European classical music: Culture and Travel Context

Though many civilisations around the world have a tradition of classical music, when used as a generic term, the phrase is usually understood as referring to the type of classical music that arose in Europe.

While classical music has roots in the Middle Ages, the best-known epochs are the Baroque period (late 16th to mid 18th century), the Classical period (mid 18th to early 19th century) and the Romantic period (19th to early 20th centuries); a similar periodization is used for European art. Of course, in practice the transition from one period to the next occurred gradually over a number of years, and music written during the transition periods often featured aspects of the periods they were straddling. Much classical music also continues to be written today, and contemporary classical music has at least a niche following in many parts of the world.

Classical ensembles have usually been dependent on patrons. In the olden days, it was particularly large imperial courts such as those of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, France, England, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Bavaria, Burgundy, the Kingdom of Naples and the Papacy and Roman Catholic Church generally, as well as prominent city states such as Venice and Florence that supported music, while nowadays, it's often national, provincial or municipal governments or foundations started by wealthy individuals and corporations.

The Baroque was an artistic period from the late 16th to mid-18th century, including painting, interior design and other artistic expressions. Baroque music marked the establishment of tonality, with common pitches, keys and chord progressions, which formed melodies, often polyphonic. Some of the most famous Baroque composers include Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Pachelbel. The Baroque period saw the development of the concerto, a piece of music for one or more solo instruments accompanied by an ensemble.

The period also saw the development of opera, with its stories often inspired by various mythologies or historical events from around the world, in particular Greek mythology (e.g. the myth of Orpheus). Two distinct operatic traditions developed during the period; the Italian and French traditions. While opera was invented in Italy by Jacopo Peri (whose first opera, Dafne, premiered in 1598 but is now lost), Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, which permiered in 1607, is the oldest one to still be regularly performed today. Eventually, Italian opera would spread throughout all of Europe and become the preferred form of entertainment for the nobility across the continent, except in France, where the Italian-born Jean-Baptiste Lully was hired by King Louis XIV to create a uniquely French operatic style instead. Lully's Cadmus et Hermione, the first ever French opera, premiered in Paris in 1673. In contrast to the Italian style, the French style placed less emphasis on individual virtuosic singing and extempore florid ornamentation, and instead featured large choruses and ballet segments as part of the opera. In England, Henry Purcell would develop a uniquely English operatic style with Dido and Aeneas in 1689, though his untimely death in 1695 at the age of 36 meant that the genre failed to reach its full potential.

The late Baroque and Rococo periods saw the development of opera buffa, or comic opera, in the city-state of Naples. It focused on stories about regular people instead of the heroic kings or gods of the then-prevalent operatic style, also known as opera seria, or serious opera. As these were intended more as entertainment for the masses than the nobility, many of the early opere buffe were written in Neapolitan, the dominant vernacular of the common people in Naples, instead of Italian. Some early Neapolitan-language opere buffe include Leonardo Vinci's Li zite 'ngalera (1722) and Leonardo Leo's L'Alidoro (1740). Many opere buffe were also originally written as short intermezzi to be performed during the intervals between acts of opere serie, perhaps the most famous being Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La serva padrona (1733).

The Classical period from 1730 to 1820 saw the formation of the genres and ensembles still familiar today, from string trios and quartets to symphony orchestras. Polyphony was comparatively deemphasized in favor of melodies with supportive accompaniment, especially in the early post-Baroque Rococo style of people like Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Giovanni Sammartini and Johann Stamitz, who were writing vocal and orchestral works in the 1730s and following that radically broke from the denser textures and more active bass lines of composers like J.S. Bach. Among the most famous composers in the Classical style were Christoph Willibald Gluck, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The early works of Ludwig van Beethoven, Gioachino Rossini and Franz Schubert are sometimes also considered to be in this style, although Beethoven led the transition toward the Romantic period. It was during the Classical period that the symphony, symphony orchestra, and concept of thematic development now usually confusingly called "sonata form" though generally confined to a single movement became cornerstones of the overall genre.

The genre of opera buffa reached its zenith during the 18th and 19th centuries, with composers such as Domenico Cimarosa, Giovanni Paisiello, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gioachino Rossini. German opera would also begin to grow in prominence during this era, with Mozart's Singspiel Die Zauberflöte (1791) elevating the art form to a new level. A new genre of French opera known as opera comique would begin to develop in France, with André Grétry being the best known exponent of this form from the Classical period.

Romanticism was a mainly 19th-century cultural movement which challenged Enlightenment ideals of reason, promoting the individual's emotions, and relationship to nature and spirituality. Romantic music became an expression of national identity and a common past, with inspiration from the Middle Ages, folk culture, and pagan mythology, including Greek and Roman, Celtic, Germanic and Slavic mythology. Beethoven's work established elements of the aesthetic and style which were emulated and developed by other composers throughout the rest of the 19th century. Some representative composers, starting with the generation after Beethoven, were Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Gioachino Rossini, Jacques Offenbach, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Johann Strauss II, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák and Edvard Grieg. The Romantic period saw a shift in musical performance away from royal courts, whose power and wealth had been reduced during the Napoleonic Wars, to public performance halls.

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Text adapted from European classical music by Wikivoyage contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.