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Classical

A continuous tradition of written-down sacred and secular European music — from neumes scratched onto medieval parchment to sound files exported from...

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A continuous tradition of written-down sacred and secular European music — from neumes scratched onto medieval parchment to sound files exported from Sibelius last week. Key sections include: Classical; Where it begins; The Baroque; The Classical era proper; The Romantic century; Modernism and after; Twelve composers worth knowing first; Forms you will meet; The orchestra, schematically; What to listen to first.

Key sections

  • 01Classical
  • 02Where it begins
  • 03The Baroque
  • 04The Classical era proper
  • 05The Romantic century
  • 06Modernism and after
  • 07Twelve composers worth knowing first
  • 08Forms you will meet
  • 09The orchestra, schematically
  • 10What to listen to first
  • 11A glossary, briefly
  • 12Watch this performance

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Slide outline
  1. 01Classical
  2. 02Where it begins
  3. 03The Baroque
  4. 04The Classical era proper
  5. 05The Romantic century
  6. 06Modernism and after
  7. 07Twelve composers worth knowing first
  8. 08Forms you will meet
  9. 09The orchestra, schematically
  10. 10What to listen to first
  11. 11A glossary, briefly
  12. 12Watch this performance
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Music
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Updated
2026-05-17
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Presentation Transcript

Detailed slide-by-slide text content extracted from this presentation.

Slide 01

Where it begins

  • Page I
  • A continuous tradition of written-down sacred and secular European music — from neumes scratched onto medieval parchment to sound files exported from Sibelius last week.
  • The story usually starts with Gregorian chant — anonymous, monophonic, modal — sung in monasteries from roughly the 9th century onward. Around the year 900, scribes began notating contour with neumes; by the 11th century, Guido of Arezzo's four-line staff fixed pitches in space. Polyphony followed: Léonin and Pérotin at Notre-Dame de Paris in the 1170s wrote some of the first multi-voice works that survive in legible form. Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame (c. 1365) is the first complete Mass setting attributable to a single composer. By Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) the language was fully imitative. By Palestrina (d. 1594) it was canonical.
Slide 02

The Baroque

  • Page II
  • c. 1600 – 1750. Tonality, basso continuo, the rise of the concerto and the opera house.
  • Around 1600, a group of Florentine intellectuals called the Camerata invented opera trying to reconstruct ancient Greek drama. Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607) is the first opera still in repertory. The Baroque century that followed saw the standardization of major-minor tonality, the figured bass, and the violin family. Corelli codified the trio sonata. Vivaldi turned out 500 concertos at the Ospedale della Pietà.
  • Bach, working in Leipzig as cantor of St. Thomas's church, brought Baroque polyphony to its summit: the Mass in B Minor, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the St. Matthew Passion. Handel, his exact contemporary, went south and west — Italian opera, then English oratorio, then Messiah (1741). Both died nearly blind. Both had been operated on by the same itinerant English oculist, John Taylor.
  • Ascending C-major scale, half note resolution — the lingua franca of common-practice tonality.
Slide 03

The Classical era proper

  • Page III
  • c. 1750 – 1820. Vienna becomes the center; sonata-allegro form becomes the engine.
  • Haydn invented (or near enough) the string quartet and the symphony as we know them. Across 104 symphonies, six dozen quartets and the late oratorios The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), he taught Europe how four instruments and four movements could think. Mozart, his friend and admirer, fused Italian melodic gift to Haydnesque architecture and added to the canon the three Da Ponte operas (Le nozze di Figaro, 1786; Don Giovanni, 1787; Così fan tutte, 1790), the late symphonies (No. 39, 40, 41), and the unfinished Requiem (K. 626).
  • Beethoven cracked the form open. The Eroica (1803) doubles the length of any prior symphony. The Ninth (1824) puts a chorus in one. The late quartets (Op. 127–135) are still where composers go to learn what is possible.
Slide 04

The Romantic century

  • Page IV
  • c. 1820 – 1900. The orchestra grows. The composer becomes a hero, a sufferer, a nationalist.
  • Schubert wrote 600 lieder, dying at 31. Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (1830) put a recurring idée fixe through five movements of opium-drenched program music. Chopin lived in salons and wrote almost exclusively for piano. Liszt invented the recital, the symphonic poem, and the celebrity tour.
  • Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth to stage Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876). Brahms, his stubborn opposite, kept faith with absolute form: four symphonies, the German Requiem, the late clarinet works.
  • Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky in Russia. Dvořák and Smetana in Bohemia. Verdi in Italy. Mahler in Vienna and New York, expanding the symphony into a cosmic vessel — the Second ("Resurrection," 1894) ends with a chorus singing of the soul's rebirth.
Slide 05

Modernism and after

  • Page V
  • 1900 – present. Tonality fractures. Many languages co-exist.
  • Debussy dissolved harmony into color (Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, 1894). Schoenberg suspended it (Pierrot lunaire, 1912) and then organized its absence with the twelve-tone method. Stravinsky shocked Paris with Le Sacre du printemps (1913), then spent decades reinventing himself — neoclassical, then serial. Bartók fused Hungarian folk modes to high modernism. Shostakovich wrote symphonies under Stalin's eye. Messiaen transcribed birdsong. Ligeti made micropolyphonic clouds (Atmosphères, 1961). Reich and Glass found minimalism in repetition. Today: Adès, Saariaho, Andriessen, Adams, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Caroline Shaw.
Slide 06

