The Classical style: clarity and balance

In the mid-18th century, Europe was living through the Enlightenment. Philosophers celebrated reason, nature and simplicity; anything complicated or artificial was viewed with suspicion. Music followed suit: instead of the learned fugues and luxuriant ornaments of the Baroque, the new generation preferred natural, elegant music that an amateur could grasp at first hearing. This period would later be called the Classical period (roughly 1750–1820), and its three great names, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, the "Viennese Classics".

From the galant style to the Classical style

The change began as early as the 1720s and 1730s with the galant style: pleasant melodies, light accompaniment, short phrases. It appears in the Italians (Pergolesi, Sammartini) and in Bach's sons, especially Johann Christian, settled in London, whom the boy Mozart met and admired. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach added a dose of emotion, surprises and sudden contrasts: the Empfindsamkeit, the "sensitive style".

Melody and accompaniment

The equality of voices was over: the melody came to the fore, on top, and everything else accompanied it. The bass no longer ran constantly; it settled on a few notes, and chords were spelled out by a regular pattern in the left hand or the strings. The continuo gradually disappeared: the composer now wrote out every note.

Phrases became regular and symmetrical, often four bars long: a first phrase asks a "question" that stops in suspense, a second "answers" it with a conclusion. Listen to this French tune, highly fashionable in the 18th century, on which Mozart wrote twelve variations (English speakers know it as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star). The first four bars stop in suspense on G; the next four conclude on C:

M:4/4
L:1/4
Q:1/4=100
K:C
"^question"C C G G | A A G2 | "^answer"F F E E | D D C2 |]

Sonata form

How do you build a long work without fugue or text? The Classical composers developed an architecture that would dominate instrumental music for over a century, sonata form:

1. Exposition: a first theme in the home key, then, after a transition, a second theme of different character in a related key (often the dominant).
2. Development: the themes are broken up, transformed, taken through distant keys. This is the moment of tension and drama.
3. Recapitulation: both themes return, this time both in the home key. The conflict is resolved.

This form is a true narrative: characters are introduced, confronted, and the story concludes. It is found in the first movement of almost every sonata, symphony, quartet and concerto of the period.

The great genres

• The symphony: a large work for orchestra, usually in four movements (fast, in sonata form; slow; minuet and trio; fast finale).
• The string quartet (two violins, viola, cello): "four rational people conversing", in a phrase often attributed to Goethe. It is the most refined genre of chamber music.
• The sonata for solo piano, or for piano and violin: the daily bread of amateurs.
• The concerto for soloist, which keeps the three movements of the Baroque but adopts sonata form.

The orchestra and the public concert

The orchestra settled down: a core of strings, woodwinds and horns in pairs, sometimes trumpets and timpani; the clarinet, a new instrument, found its place. In Mannheim, the Elector's orchestra, led by Johann Stamitz, amazed Europe with its discipline and effects, especially the ensemble crescendo, a gradual rise in volume that, so the story goes, brought audiences to their feet.

Above all, music left the palaces. Public, ticketed concerts were organised: the Concert Spirituel in Paris (from 1725), the concerts of Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel in London. A public of middle-class amateurs bought scores and played at home, and the fortepiano, capable of dynamics through touch alone, gradually replaced the harpsichord in drawing rooms. The lesson The Classical period in the final chapter shows how to play this repertoire on the piano.

In opera, Gluck led a "reform" (Orfeo ed Euridice, Vienna, 1762): less gratuitous virtuosity, more dramatic truth and simplicity.

What to listen for

• A clear melody above a light accompaniment.
• Symmetrical phrases, often in fours or eights, with clear cadences.
• Gradual dynamics: crescendos, diminuendos, sudden accents (sforzando).
• Simple harmony, centred on tonic and dominant, and changes of character within a single movement.

Listen

• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: a keyboard sonata or a string symphony.
• Johann Christian Bach: a keyboard concerto.
• Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice, the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits".
• Haydn: a quartet from Op. 76; Mozart: the Piano Sonata K. 545.