it was the whole ideology of classicism. It probably started in architecture, when they admired the classical buildings of ancient greece, their simple architecture, sense of balance a proportions and no complicated ornaments etc. And they thought, they music should be like the classical buildings, simply, elegant, in correct proportions etc.
but I agree that classicism is the most boring era in music

 

Considering Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were the most influential composers of the classical era, I suppose you'd have to blame them.

 

I have asked a similar question on a different forum, and this is the reply I have received:

It basically happened through opera. Already well before Bach died, around 1730 Italian opera had adopted a relatively simple style that was really useful for making sharp, quick, and punch dramatic effects. Listen to something like La serva padrona by Pergolesi, and you'll find a lot of the kind of dialogue between singer and orchestra that Mozart would use 50-60 years later

This was really serving a dramatic need. On stage, you wanted all of your attention focused on the singer. The orchestra needed to amplify what they were doing, not usually distract from that too much. And that's what the simple textures of the 1730s did phenomenally well, they really cast the spotlight on the singer.
I should say theatrical rather than dramatic
Anyway, that's really the basis of the classical style. Not only for classical opera, but for symphonies as well (symphonies originally being the things that come before operas). The rest is a gradual build up of orchestral effects, the transfer of these sorts of textures to other vehicles like the piano sonata.
It's no coincidence that Mozart's very earliest influences were primarily known as opera composers: JC Bach and Josef Myslivecek.
That's not the whole story of course. You have to talk about Sammartini and the Mannheim school, the Empfindsamer stile of CPE Bach, the cult of sentimentality in the 60s, etc.
But if you had to simplify it to just one thing, "Italian opera" is a good tradition to follow. As the seeds of the classical style are there VERY early, and it continued to be perhaps the most prestigious (and lucrative) artform to the end of the century

The question I asked was: "Can anyone give me a rundown of how the baroque period transitioned into the classical period?"
Credit to nmitchell076#6216 on discord for providing this answer.

 

To say who's to 'blame' is dismissive and offensive historically. There was more to it than Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Gee, and I thought the Classical era was based on a resurgence of Greek ideals that influenced all the arts from literature to painting to music in the pursuit of an ideal of balance in form and content without excesses. Some were better at this balance of form and content than others and I see the lack of interest in many of them not because they weren't good composers but because the world has changed starting in the Romantic era that was more about the rise of individuality and personal self-expression rather than conforming to a Greek ideal and the aristocracy who had so very often been a patron of the arts and the musicians depended on them for their livelihoods. If for no other reason, the Classical era represents refuge from some of the tiring up and down emotional excesses of the Romantic era. But such great composers as Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms made great contributions to the history of the music and it's absurd to think of them as being of diminished capacity as composers; they simply had a different focus in life as composers. Such an idea should final be relegated to the trash heap because it shows no understanding or insight into the Romantic era at all.

Other Classical era names: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/musicappreciation_with_theory/chapter/overview-of-the-classical-era/

 

You know that the Baroque era itself was a relative dumbing-down of harmony from the late Renaissance, right? Compare the harmonic language of Corelli to that of Gombert or Gesualdo. So why did that dumbing-down happen? Because Baroque composers were looking for a more dramatic, more human (and yes, more streamlined) way of composing which could express a greater range of emotions. So it was for the transition from Baroque to Classical: listen to a Handel opera and a Mozart opera and it's night and day in terms of being actual dramatic compositions.

Like one thing to note is that generally a Baroque composition expresses one emotion, while a classical piece can shift between different emotions within a single piece. Beethoven wasn't just "breaking out" from classical strictures, but building on what they had already developed.

 

Yes, the best of the Baroque was masterful, but an awful lot of it was dreadfully repetitious. Can you honestly tell the difference between anonymously presented pieces by Corelli, Torelli, Locatelli, Albinoni, Frescobaldi, A. Scarlatti, Tartini, etc. . . .? Can't you sleep through it as easily as through the more uninspired works by CPE Bach, Salieri, Dittersdorf, Boccherini, even the youthful Mozart and Haydn . . ? Blame the eighteenth century record companies that needed a new style to market.

 

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I wish I didn't agree with the OP as much as I do. Still, I have to give the Classical period a bit more credit than he does. In exploring music composed between Bach's time and Beethoven's in hopes of filling out my understanding of the period and discovering some great but obscure music, I've listened to a lot of music by a lot of late-18th-century composers not named Haydn or Mozart. There's plenty of well-written, pleasing music to be heard, as well as a variety of styles which the term "Classical" and the dominance of those two masters might tend to obscure. The period of time between the last works of Bach and the startling innovations of Beethoven's "middle period" was barely more than half a century, but the aesthetic change was amazing, and a single composer such as C.P.E. Bach can take us on a dizzying ride through the gamut of styles from Baroque to Classical to indescribable.

Listeners particularly fond of certain traits of Baroque style - the dramatic gestures, tense dissonances, counterpoint, free ornamentation, extended melody, and driving rhythms - may find the homophonic textures, insistent diatonicism, short, balanced phrases, and general ease and elegance of Classicism a bit dull by comparison. Ideals such as "balance,""proportion" and "tastefulness" don't exactly get my pulse racing, and when its possibilities are not illuminated by the joyous wit and timing of a Haydn or the melodic richness and poignancy of a Mozart there isn't much about the Classical style that attracts me. (NOTE: I'm leaving Beethoven out of this, as I regard him as only partly Classical. He was certainly not an exemplar of Classical "balance," despite his brilliant sense of structural proportion.)

 

The period of time between the last works of Bach and the startling innovations of Beethoven's "middle period" was barely more than half a century, but the aesthetic change was amazing, and a single composer such as C.P.E. Bach can take us on a dizzying ride through the gamut of styles from Baroque to Classical to indescribable.

This is a good point, and it wasn't just aesthetics that were going through profound changes during this period. It also marked the the earliest signs of the eventual collapse of political, economic, social and cultural control over Europe of a royal and aristocratic class that had held power for centuries.
In a period of such instability and flux, artists in many areas, poetry, painting, and sculpture as well as music, sought refuge in perceived classical order and rationality.
It isn't easy for us to see that era in the same light today.

 

By the time one reads about both sides of the Classical era posted on this thread, the subject becomes entirely sickening, toxic and poisoned. The music is spoiled even by those who supposedly like it. Every era of music has its strengths and weaknesses and the change from one era to the next is inevitable because changes in aesthetics and society never remain static.

 

It's interesting how little would be lost if all the music of the "classical era" excepting its top three or four composers were to vanish. But what would be left fills a good portion of my music shelf!

 

Yes agree, thankfully the classical and romantic styles are long gone
Afterwards composers got down to writing really interesting material.

Just think, if you can , if composers got stuck in a rut,,and continued writing like the great romantics, No
2nd Viennese, No Shostakovich, No Ravel<<<< Just think if composers today, still continued writing music exactly like Schubert, Schumann, Chopin..,,,variations on the same old themes, .

I'd still be in to R N R if that was the case,,,Moody Blues, maybe the old blues masters like Muddy Waters, J Lee Hooker.

Along with lots N lots of Mozart and Wagner.

 

Yes agree, thankfully the classical and romantic styles are long gone
Afterwards composers got down to writing really interesting material.

Just think, if you can , if composers got stuck in a rut,,and continued writing like the great romantics, No
2nd Viennese, No Shostakovich, No Ravel<<<< Just think if composers today, still continued writing music exactly like Schubert, Schumann, Chopin..,,,variations on the same old themes, .

I don't find Shostakovich particularly interesting compared to the classical and romantic composers mentioned above. For example, I find stuff like

kind of disappointing for

-using dissonant ostinatos to create funny 'sound effects' (which I find shallow)
-sometimes using lower strings just as waltz accompaniment
-having like 50% of the music in sustained tones that go on and on for pages at a time.
-weak use of strettos, canonic devices
-weak part-writing compared to string quartets of the First Viennese.

Later orchestral stuff like Glazunov sounds a bit like film music and piano music by Debussy sounds like new age to me, with some exceptions. I think music didn't get particularly interesting during and after Romantic era, aside from some greats such as Bruckner, Dvorak, Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Schoenberg etc.

 

The decline started with Pérotin. Everything after him is garbage, not worth listening to, yadda yadda yadda.

 

Pérotin you wildly overestimate! His tedious works are far worse than the "music of the spheres" from eons ago. And really, there's been nothing much of value since the planets tuned up, maybe the odd ocean grinding on a rock, or particularly choice babbling brook -- but no, even those are mostly kitsch.

 

For me each era loses something I like in its transition to the next, but there are definitely things about the baroque era I miss when listening to almost any other. I don't have the theoretical vocabulary to describe it specifically, but I guess the emphasis on counterpoint gave the rhythm this constantly shifting quality that I find much, much more interesting than the rhythmic character of any other era. This allegro by Telemann and presto by Bach, from the b minor flute sonata, are good examples.

