Wiktionary
n. 1 (context music English) Music of the classical period; the music of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haydn, etc; the musical period before the romantic. 2 (context informal English) The more serious forms of European and American music, as opposed to folk music, jazz or the many forms of popular music.
WordNet
n. traditional genre of music conforming to an established form and appealing to critical interest and developed musical taste [syn: serious music]
Wikipedia
Classical music is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western music, including both liturgical (religious) and secular music. While a more accurate term is also used to refer to the period from 1750 to 1820 (the Classical period), this article is about the broad span of time from roughly the 11th century to the present day, which includes the Classical period and various other periods. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period. The major time divisions of Western art music are as follows: the early music period, which includes the Medieval (500–1400) and the Renaissance (1400–1600) eras; the Common practice period, which includes the Baroque (1600–1750), Classical (1750–1820), and Romantic eras (1804–1910); and the 20th century (1901–2000) which includes the modern (1890–1930) that overlaps from the late 19th-century, the high modern (mid 20th-century), and contemporary or postmodern (1975–present) eras.
European art music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and some popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century. Western staff notation is used by composers to indicate to the performer the pitches (e.g., melodies, basslines, chords), tempo, meter and rhythms for a piece of music. This can leave less room for practices such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, which are frequently heard in non-European art music and in popular-music styles such as jazz and blues. Another difference is that whereas most popular styles adopt the song ( strophic) form, classical music has been noted for its development of highly sophisticated forms of instrumental music such as the concerto, symphony, sonata, and mixed vocal and instrumental styles such as opera which, since they are written down, can sustain larger forms and attain a high level of complexity.
The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to distinctly canonize the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Beethoven as a golden age. The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836.
Classical Music is a trade magazine for the classical music profession. It co-sponsors the annual ABO/Rhinegold Awards for backstage work in music, held for the first time in January 2012 - and has correspondents in Great Britain and in New York.
Its website includes news on the classical music industry. The magazine published an account of the interruption by protesters of the Jerusalem Quartet's concert at London's Wigmore Hall on 29 March 2010. It is published by Rhinegold Publishing, and the editor is Kimon Daltas.
Usage examples of "classical music".
Beginners learned how to establish parallels, by means of the Game's symbols, between a piece of classical music and the formula for some law of nature.
Like modern and classical music, it's not that one approach is right and the other wrong—.
The strains of some piece of classical music coming through the open door at the rear -- Kehrn had no idea what it was.
Now, Serena worked her hands in the loamy earth while listening to the soothing classical music that Erasmus constantly played.
It is just you and the page and the pencil, and maybe the soft classical music in the background or whatever, but you don’.
If I composed classical music it wouldn't matter, she thought savagely, everyone would say I looked charmingly eccentric.
The presence of Lady Wetherby acted as a temporary check on the development of the situation, but after they had been seated at their table a short time the lights of the restaurant were suddenly lowered, a coloured limelight became manifest near the roof, and classical music made itself heard from the fiddles in the orchestra.
I didn't know what she was playing, because it was something classical, and what I know about classical music could fit on a mosquito's nose.
We were listening to an LP of the Jefferson Airplane at that moment, quite a jump from the classical music Nicholas had loved back in Berkeley.
How it used to wake us up in the morning with classical music from that FM station, KSFR?
At one time he ran a classical music radio program and operated a record store.
Anthony Boucher, the most dearly loved and equally important person in SF, had a program of vocal music on a local radio station, and due to my interest in classical music I listened to the program.
Good to see you've become a classical music fan at last, my lead-eared friend.
In the months I had known her, she had been a charming bodyless sprite, a mind that was a dancing challenge, a reference-book of film production, classical music, politics, ballet.