Classical Style
1750 1820
The musical language developed by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven, characterized by a supreme balance of musical form and content. The term “classical” was applied to the music of Haydn and Mozart even during the final years of the 18th century. Shortly after Mozart’s death in 1791, his first biographer observed that his operas, concertos, quartets, and other works were praiseworthy because they could be listened to again and again without tiring. Even before 1800 it was already recognized that Mozart’s works would repay continued study, by analogy with the masterworks of Greek and Roman art. During the Classical period universality of musical language was a declared aim, the theorist Johann Joachim Quantz remarking as early as 1752: “…A music that is accepted and recognized as good not by one country only…but by many peoples…must, provided it is based as well on reason and sound feeling, be beyond all dispute the best”. Though the Classical style effectively transcended national boundaries, its most celebrated proponents were in fact all associated with Vienna.
Contemporary writers stressed that music should please any normally sensitive listener and be free of any unnecessary technical complications. Yet it must progress beyond mere entertainment with its power both to move and to stimulate. This reflected the rise of the middle class to a position of influence during the Age of Enlightenment. Philosophy, science, literature, and the fine arts all began to take account of a general public instead of a select group of experts. Music was similarly affected, as patronage began to wane and the modern musical public came into being. The German composer C. P. E. Bach specifically indicated an intended market of “amateurs and connoisseurs” in the title of one of his collections of keyboard music. The complementary skills of knowledge and taste were qualities in Mozart’s music singled out for special praise in a well-known letter by Haydn to his father, Leopold Mozart.
As early as 1814 the writer E. T. A. Hoffmann recognized the originality and integrity of the language, observing that the new art of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven had its origins in the middle of the 18th century. An influential style dating from around 1720 was the rococo (or style gallant), cultivated principally in France. The so-called expressive style (empfindsamer Stil) arose somewhat later, and was chiefly associated with German composers. Both styles were developments of the widespread Baroque practice of placing the principal melodic interest in the outer voices, but the significance of the bass part was radically diminished, since its role became merely a support for the main melodic line in the uppermost voice. Rococo was a term originally used to signify the elaborately ornate furnishings and interiors cultivated in France during the Regency period, whilst gallant was a popular term used to indicate the modern, smart, and sophisticated. In music, the rococo style still belonged to the aristocracy, whereas the expressive style was essentially middle-class, turning Baroque affections into sentiments of the individual. Both idioms were eventually absorbed into the Classical style.
The changes in musical language focused upon new approaches to melody and harmony. During the Baroque period the basic affect or character of a movement was always consistent, with a single subject stated at the outset, and then spun out and articulated by means of sequential repetition of phrases rather than by conspicuous cadences. Pre-Classical composers retained a structure based on related keys, but began to introduce a much greater degree of contrast within movements. The continuity of Baroque composers was replaced by more articulated phrases, which at first created new problem of fluency; melodic material was often chordal and characterized by a new simplicity. The harmonic and tonal vocabulary of Baroque composers was taken over, though with a slower harmonic pace; conventional progressions often supported a great deal of activity within the texture.
The new idioms established a range of musical genres. In keyboard music the French composer François Couperin exemplified the style gallant, cultivating descriptive genre pieces as well as harpsichord pieces known as ordres, whose dance movements often bore fanciful titles. Of the many Baroque dances it was the minuet alone which retained its place in Classical chamber and orchestral music; it was typical of the rococo with its refined small steps and gestures, but proved to be capable of sophisticated development at the hands of Haydn and Mozart. The Classical period witnessed a radical change in the role of keyboard instruments, as their continuo function gradually disappeared. Symbolic of this was the decline of the trio sonata, one of the principal Baroque instrumental forms; it gave way to the string quartet, whose dramatic development was one of Haydn’s greatest achievements.
During the Baroque period, keyboard instruments had played a part only in sonatas for two, three, or more instruments, but the solo sonata emerged during the first half of the 18th century before acquiring the important position it still holds today. A prominent contributor to the genre was the Italian Domenico Scarlatti, whose virtuoso sonatas display an important appreciation of instrumental idiom and an experimental approach both to harmonic progression and musical structure, often introducing thematic contrasts which can be regarded as a progressive feature. If Scarlatti’s lightness of mood links him to the rococo, C. P. E. Bach is the quintessential representative of Empfindsamkeit. He stated that music’s main aims were to touch the heart and move the affections and therefore it was necessary for the performer to play from the heart and to be emotionally involved. Bach’s expression of subtle shades of emotion is coupled with a concern for vocal quality which informs his sonatas and fantasias. His displays of sentiment and the cultivation of tears and sighs in his music relate to the literary movement known as Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), after a play of 1776 by Klinger. The importance of personal freedom for the artist represented in this proto-Romantic movement translated in music into great emotional intensity and passionate outbursts, which characterize some of Bach’s keyboard music and also affected some instrumental and orchestral music by the young Haydn, who freely acknowledged his debt to the older composer.
