered music of the Baroque era, Classical music became simpler. Also, orchestras grew larger, creating a stronger sound.

The development of ideas in "natural philosophy" was already well known to the public. Newton's physics, in particular, became a model: structures should be based on clear rules and be orderly. This preference for clarity influenced music, which moved away from the complex, layered melodies of the Baroque period toward a style called homophony. In homophony, one main melody is played with a simpler harmony underneath. This change made chords more common in music, even though they sometimes interrupted the smoothness of a single melody. As a result, the structure of a musical piece became easier to hear.

Economic and social changes also influenced music. As the 18th century progressed, nobility became the main supporters of instrumental music, while the public preferred lighter, humorous operas. This led to changes in how music was performed, such as using standard groups of instruments and reducing the role of the continuo. The continuo was the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of a piece, usually played by a keyboard (like a harpsichord or organ) and bass instruments. The term "obbligato," which meant a required part in chamber music, became unnecessary in Classical music because all parts were clearly written, unlike in Baroque music where parts were sometimes added on the spot. By 1800, the continuo was nearly gone, except for rare uses in religious music.

Economic changes also affected the availability and skill level of musicians. In the late Baroque period, composers had access to large musical groups, but in the 18th century, smaller, less flexible groups were common in aristocratic settings. This led to simpler parts for ensemble musicians and more complex, unique parts for skilled soloists, as seen in the Mannheim orchestra or for violinists and flutists. Audiences also wanted new music regularly, so compositions had to be ready for performance with only one or two rehearsals. Even after 1790, Mozart wrote about having only one rehearsal for his concerts.

Because Classical music focused more on a single melody, composers began to write more details about how that melody should be played, such as loudness and phrasing. This was different from the Baroque era, where melodies were often written without such instructions, leaving performers to improvise. Classical composers also started to write notes about when to play ornaments like trills or turns. The simpler musical texture made these details more important, as did the use of specific rhythms, such as opening fanfares, funeral march rhythms, or the minuet style, to help unify a musical piece.

The Classical period also saw the development of sonata form, a structure that balanced melodic ideas with harmonic progressions. The sonata remained the main form for solo and chamber music, while the string quartet became a popular genre. The symphony, a large orchestral piece, was created during this time (often credited to Joseph Haydn). The concerto grosso, a popular Baroque form featuring multiple musicians, was replaced by the solo concerto, which focused on one soloist showing off technical skills through fast, challenging passages. Some concerti grossi remained, like Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola in E-flat major.

Main characteristics

During the Classical period, music often features short phrases, usually four bars long, with contrasting melodies and rhythms. These phrases may sometimes feel simple or brief. The music is mostly homophonic, meaning a clear melody is supported by a simpler harmony, such as an Alberti bass pattern. This differs from Baroque music, where a single musical idea was developed across multiple voices using counterpoint, with consistent rhythm throughout. Classical music, therefore, has a lighter and clearer sound compared to Baroque music. The Classical style also draws from the galant style, which focused on elegance rather than the Baroque style’s serious and grand tone.

Classical music follows a clear structure, with distinct contrasts between the tonic and dominant keys, marked by strong cadences. Dynamics are used to emphasize the music’s structure. Sonata form, which became important in the early Classical period, was often used in compositions. This contrasts with Baroque music, where movements typically moved between tonic and dominant keys through continuous chord changes without a clear sense of reaching a new key. While counterpoint was less central in Classical music, it was still used in serious works like symphonies, string quartets, and religious music.

Technological advances in instruments supported the Classical style. Equal temperament allowed music to sound consistent in all keys. The fortepiano and later the pianoforte replaced the harpsichord, enabling greater dynamic range and longer melodies. Keyboard instruments became more powerful and expressive over time.

The orchestra grew larger and more standardized. By the late 18th century, the harpsichord and pipe organ’s role in orchestras was replaced, leaving the string section as the foundation. Woodwinds formed their own section, including clarinets, oboes, flutes, and bassoons.

While vocal music like comic opera was popular, instrumental music was highly valued. Common forms included the sonata, trio, string quartet, symphony, concerto, and lighter pieces like serenades. Sonata form became the most important structure, used in the first movements of large works and in standalone pieces like overtures.

History

In his book The Classical Style, author and pianist Charles Rosen explains that between 1755 and 1775, composers worked to create a new style that was more dramatic. During the High Baroque period, dramatic expression was limited to showing individual emotions, called the "doctrine of affections" or "dramatic sentiment." For example, in Handel's oratorio Jephtha, the composer expresses four separate emotions in the quartet "O, spare your daughter," one for each character. Over time, this method of showing single emotions was seen as too simple and not realistic. Composers instead tried to show multiple emotions at once or in a sequence within a single character or movement, called "dramatic action." This is seen in the finale of Act 2 of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, where the lovers move "from joy through suspicion and outrage to final reconciliation."

Musically, this "dramatic action" required more variety. Baroque music had smooth, flowing movements with similar textures. After the High Baroque, composers began using sudden changes in texture, dynamics, harmony, or tempo to interrupt this flow. One style that developed after the High Baroque was called Empfindsamkeit, meaning "sensitive style," and its most famous composer was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Composers in this style used abrupt changes, which sometimes made the music sound confusing. The Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti expanded these ideas further. His over 500 keyboard sonatas included sudden texture changes, but these changes were organized into balanced phrases that became a hallmark of the Classical style. However, Scarlatti's changes still felt sudden and unprepared. The greatest achievement of Classical composers like Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven was making these dramatic surprises sound logical, so that "the expressive and the elegant could join hands."

Between the death of J.S. Bach and the maturity of Haydn and Mozart (about 1750–1770), composers experimented with new ideas, seen in the music of Bach's sons. Johann Christian developed a style called Roccoco, which had simpler textures and harmonies and was described as "charming, undramatic, and a little empty." Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach aimed to increase drama, and his music was "violent, expressive, brilliant, continuously surprising, and often incoherent." Wilhelm Friedemann, J.S. Bach's eldest son, continued Baroque traditions in an unusual way.

At first, the new style used Baroque forms like the da capo aria, sinfonia, and concerto, but with simpler parts, more written ornamentation, and clearer divisions of pieces. Over time, the new aesthetic led to major changes in how music was structured. Composers focused on dramatic effects, striking melodies, and clearer textures. One major change was moving away from the complex, interwoven polyphonic style of the Baroque to homophony, a lighter texture with a clear melody line supported by chords.

Baroque music often used harmonic fantasies and polyphonic sections that emphasized less on the overall structure of a piece and had fewer clear musical phrases. In the Classical period, harmonies became simpler, but the structure of the piece, phrases, and small melodic or rhythmic motives became more important.

Another major change was the work of Christoph Willibald Gluck, who simplified opera by removing layers and improvisations and focusing on harmonic changes and transitions. By highlighting these moments, he created powerful emotional shifts in music. He used changes in instrumentation, melody, and mode to emphasize these transitions. Gluck's approach influenced composers like Antonio Salieri, who helped make opera and other vocal music more accessible, leading to great public success.

Between the Baroque and Classical periods (around 1730), many musical styles competed. The sons of Johann Sebastian Bach represented this diversity: Wilhelm Friedemann Bach continued Baroque traditions in a personal way; Johann Christian Bach simplified textures and influenced Mozart; and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach created passionate, eccentric music in the Empfindsamkeit style. Music was at a crossroads: older masters had strong techniques, but the public wanted new ideas. This is why C.P.E. Bach was highly respected—he understood older forms and knew how to present them in new, varied ways.

