# Who ushered in the Classical era?



## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

I ask this question because there for later eras there are clear game changers, at least as I understand it. Beethoven for example arguably caused the shift into romanticism. Wagner arguably created the late romantic idiom, and Schoenberg and Stravinsky arguably spawned the modern era of music. All I've heard is that Bach perfected the Baroque while his sons and the younger generation were doing classical while at the end of his life Bach was still doing the Baroque thing. So is there any single composer who caused the shift into the Classical period away from the Baroque period? Obvious names like Haydn and Mozart I don't think qualify, because I think the Classical era was in full swing by the time they came around, even if they were incredibly influential in it. I might be wrong about any of these arguable things I mentioned, and I'd welcome any correction or discussion about this. So in short, what caused the change from Baroque to Classical?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Domenico Scarlatti, Rameau, Handel to a degree were a few composers that were instrumental in the transition between the Baroque and Classical Eras. The first composers that really shaped the Early Classical sound were the composers from the so called "Mannheim" school, which included Johann Stamitz, Richter, Carl Stamitz and Franzi.

But overall, I think the transition was pretty smooth and there was no real "major game changer" regarding this transition.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Probably C.P.E. Bach


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Agree with violadude. There were earlier precursors, but the "galante"-era composers (the Bach boys and the Manheimers among others) set up the final shift to "classical" music. To my knowledge, that style appears first, unmistakably, in early Haydn. His perfection of sonata form ended forever the monopoly of the "single affect" idea. From the 1760s forward, serious music would often involve multiple affects and themes working either together or in opposition in the same movements.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I confess... it was me.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Probably C.P.E. Bach


In honor of the new Star Wars movie, from our local classical music DJ:


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Dedalus said:


> . . . Beethoven for example arguably caused the shift into romanticism.


I can't really agree with this Beethoven claim, but I don't want to sidetrack the thread with hair splitting.

For me the biggest shift away from baroque in Bach's sons is clearly J. C. Bach, not so much C.P.E. or W. F. It seems all the classic era gestures are in place with his music. I am very surprised though to find on Wikipedia that Johann Stamitz preceded him. I had that backward in my mind.


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## PJaye (May 22, 2015)

For me, Giovanni Pergolesi’s music often has a stylistic affinity with the classical era. I hear something of the spirit of that time in his work as if he was a man looking ahead to that time at some points –although he does in other pieces sound utterly in his baroque element. I like that he has both of those characteristics –for me anyway. That’s what I hear. I haven’t listened to his operas yet, so I can’t comment on those. I’m not sure if he was that influential to musicians outside of his own time though, so maybe he played a small part. I just wish he’d lived a little longer.


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## Andolink (Oct 29, 2012)

Johann Adolf Hasse's operas of the early 1730's show clear signs of the move away from Baroque complexity and counterpoint to the melody driven unornamented simplicity of the galante and classical styles. The arias from an opera like Cleofide (1731) are very noticably un-Baroque sounding to me and already on the road to the world of Haydn and Mozart.


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## Lyricus (Dec 11, 2015)

Georg Philipp Teleman I think deserves the honor, as he likewise influenced C. P. E. Bach. I think after that they're merely building on foundations already laid. I don't know the chronology well enough to say if his transitional works are before or after Hasse's, but he's the elder of the two.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Weston said:


> I can't really agree with this Beethoven claim, but I don't want to sidetrack the thread with hair splitting.


What Beethoven's music itself is is perhaps debatable, but I don't see how it is debatable that he caused the_ shift into Romanticism_.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Also G.B. Sammartini:

_"Sammartini is especially associated with the formation of the concert symphony through both the shift from a brief opera-overture style and the introduction of a new seriousness and use of thematic development that prefigure Haydn and Mozart. Some of his works are described as galant, a style associated with Enlightenment ideals, while "the prevailing impression left by Sammartini's work... [is that] he contributed greatly to the development of a Classical style that achieved its moment of greatest clarity precisely when his long, active life was approaching its end".[_1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Sammartini


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

The funny thing is, the Baroque Era started out as a movement back to simplicity and away from the complexities of Renaissance counterpoint. Then by the end of the Baroque Era, the Classical Galante style was a move away from the complexities that had been built up in the Baroque Era.

That seems to be a running theme in music history. Whenever music gets too complex composers try to reel it back to a more simple style, and then they quickly realize how boring it is and make it more complex all over again. A similar thing seems to have happened recently with regards to the original minimalist movement vs. the post-minimalist composers of today.

Not that Monteverdi is boring *ahem*, not at all. And not the Stamitz...

Okay, maybe Stamitz is a little boring sometimes


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

+1, and much of the Mannheim school products.

Sammartini is well represented in the boring music league, too - by today´s standards. 
Though recordings mean a lot.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

violadude said:


> The funny thing is, the Baroque Era started out as a movement back to simplicity and away from the complexities of Renaissance counterpoint. Then by the end of the Baroque Era, the Classical Galante style was a move away from the complexities that had been built up in the Baroque Era.
> 
> That seems to be a running theme in music history. Whenever music gets too complex composers try to reel it back to a more simple style, and then they quickly realize how boring it is and make it more complex all over again. A similar thing seems to have happened recently with regards to the original minimalist movement vs. the post-minimalist composers of today.
> 
> ...


You nailed it, violadude. It happens in the non-classical world too. Cool jazz simplified bebop. Punk was a back to basics reaction to overblown progressive rock, etc.

With very few exceptions I've leaned toward the more complex styles, hating the change back toward the simple until I learn better. For many years I wouldn't listen to anything post-Bach / