Classical - Genres

Classical Style: Music in the early Classic period reflected a preference for naturalness and a desire for wide appeal. Writers distinguished between the learned style of contrapuntal writing and the more tuneful, homophonic galant style.

Genres

Serenade - Serenades are typically calm, light music. Music An instrumental composition written for a small ensemble and having characteristics of the suite and the sonata.

• Calm and light
• Purely instrumental
• Small ensemble - Although 
• Characteristics of a suite and sonata
• Begin and end movements with march-like character

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb_jQBgzU-I
- Mozart " Eine kleine Nachtmusik" Allegro (famous, typical serenade only containing strings)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Up4X1JHwqI -  Mozart 'Serenade For Winds; K. 361' 3rd Movement


Divertimento - a light and entertaining composition, typically one in the form of a suite for chamber orchestra.

• Light Hearted, entertaining, pleasant and informal 
• Small ensemble
• Accompanied banquets and social events
• minuets, marches, and theme-and-variation-movements
• Strings, winds or a combination of the two
• steady quick pulse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=830LICRzWUk - W. A. Mozart - Divertimento in D KV 334



Classical symphony - An extended piece in three or more movements for symphony orchestra.
A symphony orchestras is composed of string, wind, and percussion sections.

• Exploiting the expanded range of tone colour and dynamics of the classical orchestra.
• Four movements which evoke a wide range of emotions through contrasts of tempo and mood
• Quickly ascending rocket themes and steamroller effects (drawn-outcrescendos)
• heart of the Classical orchestra (about thirty to forty players) was the strings, assisted by woodwinds, brass, and percussion
• mingles Classical and Romantic elements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTc1mDieQI8 -Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3217H8JppI - Symphony No. 9 ~ Beethoven



Classical concerto - A composition for an orchestra and one or more solo instruments, typically in three movements. The Classical concerto introduced the cadenza, a brilliant dramatic solo passage where the soloist plays and the orchestra pauses and remains silent.

• Combines the soloist's virtuosity and interpretive abilities with the orchestra's wide range of tone colour and dynamics
• Contrast of ideas and sound that is dramatic and satisfying.
• Solo instruments in classical concertos include violin, cello, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, horn and piano. 
• First and last movement sometimes an unaccompanied show-piece fir the soloist, the Cadenza

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVKpvD3X6EM - Mozart - Piano concerto No 21, Elvira Madigan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXIZUz5mD18 - Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat, K. 271

Classical opera - 

Many characteristics of Classical music originated in the Italian opera of the first decades of the eighteenth century. An opera buffa was a full-length comic opera sung throughout, with a combination of serious and comic characters. Dialogue was set in rapid recitative with keyboard accompaniment. Arias used short, tuneful phrases, organized into periods and accompanied by simple harmonies.

Learn Listen Online...
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/learnlisteningonline/higherandadvancedhigher/musicaltopics/opera/classical.asp

• Voice and orchestral accompaniment
• Orchestra are expanded in size and nature 
• Dramatic 
• Focus on melody lead to musical syntax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVP22QCbLHI - W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM1ns5wzF3U - Classical Opera: Mozart's Castrati

String quartet - An ensemble of four musicians playing stringed instruments, usually two violins, a viola, and a cello. Haydn was the first creator of the string quartet.

• Tuneful melodic lines
• Four part harmonic blending
• A combination of four string instruments
• players would improvise and harmonise, on their own or in groups
• rich cantabile melodic writing with thematic multiplicity and embellishment
• A wide range of emotional content to tonal mysteriousness,  light-heartedness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoD3bAtmUJk - Haydn String Quartet Op 76 No 3 C major 'Kaiser' 'Emperor'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKFzy7tEXu4 -Beethoven String Quartet Op. 18 No.1 1st mvt.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwlmFGScUFQ&list=PLF41151CDFC4E519E - Mozart string quartet 16 in E flat major (Mov 1/4)

Sonata - A form of a movement consisting of three sections, the exposition, development, and recapitulation, often followed by a coda. The term sonata was increasingly applied to either a work for keyboard alone (see piano sonata), or for keyboard and one other instrument, often the violin or cello.

