Musical Epochs
The Classic
Term which, with its related forms such as 'classic' and 'classicism', has been
applied to a variety of music from different cultures and is taken to mean any
that does not belong to folk or popular traditions; it is also applied to any
collection of music regarded as a model of excellence or formal discipline. But
its chief application is to the Viennese Classical idiom which flourished in the
late 18th century and the early 19th, above all in the hands of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Among its
musical characteristics are the use of dynamics and orchestral colour in a
thematic way; the use of rhythm, including periodic structure and harmonic
rhythm, to give definition to large-scale forms, along with the use of
modulation to build longer spans of tension and release (most of the music is
cast in sonata
form or closely related forms); and the witty, typically Austrian mixture of
comic and serious strains. It is no coincidence that this period was one of keen
interest in classical antiquity; most of Gluck's 'reform' operas,
composed at the beginning of this period, are based on classical subjects.
The term 'neo-classicism' has been applied to the 18th-century revival of
interest in classical antiquity. In music it is more often applied to the early
20th-century movement, led by Stravinsky, which
revived the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier
styles to replace what seemed the increasingly exaggerated gestures and the
formlessness of late Romanticism.
This project was created by Ahmed Azab.
Since �2001
