# I wonder what chamber music exactly is, help pls.



## SamilGungor (Feb 2, 2015)

Hello guys, how can you define chamber music exactly? For example, can WTC or Goldbergs or English Suites etc. kinds of solo keyboard works or solo violin sonatas & partitas be defined as "Chamber music"? Or Bach's concertos, trio sonatas?


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

SamilGungor, Wiki has defined Chamber Music as such:

"_Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments-traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part_."

Piano Variations such as Beethoven's _Diabelli Variations_ and Bach's _Goldberg Variations_ fall under "Solo" music and not Chamber. Piano Sonatas and other such solo piano works like Bach's WTC would also fall under the "Solo" category.

A Concerto would fall under the Orchestral category and not Chamber. Brahms' and Mendelssohn's Violin Concertos, Beethoven and Mozart's Piano Concertos (and so forth) would fall under Orchestral music along with symphonies.

Here are some popular Chamber music genres: 
- String Quartets (and Quintets, Sextets, Trio, Octets). 
- Piano Trios (and Quartets, Quintets). 
- Cello Sonatas and Violin Sonatas (the name can be misleading, as they normally are accompanied by piano, making them duos, and not "Solo" music as their name would indicate).


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## SamilGungor (Feb 2, 2015)

DiesIraeVIX said:


> SamilGungor, Wiki has defined Chamber Music as such:
> 
> "_Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments-traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part_."
> 
> ...


Thank you. I knew that chamber music is played with small group of instruments but I don' know how "small" it should be. For example some Brandenburg Concertos can be played with 7 instruments, I don't know if this is small enough or not.

I can guess that Classical, Romantic and Modern era concertos would fall under Orchestral category, I only wonder if Baroque era concertos can be considered as "Chamber Music", because as I said, I have seen some Baroque concertos which are played by a very small orchestra.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

SamilGungor said:


> Thank you. I knew that chamber music is played with small group of instruments but I don' know how "small" it should be. For example some Brandenburg Concertos can be played with 7 instruments, I don't know if this is small enough or not.
> 
> I can guess that Classical, Romantic and Modern era concertos would fall under Orchestral category, I only wonder if Baroque era concertos can be considered as "Chamber Music", because as I said, I have seen some Baroque concertos which are played by a very small orchestra.


Two parts of the definitions already given you are key: Chamber, as in can be played in a room (a large one) vs. a hall, because the fullest volume from a chamber ensemble is not lost in such a room, and One Player Per Part -- this means, at its most rigid, that there is no doubling of two instruments even playing the same note for more force or volume, i.e. each player has an independent line without which some key element would be lost, all the parts together making the musical sense.

It is quite safe to call the Brandenburg Concerti "Chamber Music" these are smaller ensembles, and the works were written to be played in a large room, and not anticipating a large concert hall.

This gets 'looser,' with a chamber orchestra, which can be up to about thirty players... the orchestra in a Mozart Piano Concerto was not often more, and technically, that is a chamber orchestra. There, some doubling of parts may also occur.

Fuller orchestral works (that many more players) are "orchestral music," and that would include concerti, almost without exception most of the Beethoven and later Romantic concerti, though there is a solo player or players in those. Another older general term other than concerto for those works where a soloist is prominent is 'concertante' -- still an orchestral work with a soloist with a prominent part. Perfect example is Mozart's two _Sinfonia concertante,_ one with a woodwind quartet as soloists (oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon), the other with violin and viola soloists. (Concertos, from Mozart on, some from earlier eras, are very much in only a slight variation on the classical symphonic form.)

Full orchestral works with chorus (and sometimes vocal soloists as well) are called 'choral works.' It is understood there is a chorus _and_ the full orchestra.

Numbers for the sizes of these groups vary and aren't written in stone, though there are a generally average numbers of players more or less. (Chamber music, especially, can be two to sometimes ca. + - twenty players, and that then would be partially defined by the 'one player per part' measure, or the genre defined by that particular quality of the writing.) A little further in number of players, nature of the work, it is then a chamber orchestra


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## SamilGungor (Feb 2, 2015)

PetrB said:


> Two parts of the definitions already given you are key: Chamber, as in can be played in a room (a large one) vs. a hall, because the fullest volume from a chamber ensemble is not lost in such a room, and One Player Per Part -- this means, at its most rigid, that there is no doubling of two instruments even playing the same note for more force or volume, i.e. each player has an independent line without which some key element would be lost, all the parts together making the musical sense.
> 
> It is quite safe to call the Brandenburg Concerti "Chamber Music" these are smaller ensembles, and the works were written to be played in a large room, and not anticipating a large concert hall.
> 
> ...


Thank you very much for the very informative reply.


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