Classical Period (music) - Classicism

In the middle of the 18th century, Europe began to move toward a new style in architecture, literature, and the arts, generally known as Classicism, which sought to emulate the ideals of Classical antiquity and especially those of Classical Greece. While still tightly linked to the court culture and absolutism, with its formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, the new style was also a cleaner style—one that favored clearer divisions between parts, brighter contrasts and colors, and simplicity rather than complexity, and the typical orchestra size increased.

The remarkable development of ideas in "natural philosophy" had established itself in the public consciousness with Newton's physics taken as a paradigm: structures should be well-founded in axioms and be both well-articulated and orderly. This taste for structural clarity worked its way into the world of music, moving away from the layered polyphony of the Baroque period, towards a style where a melody over a subordinate harmony—a combination called homophony—was preferred. This meant that the playing of chords, even if they interrupted the melodic smoothness of a single part, became a much more prevalent feature of music. This, in turn, made the tonal structure of works more audible.

The new style was also pushed forward by changes in the economic order and in social structure. As the 18th century progressed, the nobility became the primary patrons of instrumental music, and there was a rise in the public taste for comic opera. This led to changes in the way music was performed, the most crucial of which was the move to standard instrumental groups and the reduction in the importance of the continuo—the harmonic fill beneath the music, often played by several instruments. One way to trace this decline of the continuo and its figured chords is to examine the decline of the term obbligato, meaning a mandatory instrumental part in a work of chamber music. In the Baroque world, additional instruments could be optionally added to the continuo; in the Classical world, all parts were noted specifically, though not always notated, as a matter of course, so the word "obbligato" became redundant. By 1800, the term was practically extinct.

The changes in economic situation also had the effect of altering the balance of availability and quality of musicians. While in the late Baroque a major composer would have the entire musical resources of a town to draw on, the forces available at a hunting lodge were smaller and more fixed in their level of ability. This was a spur to having primarily simple parts to play, and in the case of a resident virtuoso group, a spur to writing spectacular, idiomatic parts for certain instruments, as in the case of the Mannheim orchestra. In addition, the appetite for a continual supply of new music, carried over from the Baroque, meant that works had to be performable with, at best, one rehearsal. Indeed, even after 1790 Mozart writes about "the rehearsal," with the implication that his concerts would have only one.

Since polyphonic texture was no longer the main focus of music (excluding the development section) but rather a single melodic line with accompaniment, there was greater emphasis on notating that line for dynamics and phrasing. The simplification of texture made such instrumental detail more important, and also made the use of characteristic rhythms, such as attention-getting opening fanfares, the funeral march rhythm, or the minuet genre, more important in establishing and unifying the tone of a single movement.

Forms such as the concerto and sonata were more heavily defined and given more specific rules, whereas the symphony was created in this period (this is popularly attributed to Joseph Haydn). The concerto grosso (a concerto for more than one musician) began to be replaced by the solo concerto (a concerto featuring only one soloist), and therefore began to place more importance on the particular soloist's ability to show off. There were, of course, some concerti grossi that remained, the most famous of which being Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola in E flat Major.