What is classical music?
Classical music, strictly defined, means music produced in the western world between 1750 and 1820. This music included opera, chamber music, choral pieces, and music requiring a full orchestra. To most, however, classical music refers to all of the above types of music within most time periods before the 20th century. Classical music in its limited definition includes the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. From Mozart, a huge range of pieces offer us a chance to enjoy. Mozart wrote symphonies, music for quartets and quintets, chamber orchestra pieces, choral pieces, piano concertos, and entire operas. In total, he wrote over 600 musical pieces. He is perhaps best known for his opera, The Magic Flute . Most also recognize Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, as well as a number of his symphonies and concertos. Classical music would not be quite the same without Beethoven, who is particularly known for his symphonies. Beethoven’s sixth symphony is probably most recognized because of its pastorale
The formal curriculum in this course begins by asking this question. As I told the students, we’re not looking for a concise dictionary definition. Instead, we want to name as many characteristics of classical music as we can, in an attempt to describe as fully as possible what it is in the present era, and how it functions. This was a discussion that could have gone on all day. But here’s some of what we came up with: • Classical music is western, suggested one of the students. It’s European music, the music of western culture. That, I thought, was an important point to make in today’s multicultural climate, where musical styles from all over the world are starting to influence each other. I asked whether any non-western idioms could be found in classical music.My own instinct would have been to answer “no, for all practical purposes” or “only rarely.” But the students felt otherwise. Yes, said several of them, non-western styles can be found in classical music.One example was Debussy
WHO LISTENS TO IT? Vignettes from the American scene Frank T. Manheim The term, “classical music” did not yet exist in the 1913 Webster Unabridged Dictionary. Music critics and writers into the 1920s like the American Henry Finck and the French epitome of broad culture, Romaine Rolland, widely read in America, spoke only of “music”. The British writer, Constant Lambert, before he died at an early age, created a stir by claiming that what we now call “classical music” was in decline (Music Ho, 1934). He too didnt call it by that name. By 1934 the term, “classical music”, had come into use in America to distinguish “serious” music from popular styles that were burgeoning on 78-rpm shellac records and AM radio. In the 1930s and 1940s classical radio reached huge audiences by todays standards. Metropolitan Opera broadcasts began in 1931 and NBCs radio orchestra broadcasts reached millions of regular listeners. According to Pegolottis biography of radio and early TV host, Deems Taylor (2003
