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This is a list of composers of the Classical music era, roughly from 1730 to 1820. Prominent classicist composers [1] [2] [3] include Christoph Willibald Gluck , Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach , Johann Stamitz , Joseph Haydn , Johann Christian Bach , Antonio Salieri , Muzio Clementi , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Luigi Boccherini , Ludwig van Beethoven ...
- Overview
- The Classical period
- The Romantic period
The Classical era in music is compositionally defined by the balanced eclecticism of the late 18th- and early 19th-century Viennese “school” of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, who completely absorbed and individually fused or transformed the vast array of 18th-century textures and formal types. Expansion of the tripartite Italian overture h...
The Classical era in music is compositionally defined by the balanced eclecticism of the late 18th- and early 19th-century Viennese “school” of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, who completely absorbed and individually fused or transformed the vast array of 18th-century textures and formal types. Expansion of the tripartite Italian overture h...
With the onset of the Romantic era in the wake of the French Revolution, composers began to view their own role in society as well as the social function of their work, and hence also its aesthetic prerequisites, in a radically different light. With respect to social function, Beethoven was actually the first musician of stature to achieve emancipation in the sense that his work reflected, with relatively few exceptions, purely personal artistic concerns. He simply took it for granted that patrons would supply funds sufficient for him to pursue his creative career unfettered by financial worries. This attitude represents a total reversal of the basic assumptions of the preceding century, when composers were hired by and large to satisfy the musical needs of specific individuals or institutions.
The view of the composer as artist also changed. If during the Middle Ages the craft of musical composition had been evaluated largely in terms of its strict adherence to established rules, instinctiveness and spontaneity had remained suspect well into the Italian Renaissance. For a 15th-century composer-theorist like Johannes Tinctoris, the value of a musical composition depended on learned judgment as well as spontaneous reaction. Thus his admiration for certain composers of his time stemmed both from the happiness and from the enlightenment that he found in examining their music. But the Swiss theorist Henricus Glareanus, writing 70 years later, explicitly preferred natural talent to the most exquisite craftsmanship. The Renaissance was the first epoch in European intellectual history to recognize that the greatness of a composer rests upon his inherent talent and unique personal style, and that genius supersedes both experience and the observance of theoretical precepts. Likewise, it was the first era in which the process of composition was viewed as linked to powerful internal impulses. The rising tide of academicism notwithstanding, this basic attitude on the whole dominated the European scene more or less consistently from then on. According to E.T.A. Hoffmann, the early 19th-century poet, critic, and composer, “effective composition is nothing but the art of capturing with a higher strength, and fixing in the hieroglyphs of tones, what was received in the mind’s unconscious ecstasis.” And Romantic composers from Schumann and Chopin to Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler did in fact produce much of their very best creative work in precisely such a state of exaltation, in a few tragic instances (e.g., Schumann and Wolf) to the ultimate detriment of their sanity.
The aesthetic effects of this drastic change in conception of the composer’s task and potential were immediate and far reaching. For one, every large-scale composition assumed artistic significance of a type previously accorded only a whole series of works, sometimes a composer’s entire output. And, concomitantly, many leading composers of the 19th century wrote in considerably smaller quantities than their predecessors. But in exchange they revelled in idiomatic and structural peculiarities even in works that nominally fell into the same formal category. Thus, although “characteristic” symphonies alluding to nonmusical ideas occurred occasionally in the late 18th century, virtually every symphonic composition postdating Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Opus 55 (Eroica; completed 1804), could be so designated. “Characteristic” works like Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Opus 68 (Pastoral; 1808), or his overture to Goethe’s drama Egmont are but one step removed from the kind of characteristic scenes that make up the Symphonie fantastique of the French composer Hector Berlioz or, for that matter, Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides (also known as Fingal’s Cave), an overture unrelated to any particular drama, spoken or sung. Franz Liszt, in the free-wheeling forms of his symphonic poems, simply pursued the individualistic line to its ultimate consequences, severing whatever tenuous ties to traditional structures the works of his immediate predecessors had still maintained. The Romantic composer viewed himself basically as a poet who manipulated musical sounds instead of words. But if the composers catered to poetry, writing Lieder (German songs) and attempting to retell stories in instrumental works, the poets looked with awe and envy upon the composers’ use of a language so utterly dissociated from material existence. “All art aspires to the condition of music,” said Wordsworth. It is thus hardly surprising that opera, whose extramusical connotations had in the past been responsible for some of the most daring stylistic innovations, rapidly incurred the disfavour of progressive composers. Although some, like Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and Schumann, tried their hands at an occasional opera, others, including Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms, felt no inclination whatever to compose for the stage. Instead, each developed personal idioms capable of a depth of expression that words could not match. Mendelssohn spoke indeed for many when he remarked that, as far as he was concerned, music was more precise in meaning than words.
