HISTORY OF MUSIC - CLASSICAL MUSIC: The term "Classical", in music, is employed in two different directions. The people, for example, use the expression ''classical music'' considering all music divided in two main parts: ''classical'' and ''folk''. According to the musicologist, however, ''Classical Music'' has a special meaning and precise: it''s the music composed between 1750 and 1810, that includes Haydn and Mozat''s music, just like the initial Beethoven''s compositions. By the service of the high nobility, the musician was just one servant who, after providing background music for dinner and conversation, had dinning with with the other employees of the house. To please their bosses, they had to follow the musical traditions. In his piece, he respected and reflected the emotions of the court. The creative imagination wouldn''t be welcome if it represented the breakdown of traditional structures. Haydn accepted this deal and fulfilled its obligations. Mozart didn''t accepted these limitations and paid a high price for the insistence on remaining faithful to its principles. The courts have relegated it to oblivion and let him die like a beggar. Beethoven was the first to decide that he shouldn''t have obligations to anyone and demanded to be respected as an artist. Was born, with Beethoven, the romantic thought.
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC: The Classical Music shows itself refined and elegant and tends to be lighter, less complicated than the baroque. The composers try to enhance the beauty and the grace of melodies. The Orchestra is in development. The composers have stopped using the harpsichord and added more wind instruments. During the Classical Period, the instrumental music started having greater importance than the vocal. This time has been created the Sonata. It is a piece with a lot of movements to one or more instruments. The Symphony is, in fact, a sonata for orchestra. Its movements number becomes four: fast - slow - Minuet - very fast. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven was the greatest symphony composers of the Classicism. The Concerto consists of a composition for solo instrument against an orchestral mass. It has three movements: fast - slow - fast. Many pieces were written for the fortepiano, generaly called as piano to abbreviate. Bartolomeu Cristofori, italian harpsichord builder, had already completed around 1700, the manufacture of at least one of these instruments. While the harpsichord''s strings are plucked by nozzles of feathers, the piano has its strings beaten by hammers, whose dynamics can be varied according to the performer''s finger pressure. This would give to the piano great power of expression and would open a number of new possibilities. In the beginning, the piano took to became popular because the models were very poor. But in the late eighteenth century, the harpsichord had fallen into disuse, replaced by the piano.
Major classical composers: P. E. Bach (1714-1788), Gluck (1714 - 1787), J. Haydn (1732 - 1809), W. A. Mozart (1756 - 1791), L. van Beethoven (17700 1827).