Find the word definition

Wiktionary
classical period

n. (context music English) the musical period of time following the Baroque period and precede the Romantic period, spanning 1750-c.1830.

Wikipedia
Classical period (music)

The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about the year 1750 and the year 1820. However, the term classical music is often used in a colloquial sense as a synonym for Western art music which describes a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or seventeenth century to the nineteenth. This article is about the specific period from 1750 to 1820.

The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods. Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. It is mainly homophonic, using a clear melody line over a subordinate chordal accompaniment, but counterpoint was by no means forgotten, especially later in the period. It also makes use of style galant which emphasized light elegance in place of the Baroque's dignified seriousness and impressive grandeur. Variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before and the orchestra increased in size, range, and power.

The harpsichord was replaced as the main keyboard instrument by the piano (or fortepiano). Unlike the harpsichord, which plucked strings with quills, pianos strike the strings with leather-covered hammers when the keys are pressed, which enables the performer to play louder or softer and play with more expression; in contrast, the force with which a performer plays the harpsichord keys does not change the sound. Instrumental music was considered important by Classical period composers. The main kinds of instrumental music were the sonata, trio, string quartet, symphony (performed by an orchestra) and the solo concerto, which featured a virtuoso solo performer playing a solo work for violin, piano, flute, or another instrument, accompanied by an orchestra. Vocal music, such as songs for a singer and piano (notably the work of Schubert), choral works, and opera (a staged dramatic work for singers and orchestra) were also important during this period.

The best-known composers from this period are Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert; other notable names include Luigi Boccherini, Muzio Clementi, Antonio Salieri, François Joseph Gossec, Johann Stamitz, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Christoph Willibald Gluck. Ludwig van Beethoven is regarded either as a Romantic composer or a Classical period composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic era. Franz Schubert is also a transitional figure, as were Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Luigi Cherubini, Jan Ladislav Dussek, and Carl Maria von Weber. The period is sometimes referred to as the era of Viennese Classic or Classicism , since Mozart, Haydn, Salieri, and Beethoven all worked in Vienna and Schubert was born there.

Classical period

Classical period may refer to:

  • Classical Greece, specifically of the 5th and 4th centuries BC
  • Classical antiquity, in the Greco-Roman world
  • Classical period (music), in music
  • Classic stage, of American archaeology

Usage examples of "classical period".

Such arrogance, when anyone with any sense should have seen that the great period of molecular biology - what Gunther Stent was in retrospect to call its classical period - was just opening.

The classical period has arrived of the late-middle-age nervous breakdown, divorce, alcoholic debacle, and so forth: when the light of your life has descended, unprepared, into an unprepared unconscious, and you there drown.

The second part of the story is, then, no original legend, but belongs to the seventh or eighth century, or the classical period.

But even the classical period's seven hundred years in the future!

The reader who likes to consider sources at first hand will not necessarily know where to find the principal ancient texts relating to Hadrian, or even what they are, since most of them come down to us from writers of the late classical period who are relatively little read, and who are ordinarily familiar only to specialists.

But the gardeners of the classical period, who cultivated the best pear they could procure, never thought what splendid fruit we should eat.

He'd glossed over the Dark Age that had lain between this time and the glories of the Classical period.