• Keyboard alone or for keyboard and one other instrument, often the violin or cello
• Multimovement works - exposition, development and recapitulation
• Alberti bass
• Perfect V-I cadences
• Ornamentation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqVKdDlohSQ - Mozart Sonata in B flat major K333 1st mvt


 Mozart and Haydn's settings of the Mass - A form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy (principally that of the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, and Lutheranism) to music.

The main focus of Mozart’s church music fell on the mass. No two of his mass settings are alike, for Mozart avoided clichés and found surprising solutions over and over again, even in works composed only a short while apart.

• Sacred musical composition 
• Choral voices
• Church Organ - Occasional Solo
• Multi part textures
• Long sustained notes and flowing melodys
• Contrasting dynamics, sudden forte and piano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U82yfBfNLM - Mozart: Gloria from Coronation Mass 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP4y1CsiADk - Haydn: Gloria (Missa Sancti Nicolai) 

Words and Phrases; Vocabulary - Classical

Basso Continuo: (in baroque music) an accompanying part which includes a bass line and harmonies, typically played on a keyboard instrument and with other instruments such as cello or lute.

Polorized Texture: 2 high parts and a gap between melody and bass

Terraced dynamics: is connected to the number of instruments being played. i.e. Blocks of f and p, more instruments = louder (f), fewer instuments = quiter (p)

Rapid chord change: Chords are changed at a faster rate (the speed at which chords change) i.e. I-IV-Ib-V in a bar compared to a whole bar of chord I

Heavily ornamented melodic lines: Music A note or group of notes that embellishes a melody.

Episodic construction such as ritornello form:  ritornello, ( Italian: “return”)  a recurrent musical section that alternates with different episodes of contrasting material. The repetition can be exact or varied to a greater or lesser extent. In the concerto grosso the full orchestra (tutti) has the ritornello; the solo group (concertino) has the contrasting episodes.

Rococo:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlMyFXiMSc
Music A style of composition arising in 18th-century France, often viewed as an extension of the baroque, and characterized by a high degree of ornamentation and lightness of expression.


Style Galant:  A new style of classical music, fashionable from the 1720s to the 1770s. It consciously simplified contrapuntal texture and intense composing techniques that realized a pattern on the page and substituted a clear leading voice with a transparent accompaniment. 

Empfindsamer stil:  The Empfindsamer Stil (literally sensitive style) is a style of musical composition developed in 18th century Germany, intended to express "true and natural" feelings, and featuring sudden contrasts of mood.   

Divertimento: a light and entertaining composition, typically one in the form of a suite for chamber orchestra.
    
    
Serenade:  The most important and prevalent type of serenade in music history is a work for large instrumental ensemble in multiple movements, related to the divertimento, and mainly being composed in the Classical and Romantic periods, though a few examples exist from the 20th century. Usually the character of the work is lighter than other multiple-movement works for large ensemble (for example the symphony), with tunefulness being more important than thematic development or dramatic intensity.

    

    

Classical - Composers

Mozart

http://www.biography.com/people/wolfgang-mozart-9417115
1756-1791




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0UmrCXxVA

Mozart - The best of Mozart


Prolific Austrian composer and child prodigy; master of the classical style in all its forms of his time.
 Perhaps his best-admired work is in opera, the piano concerto and sonata, the symphony, and in the string quartetand string quintet. Mozart also wrote much work for solo piano, other forms of chamber music, masses and other religious music, and numerous dances, divertimentos, and other forms of light entertainment.


Haydn

http://www.biography.com/people/franz-joseph-haydn-9332156
1732 -1809

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmZF3kBZQ6E

Haydn- The Best of Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn was among the creators of the fundamental genres of classical music, and his influence upon later composers is immense. Haydn’s most celebrated pupil was Ludwig van Beethoven, and his musical form casts a huge shadow over the music of subsequent composers such as Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms.

He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.


Beethoven

http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862
1770- 1827



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-fFHeTX70Q

Beethoven - The Best of Beethoven
Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770, in Bonn, Germany. He was an innovator, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet, and combining vocals and instruments in a new way. His personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear.

His best known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. He also composed other chamber music, choral works (including the celebrated Missa Solemnis), and songs.