Italy was a vital force in the pre-Classical period and provided the seeds for the development of the symphony. The operatic overture was established in Italy by 1700, and it was not long before its three sections were taken wholesale from the theatre and performed independently. Early Italian composers of symphonies were Guiseppe Tartini and G. B. Sammartini. However, German dominance in the field was soon established, notably at Mannheim, where the orchestra under Johann Stamitz became famed for its disciplined precision and later greatly impressed Mozart. The Mannheimers combined an Italianate lyricism with a dramatic force based on idiomatic instrumental devices such as crescendo and tremolo. The development of the Classical orchestra also owed much to Austrian composers such as Mathias Georg Monn and Georg Christoph Wagenseil, whose eclectic approach tempered the simplicity of the new style with an instinctive retention of contrapuntal expertise. The well-documented distinctions of national styles around the middle of the century gave way to a truly international perspective during the age of Haydn and Mozart. The cosmopolitan musical outlook of J. S. Bach’s youngest son Johann Christian Bach arose from his studies in Germany and Italy and his career as composer and performer in London. The grace, elegance, and occasional melancholy of his musical language show an immediate influence on the young Mozart.
In opera the rise of comedy proved influential throughout the century. Comic intermezzi, performed between the acts of opera seria, introduced stock characters and simple plots in real-life situations. Opera buffa soon achieved independence in works such as La Serva Padrona (1733) by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and the genre proceeded to become hugely influential, not least upon Mozart’s three collaborations with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte Le Nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan Tutte (1790). In opera seria Christoph Willibald Gluck sought to balance the various elements so that they all contributed to the drama. Invoking reason and good sense, he eschewed vocal virtuosity or over-long orchestral ritornelli, stating: “…I have always endeavoured to have my music enhance the text in a simple and natural manner, through forceful expression and appropriate declamation.” Gluck’s insistence that an opera should have ethical significance and express significant human emotions makes him an important contributor to Classical vocal style. But by the end of the century, the huge influence of the Italian opera seria was at an end, composers such as Johann Adolf Hasse and Niccolò Jommelli among the last exponents of its refined elegance.
More than any other composer, Haydn forged during the 1770s a personal synthesis of earlier idioms, combining the learned and accessible, the comic and the serious. The articulation of large-scale forms and the employment of modulation for tension and release are important elements of the Classical principle, cultivated by both Haydn and Mozart. Although the interaction of form and content involves a variety of tonal proportions within individual movements, certain consistent elements in the relationship of material and tonality have given rise to the blanket and somewhat misleading term sonata form to signify the development of Baroque binary structure found in the first movements of Classical works, and elsewhere. The term “sonata principle” more accurately describes a procedure which reflected the natural musical language of the time and which could be readily combined with other elements such as rondo or even fugue. Haydn’s motivic development of his material often contrasts with Mozart’s lyrical Italianate vein, even where the outline of their respective musical forms seems superficially similar.
The universality achieved by Haydn was enhanced throughout his music by touches of folk culture, one of the means by which he sought to fulfill the expectations of his public. His twelve “London” Symphonies (Nos. 93-104, 1791-1795) effectively illustrate the scope of his mature orchestral style. Mozart was also conscious of the need to be accessible, but at the same time was motivated in the 1780s to undertake a fruitful study of the complex procedures of J. S. Bach. Counterpoint subsequently found its way not only into symphonic contexts such as the “Jupiter” Symphony (No. 41, 1788) but also into less obvious genres such as the piano concerto. It also radically enhanced the dramatic possibilities in Mozart’s music for the theatre, especially in the delineation of individual characters within ensembles. His operatic finales demonstrate a masterly organization of tonal large-scale structures. Mozart’s musical language reconciles many opposing influences, and his instinctive juxtaposition of Italian and Viennese elements is especially reflected in his towering achievements within opera seria, opera buffa, and German Singspiel. A less integrated approach may be observed throughout church music of the period, which places arias in the style of Italian opera seria in close proximity with elaborate choral fugues.
Rhetoric was a significant influence on musical composition throughout the period, and the small-scale slurs through which Classical composers denoted their expressive intent have recently been accorded their true significance in performance. Some idea of unwritten conventions of the period and the widely held analogies with oratory may be gleaned from the treatises by Quantz (1752), Leopold Mozart (1756), C. P. E. Bach (1753, 1762), Daniel Gottlob Türk (1789), and others.
The extent to which the Classical style survived into the 19th century is debatable. Beethoven’s music is highly structured and in that sense “classical”, however expanded his concept of tonal structure; on the other hand, ease of communication ceased to be a priority within his later music. The impact of Revolutionary France brought extra-musical influences more characteristic of the Romantic period; Beethoven’s decline in productivity and increasing self-consciousness also distance him from both Haydn and Mozart. The Viennese composer Franz Schubert contained a lyric impulse and wide-ranging tonal excursions within impressive large-scale structures, such as his late piano sonatas and The Great C major Symphony (No. 9, 1825). Within Schubert’s songs, however, a Classical regard for form mingles with an instinctive imagination more characteristic of the Romantics. Although Classical structures retained an important position throughout the 19th century, it was the forms rather than the underlying principles which survived in the work of many Romantic composers.
