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Sample tracks

Historical hooks

1765 – James Watt’s first steam engine 1768 – James Cook’s first voyage of exploration to the Pacific 1776 – US Declaration of Independence 1789 – French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen  –  The storming of the Bastille 1781 – Kant  publishes Critique of Pure Reason 1793 – Execution of Louis XVI 1796 – Jenner develops vaccine for smallpox

Gabriel’s Le Petit Trianon at Versailles, France (1762-68)

Music in the Classical Era

• The nobility were still important as patrons of music but the wealthy middle classes also increasingly commissioned one-off compositions and performances. The late eighteenth also saw the rise of the public concert, often paid for by subscription and organised by impresarios.
• The eighteenth century saw the rise of amateur musicians (both noble and middle class), who needed a repertoire of music to play that catered for a wide range of abilities. This period also saw a large number of self-study tutors for various instruments.
• Classical forms and textures are somewhat simpler than in the Baroque and this partially accounts for the amazing productivity of many Classical composers, most famously Haydn and Mozart, who wrote many hundreds of sonatas, symphonies and chamber works between them

Lancret’s – The Servant Justified (1730s)

• the Italian operatic style of the early eighteenth century popularised a more formulaic approach to both harmony and form, which again allowed composers to be incredibly productive(c.f. the early C20 Broadway musical)
• During the Enlightenment people became less willing to accept traditional religious and scholarly wisdom, valuing instead individual reason and experience – the public pursuit of learning was encouraged. Listeners were expected to engage and understand the music rather than be swept along by its emotion.
• The emphasis on music that was lighter, prettier and more elegant at the beginning of the Classical era echoes a similar move in architecture away from the grandness of the Baroque. Louis XVI, for example, was more interested in summer palaces and hunting lodges than majestic castles.
• A development from the late Baroque was the establishment of equal temperament, which meant that composers could modulate more widely and confidently; changes of key were increasingly used to create dramatic contrasts (in Baroque music the modulations tend to be less conspicuous as part of a continuous flow

Stylistic features

Typical pieces (all tracks available on Moodle)