What was architecture like during the classical period?
In the middle of the 18th century, Europe began to move toward a new style in architecture, literature, and the arts, generally known as Classicism. While still tightly linked to the court culture and absolutism, with its formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, the new style was also a cleaner style -one that favored clearer divisions between parts, brighter contrasts and colors, and simplicity rather than complexity. The remarkable development of ideas in “natural philosophy” had established itself in the public consciousness with Newton’s physics taken as a paradigm: structures should be well-founded in axioms and be both well-articulated and orderly. This taste for structural clarity worked its way into the world of music, moving away from the layered polyphony of the Baroque period, towards a style where a melody over a subordinate harmony was preferred.