The way the momentum is transferred through all these differing phrases just makes it inexhaustible to me, whereas something like the finale of Mozart's 40th, for all its aggression, just seems to move a bit predictably. I enjoyed it for a few listens the first time I've heard it, and then I finished with it. Over five years later I'm still dazzled by the variety of motion in the Bach and Telemann pieces (sometimes Mozart does hit this spot for me though, like in the finale of his 14th quartet).

I actually feel like Haydn did a better job of combining this quality with classical era principles than even most romantic era composers. Fast movements by Bruckner and Brahms and Schumann and etc just sound so "square" compared to Haydn, Handel, Bach, and sometimes even CPE Bach. Though obviously there are things I like in the romantic pieces that the classical/baroque ones don't have.

Also, I know Schoenberg tends to be compared to the classical era, but I feel reminded of the baroque era when I listen to a lot of his stuff, like the wind quintet, maybe the density of it, and I love it for that reason.

 

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After the splendors of the baroque era, with its ever-expanding richness of expression and complexity of craft, the evolution of the music was suddenly hijacked by the most restrictive dumbing-down known as the classical era.
No era has produced fewer big names than the classical era. Yes, there were Haydn and Mozart, but they were the exceptions, for they managed to write interesting music within the ;
..

Voila, that was my rant. If you don't agree, kindly buzz off.

Ignoring your last comment, you paint a far too simplistic picture of the switch from baroque to "classical" era music, as if it happened almost over night, with no intermediate stages. There were several stages from early galante through to late classical.

There were several important composers over this period apart from Haydn and Mozart. Just to mention a few there was Albinoni, Porpora, D Scarlatti, Sammartini, C P E Bach, Pergolesi, Gluck, J C Bach, Boccherini, Cimarosa.

These and many other composers wrote a great deal of very good music that was nothing like the description you give it: "the most restrictive stylistic shackles ever imposed on composers".

 

..................

 

How odd - I always sense that music is in chains when listening to baroque - the familiar rythms and style feel like the music is just never going to break free. It seems to me the classical era was necessary as a step to free music from this absurdly long period and move it "forward" so that Beethoven and others could really press forwards. Thankfully we have two great classical era composers - three if Beethoven is included - and classical era music at its best is as impressive as any other.

 

It's important to remember that what we usually refer to as the "Classical period" was really rather short, only about 60 years even if we include that interesting transitional period known as "Rococo," when styles were all over the map and when that great invention of the Classical era, sonata form, had yet to show its potential for quasi-dramatic narrative. We might have had more truly great Classical composers had the social and political developments of a revolutionary era not propelled the arts so rapidly toward Romanticism.

 

Usually don't take the middle-of-the-road view, but I see advantages over disadvantages of any era, except Midieval at its most primitive, and contemporary at its most superficial (love the great gags, though).

 

I think I finally have the gist of the thread: who to "blame"... and there's no era without its treasures, including the Romantic era with Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, and so many others who could finally speak out for themselves without somebody of noble birth telling them what to write and do. I "blame" Michael Haydn for writing one of the glories of the Classical era with his Schrattenbach-Requiem. I find it simply magnificent with its intelligence and heart, without having to draw it into a senseless comparison with anything else:

Would love to have heard this incredible performance live!

 

I think I finally have the gist of the thread: who to blame... and there's no era without its treasures, including the Romantic era with Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, and so many others who could finally speak out for themselves without somebody of noble birth telling them what to write and do. I blame Michael Haydn for writing one of the glories of the Classical era with his Schrattenbach-Requiem. I find it simply magnificent with its intelligence and heart without having to draw it into a senseless comparison with anything else:

Thats probably M Haydn's best work.

 

Brexit....(sorry Rubens

 

The Classical period in music was a short one unless you include Beethoven and Schubert (which I don't but most people here do). If you do include those last two then it must come close to being the "greatest period" (silly concept, I know) with four of the absolute biggest names and quite a few others. If it is the briefer period before Beethoven and Schubert then the presence of Mozart and Haydn is also quite something. All that is left is the familiar argument that many threads revert to that some or all of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert are somehow not all they are cracked up to be.

I would also like to suggest that CPE Bach - who often sounds like he has one foot in the Baroque and the other in the Classical - is far more than a mere minor composer.

 

The Classical period in music was a short one unless you include Beethoven and Schubert (which I don't but most people here do). If you do include those last two then it must come close to being the "greatest period" (silly concept, I know) with four of the absolute biggest names and quite a few others. If it is the briefer period before Beethoven and Schubert then the presence of Mozart and Haydn is also quite something. All that is left is the familiar argument that many threads revert to that some or all of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert are somehow not all they are cracked up to be.

As you say, a lot depends on how Beethoven and Schubert are treated.