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Men of Musical Composition
As in the late Renaissance, harmony once again furnished the primary expressive means. In defining musical structure, too, harmonic and modulatory procedures predominated at the expense of the contrapuntal interplay of motives. Numerous Romantic composers excelled in concise forms of strong melodic-harmonic import, variously entitled Impromptu, Nocturne, Song Without Words, Ballade, Capriccio, Prelude, Étude, etc. The form of these works was nearly always tripartite, with a literal or modified repeat of the first part following a melodically and harmonically contrasting middle section. Works of larger scope often consisted of a series of relatively autonomous subunits tied together either by the same tune presented in different guises (as in variation sets) or by fairly literal recurrences of an initial musical idea (the rondo principle). Compositions of the Classical sonata-allegro type, to which motivic-contrapuntal development was essential, inevitably suffered from the Romantic love for pure, harmonically defined melody. Thus Tchaikovsky frankly admitted in 1878 that, although he could not complain of poverty of imagination or lack of inventive power, his lack of structural skill had frequently caused his “seams” to show: “there was no organic union between my individual episodes.” Composers such as Tchaikovsky were indeed particularly successful with chainlike formations like the serenade or the ballet suite, which comprised a well-calculated number of carefully wrought smaller entities.
- Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn was a remarkable composer, epitomizing the meaning of classical period composition, and though he wasn't as flashy as the younger Mozart, his music always stayed true to form.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Did you know that nearly half of Mozart's life was spent touring the European continent? Born in 1756, Mozart was a musical prodigy who began composing at the age of five.
- Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) Salieri may have been envious of young Mozart's musical genius, however, the rumors of Salieri poisoning Mozart are, in fact, simply rumors.
- Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) Thanks to Christoph Willibald Gluck, opera as we know them today could be radically different. Gluck revolutionized opera by softening the contrast between recitatives (the dialogue between one aria to the next) and arias by weaving underlying melodic themes and orchestral passages within the recitatives as they flowed into the arias.
This is a list of classical music composers by era. With the exception of the overview, the Modernist era has been combined with the Postmodern.
- Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach. Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach – ‘Cello Concerto in A minor’ C.P.E. Bach emerged from one of Western music’s most impressive musical dynasties as the fifth child of Johann Sebastian Bach, perhaps the Baroque era’s greatest composer.
- Christoph Willibald Gluck. ‘Orfeo ed Euridice‘ by Christoph Willibald Gluck. Opera had developed as an art form during the Baroque era, but it was during the Classical period that it really began to flourish.
- Muzio Clementi. Muzio Clementi – ‘Piano Concerto in C Major’ While harpsichord and organ had been the dominant keyboard instruments of the Baroque era, one of the Classical period’s more significant technological developments was the invention of the piano.
- Joseph Haydn. Joseph Haydn – ‘Surprise’ The symphony is an extended, large-scale orchestral piece made up of three or four movements, while the string quartet follows a similar musical structure in a classic chamber music format of two violins, viola, and cello.
From the hundreds of classical music composers working in the Western tradition during the last 600 years, we list 10 that are generally regarded as the most essential composers to know, including Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Wagner, and more.
Nov 25, 2020 · Classical composers: Haydn, Marianna Martines and Mozart. Picture: Getty. By Maddy Shaw Roberts. We all know ‘classical music’ – music that’s distinct from pop, rock or jazz. But what of the Classical era? From Mozart to Beethoven, we explore the greatest composers active in the second half of the 18th century.
