From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architechts, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece. The newly established aristocracies were replacing monarchs and the church as patrons of the arts, and were demanding an impersonal, but tuneful and elegant music. Dances such as the minuet and the gavotte were provided in the forms of entertaining serenades and divertimenti.
At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical
center of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as being
in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to train
in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard
musical forms that were to predominate European musical culture for the
next several decades. A reform of the extravagance of Baroque opera was
undertaken by Christoph
von Gluck. Johann Stamitz contributed greatly to the growth of the
orchestra and developed the idea of the orchestral symphony.
The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful
symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three
great composers of the Viennese school: Franz
Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig
van Beethoven. During the same period, the first voice of the burgeoning
Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz
Schubert.
The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann ; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz ; and the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.
During the early nineteenth century, opera composers such as Carl
Maria von Weber turned to German folk stories for the stories of their
operas, while the Italians looked to the literature of the time and created
what is known as Bel
canto opera (literally "beautiful singing"). Later in the
century, the field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe
Verdi, while German opera was virtually monopolized by Richard
Wagner.
During the nineteenth century, composers from non-Germanic countries began looking for ways in which they might express the musical soul of their homelands. Many of these Nationalist composers turned to indigenous history and legends as plots for their operas, and to the popular folk melodies and dance rhythms of their homelands as inspiration for their symphonies and instrumental music. Others developed a highly personal harmonic language and melodic style which distinguishes their music from that of the Austro-Germanic traditions.
The continued modification and enhancement of existing instruments,
plus the invention of new ones, led to the further expansion of the symphony
orchestra throughout the century. Taking advantage of these new sounds
and new instrumental combinations, the late
Romantic composers of the second half of the nineteenth-century created
richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and concertos. Two of the giants
of this period are the German-born Johannes
Brahms and the great Russian melodist Peter
Ilyich Tchaikovksy.
By the turn of the century and for the next few decades, artists of all nationalities were searching for exciting and different modes of expression. Composers such as Arnold Schoenberg explored unusual and unorthodox harmonies and tonal schemes. French composer Claude Debussy was fascinated by Eastern music and the whole-tone scale, and created a style of music named after the movement in French painting called Impressionism. Hungarian composer Béla Bartók continued in the traditions of the still strong Nationalist movement and fused the music of Hungarian peasants with twentieth century forms. Avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse explored the manipulation of rhythms rather than the usual melodic/harmonic schemes. The tried-and-true genre of the symphony, albeit somewhat modified by this time, attracted such masters as Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich, while Igor Stravinsky gave full rein to his manipulation of kaleidoscopic rhythms and instrumental colors throughout his extremely long and varied career.
While many composers throughout the twentieth-century experimented in new ways with traditional instruments (such as the "prepared piano" used by American composer John Cage), many of the twentieth-century's greatest composers, such as Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini and the Russian pianist/composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, remained true to the traditional forms of music history. In addition to new and eclectic styles of musical trends, the twentieth century boasts numerous composers whose harmonic and melodic styles an average listener can still easily appreciate and enjoy.