By the late 1750s, centers of the new style flourished in Italy, Vienna, Mannheim, and Paris. Many symphonies were written, and orchestras were linked to theaters. Opera and other vocal music with orchestras were the main features of musical events, with concertos and symphonies (originally from overtures) serving as instrumental interludes for operas and church services. Over time, symphonies and concertos developed and were performed independently of vocal music.

By the late 1750s, the standard orchestra—a group of strings with added winds—and movements with distinct rhythmic characters were established in Vienna. However, pieces still had some Baroque traits: individual movements focused on one emotion or had one contrasting middle section, and their length was not much longer than Baroque movements. There was no clear theory for composing in the new style, making it a time ripe for major changes.

The first great master of the new style was Joseph Haydn. In the late 1750s, he began writing symphonies, and by 1761, he had composed a triptych (Morning, Noon, and Evening) in the contemporary style. As vice-Kapellmeister and later Kapellmeister, he expanded his output, writing over 40 symphonies in the 1760s. As his fame grew and his orchestra expanded, his music spread widely, though he was one of many composers at the time.

While some scholars say Haydn was later overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven, his role in shaping the new style was essential to the future of Western art music. Before Mozart or Beethoven became famous, and while Johann Sebastian Bach was mainly known to keyboard music enthusiasts, Haydn achieved a level of recognition that placed him above most other composers, except perhaps George Frideric Handel of the Baroque era. Haydn transformed existing ideas, earning titles like "father of the symphony" and "father of the string quartet."

One of the forces that helped Haydn push forward was the early development of…

First Viennese School

The First Viennese School is a term used to describe three composers from the Classical period in late-18th-century Vienna: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Sometimes, Franz Schubert is also included in this group.

In German-speaking countries, the term "Wiener Klassik" (meaning "Viennese classical era" or "Viennese classical art") is used. This term is often applied more broadly to describe the entire Classical era in music. It helps to separate this period from other musical periods that are also called "classical," such as the Baroque and Romantic eras.

The term "Viennese School" was first used in 1834 by an Austrian music expert named Raphael Georg Kiesewetter. At that time, he only included Haydn and Mozart in the group. Later, other writers added Beethoven to the list. The word "first" is now added to the name to avoid confusion with the Second Viennese School.

Although Schubert was not part of the group, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven knew each other. Haydn and Mozart even played music together in small groups. However, they did not work together in a way that is typical of later musical groups, such as the Second Viennese School or Les Six. Also, none of these composers were formally taught by one another, except for Beethoven, who briefly studied with Haydn.

Some people try to include later composers like Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms, and Gustav Mahler in the First Viennese School. However, this is not supported by serious music scholars. According to expert James F. Daugherty, the Classical period, which lasted roughly from 1775 to 1825, is sometimes called "the Viennese Classic period."

Classical influence on later composers

Musical styles and the instruments used in different eras do not disappear all at once. Instead, changes happen slowly over time, until older styles are seen as old-fashioned. The Classical style did not end suddenly. It was gradually replaced as new musical ideas developed. For example, orchestras stopped using the harpsichord to play basso continuo over many years, not all at once in 1750. This practice ended by the late 1700s.

One major change was the use of more "flatward" keys, which means moving toward keys with more flats in their music. In the Classical style, major keys were more common than minor keys, and composers used "sharpward" modulations, such as moving from C major to G major or A major (keys with more sharps). Minor keys were sometimes used for contrast. Starting with composers like Mozart and Clementi, music began to use more subdominant chords (like the ii or IV chord in C major, which are d minor or F major). Schubert later used these subdominant modulations more often, even in places where earlier composers would have used dominant shifts (like moving to G major from C major). This change added darker tones to music, made the minor mode stronger, and made musical structure harder to follow. Beethoven helped this trend by using the fourth interval as a consonance and creating more ambiguous musical modes, as seen in the opening of his Symphony No. 9 in D minor.

Composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Carl Maria von Weber, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, John Field, and Felix Mendelssohn were part of the "Proto-Romantics" generation. Their music was strongly influenced by the Classical style, even though they were not yet composers who followed strict rules. They studied and responded to works by earlier composers like Haydn and Mozart. The orchestras they used had similar sizes and types of instruments to those in the Classical era, allowing their music to sound similar to Classical works.

However, changes that would end the Classical style began with composers like Beethoven. One major change was the use of new harmonic ideas. Another was the focus on continuous, rhythmically uniform accompaniment, as seen in Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. This style influenced many later pieces. Other factors included more knowledge of music, better instruments, the growth of concert societies, and the rise of the piano, which became louder and more powerful due to technological advances like steel strings and cast-iron frames. These changes helped the Romantic style develop.

It is hard to draw a clear line between Classical and Romantic styles. Some parts of Mozart's later works sound similar to music written 80 years later, and some composers continued writing in the Classical style into the early 20th century. Even before Beethoven died, composers like Louis Spohr used more complex chromaticism in their music. Schubert's Symphony No. 5, written near the end of the Classical era and the start of the Romantic era, used a style that looked back to older traditions.

Vienna's decline as the main center for orchestral music in the late 1820s, after the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert, marked the end of the Classical style. Composers like Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin visited Vienna but later moved to other cities. Composers such as Carl Czerny, influenced by Beethoven, also searched for new ideas to express the growing world of music.

In the early 20th century, a new style called Neoclassicism developed, inspired by the balance and restraint of 18th-century classical music. Composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev used this style during parts of their careers.

Classical period instruments

The Baroque guitar had four or five sets of double strings, called "courses," and a beautifully decorated soundhole. It was very different from the early classical guitar, which had six strings like the modern guitar. Between 1760 and 1860, over 300 books were written about the classical guitar by more than 200 authors. This was an important time for the guitar.

During the Baroque era, ensembles used many different bowed stringed instruments, such as the viola d'amore and various fretted viols, which ranged in size from small to large. In the Classical period, the string section of the orchestra became standard with four instruments:

• Violin: In orchestras and chamber music, first violins usually played the melody or higher notes, while second violins played supporting lines, harmonies, or accompaniment.
• Viola: The viola filled in the middle range of the orchestra, often playing inner harmony parts.
• Cello: The cello had two roles. It sometimes played the bassline, which was also played by double basses (but an octave lower, since double basses are transposing instruments). At other times, it played melodies or solos in the lower register.
• Double Bass: The double bass played the lowest pitches in the string section to provide the bassline.

In the Baroque era, double bass players usually followed the same bassline as cellos and other low-pitched instruments, playing an octave lower. In the Classical era, some composers still wrote only one bass part, called "bassi," for both cellists and double bassists. Later, some composers began to write separate parts for double basses.

Orchestras often included at least two wind instruments, such as oboes, flutes, clarinets, or bassoons. Wealthy patrons sometimes hired all-wind ensembles called "harmonie" for special events. These ensembles sometimes joined larger string orchestras to form the wind section.

Common wind and percussion instruments included:
– Piccolo (used in military bands)
– Flute
– Oboe
– English horn
– Clarinet
– Basset horn (used in Mozart’s Requiem)
– Basset clarinet
– Clarinette d’amour
– Bassoon
– Contrabassoon (used in Haydn’s The Creation)
– Bagpipe (used in Mozart’s Die Bauernhochzeit or "Peasant Wedding")

• Timpani
• "Turkish music": Bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine

• Clavichord
• Fortepiano (the early version of the modern piano)
• Harpsichord: The standard keyboard instrument during the Baroque era, used until the 1750s. It was later replaced by the fortepiano and then the piano. By the early 1800s, the harpsichord was no longer used.
• Organ

• Natural horn
• Natural trumpet
• Trombone (used in operas and sacred music)
• Keyed trumpet (used in Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto)
• Serpent (used in military bands)
• Post horn (used in Mozart’s Serenade No. 9)