Twelve composers worth knowing first

  • Page VI
  • An entry list, not a canon. Hear one piece by each.
  • 1685–1750
  • Johann Sebastian Bach
  • The summit of polyphony. Start with the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 or any cello suite.
  • 1685–1759
  • George Frideric Handel
  • Italian opera and English oratorio. Messiah (1741); Water Music (1717).
  • 1732–1809
  • Joseph Haydn
  • Father of the symphony and quartet. Symphony No. 104 "London"; the Op. 76 quartets.
  • 1756–1791
  • W. A. Mozart
  • Operatic genius, instrumental architect. Don Giovanni; Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter".
  • 1770–1827
  • Ludwig van Beethoven
  • Bridge to Romanticism. Symphony No. 5; Op. 131 String Quartet.
  • 1797–1828
  • Franz Schubert
  • Lied and chamber. Winterreise (1827); String Quintet D. 956.
  • 1813–1883
  • Richard Wagner
  • The total artwork. Tristan und Isolde (1865); the Ring cycle.
  • 1833–1897
  • Johannes Brahms
  • Late Romantic classicism. Symphony No. 4; the late piano pieces, Opp. 116–119.
  • 1860–1911
  • Gustav Mahler
  • The symphony as world. Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection"; Das Lied von der Erde.
  • 1862–1918
  • Claude Debussy
  • Impressionism. La mer (1905); the two books of Préludes.
  • 1882–1971
  • Igor Stravinsky
  • Three styles in one life. Le Sacre du printemps (1913); Symphony of Psalms.
  • 1906–1975
  • Dmitri Shostakovich
  • 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, one century of Soviet history. Symphony No. 5; String Quartet No. 8.
Slide 07

Forms you will meet

  • Page VII
  • Sonata-allegro formExposition · development · recapitulation. The engine of first movements 1750–1900.
  • c.1750+
  • FugueA subject stated, answered, and contrapuntally combined. Bach's Art of Fugue is the textbook.
  • Baroque
  • ConcertoSoloist vs. orchestra. Vivaldi codified it; Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms perfected it.
  • 17c+
  • SymphonyFour-movement orchestral cycle. Haydn 104, Mozart 41, Beethoven 9, Mahler 9 (and a half).
  • c.1750+
  • Lied / art songVoice + piano, often setting a poem. Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Mahler, Strauss.
  • 19c
  • Tone poemSingle-movement orchestral narrative. Liszt invented it; Strauss perfected it (Also sprach Zarathustra, 1896).
  • 19c
  • Twelve-tone rowAll 12 chromatic pitches ordered, then transposed/inverted/retrograded. Schoenberg, 1923.
  • 1923+
Slide 08

The orchestra, schematically

  • Page VIII
  • A modern symphony orchestra of c. 90–110 players, seated as for the late Romantic repertoire.
  • Standard concert seating, viewed from the audience.
Slide 09

What to listen to first

  • Page IX
  • Ten recordings that are themselves part of the canon.
  • Bach — Goldberg VariationsGlenn Gould, 1955 (Columbia). The recording that made Bach modern.
  • 1955
  • Beethoven — Symphony No. 9Furtwängler, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, 1951.
  • 1951
  • Mozart — Le nozze di FigaroErich Kleiber, Vienna Philharmonic, 1955 (Decca).
  • 1955
  • Mahler — Symphony No. 9Bernstein, Berlin Philharmonic, 1979 (DG).
  • 1979
  • Stravinsky — Le Sacre du printempsBoulez, Cleveland Orchestra, 1969 (CBS).
  • 1969
  • Debussy — Préludes Book IKrystian Zimerman, 1991 (DG).
  • 1991
  • Shostakovich — String Quartet No. 8Borodin Quartet, 1984.
  • 1984
  • Górecki — Symphony No. 3Dawn Upshaw, London Sinfonietta, 1992 (Nonesuch). Sold a million.
  • 1992
  • Pärt — Tabula RasaKremer, Schnittke, Lithuanian CO, 1984 (ECM).
  • 1984
  • Reich — Music for 18 MusiciansSteve Reich and Musicians, 1978 (ECM).
  • 1978
  • Watch Gould's 1955 Goldbergs on YouTube →
Slide 10

A glossary, briefly

  • Bonus
  • Words you will hear at intermission.
  • Allegro · Andante · AdagioTempo markings: fast · walking · slow.
  • it.
  • Forte · PianoLoud · soft. The forte-piano (later pianoforte) is named for being able to do both.
  • it.
  • CadenzaA solo passage, often improvised or written-out, near the end of a movement.
  • it.
  • CodaA concluding passage that closes a movement after the main material.
  • it.
  • Tutti"All" — the whole orchestra plays, often as the answer to a soloist.
  • it.
  • Da capo (D.C.)"From the head" — return to the beginning. Defines the Baroque aria.
  • it.
  • Köchel · BWV · D. · Op.Catalog numbers: Mozart (K.), Bach (BWV), Schubert (D.), most others (Op.).
  • cat.
Slide 11

Watch this performance

  • Page X
  • Illustrative placeholder concert-hall image (picsum.photos). The pause before the A.
  • Featured
  • Beethoven · Symphony No. 9 · Finale
  • Leonard Bernstein conducts an "Ode to Freiheit" in Berlin, December 25, 1989 — three weeks after the Wall fell. The choral finale of the Ninth, performed by an orchestra and chorus assembled from East and West.
  • Watch · Bernstein Beethoven 9 Berlin 1989 →
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