It would seem that OP clearly thinks that Beethoven was entirely in the "romantic" era. I'm not sure what he thinks about Schubert, but I'll assume he thinks that Schubert was also a "romantic". [I would place Beethoven mainly in the "classical" era, and Schubert somewhere in the middle veering towards the "romantic" era, but no matter.]

On that premise, he thinks that it was only Mozart and "Papa" Haydn in the entire Classical era who were any good. As for the rest, they were largely a waste of time. Because of this, he thinks that overall the entire classical era was the worst of all eras, a "monstrosity", as he calls it.

I think basically he's just telling us that he is big admirer of Beethoven, whom he sees as rescuing classical music from a fate worse than death. He's also asking which of the "classical era" composers was the most guilty in creating the basic musical forms that became its norm.

He doesn't say anything about later "romantics", partly I suspect because he's not familiar enough to comment. I wonder if he's aware that after Beethoven died, the true early romantics like Schumann and Liszt developed things in a different manner from what he might have guessed based on a consideration of Beethoven's style of music.

This forum has had many similar Beethoven enthusiasts over the years. They come in all shapes and sizes, but all with the same message that Beethoven was "god's gift", and the rest mainly a load "w..k..s".

As usual, in discussion around this issue we're seeing quite a bit of misunderstanding, and a repeat of all the same arguments that have been trotted out many times before.

 

Charles Rosen's book The Classical Style has helped me appreciate the Classical era more. If you read that book you will realize Classical era music was not a dumbing down. Music became less about counterpoint and more about form. Despite the seeming surface simplicity of the thematic content, form was expanded and made more complex. As far as its origins Classical era music was influenced by comic opera. After the seriousness of the Baroque, people craved something different. It's connection to opera made it effective at expressing dramatic action/scenarios. I think the dramatic forms of Haydn and Mozart were big stepping stones towards the Romantic era, it was not just Beethoven.

 

Charles Rosen's book The Classical Style has helped me appreciate the Classical era more. If you read that book you will realize Classical era music was not a dumbing down. Music became less about counterpoint and more about form. Despite the seeming surface simplicity of the thematic content, form was expanded and made more complex. As far as its origins Classical era music was influenced by comic opera. After the seriousness of the Baroque, people craved something different. It's connection to opera made it effective at expressing dramatic action/scenarios. I think the dramatic forms of Haydn and Mozart were big stepping stones towards the Romantic era, it was not just Beethoven.

Yes, Haydn provides drama!!

 

The Youtube of Michael Haydn's Requiem distorts - this is better quality.

 

Sorry to hear that. I've heard it three times in the US and it doesn't distort. The sound quality is excellent. Wish I could be of more help. I did happen to notice that there were other online performances available, but I really liked this one. If you happen to find one, I think you'll enjoy it. I was blown away.

 

^ As I (and Partita) have noted this is really a thread for knocking Mozart and Haydn (and perhaps promoting Beethoven) in disguise so you have come to the right place, Paul. I do quite like Bernstein's Mozart but you should try a few others in Mozart if Bernstein doesn't do it for you. Klemperer, Krips, Pinnock, Norrington, Harnoncourt, Mackerras, and others all have very different approaches to the music. That all of them work is a suggestion of the greatness of Mozart - there are so many sides to the works he composed.

 

Oh no, you have me wrong.
What I was attempting to express, is how magnificent Mozart is ,,in his finest works, late syms, late PC's, operas...A level of composition which requires and demands, the finest of orch and conducting,,,nothing less.
His opears, I am a bit more forgiving,,,though the golden 1950's era was by all accounts the *Classical recording* period for Mozart's operas (same can be said for wagner, the 1950's).

Now In his late syms, , you can read all the coments over at amazon on Walter/Columbia, Bohm/Berlin , if you don't want to take my word for it, both are stunningly accurate.
As you say, there are others as well which offer fine accounts,,,,and others not so *great*.

Mozart fulfills all my needs for the classical era,,,and then some more.
It is the early romantic, through late romantic era which I find,,not all that interesting, aftera few listens.

Which is why I date my composers born 1870 afterwards. Debussy, 1880,,,wrong,,,born 1862!!!! UNREAL. so from his birth onwards through say,,,,1940, that's stretching it, as Carter, Schnittke, Henze, Pettersson all born way before 1940,,,let me check,,,be right back.....

Elliott Carter 1908

Schnittke 1934

Pettersson 1911

Henze 1926

and
Szymanowski 1882!! Unreal

It is this era, which offers 5X's the number of masterpieces compared to any previous era.
Which stands to reason.

 

^ OK. That's alright, then!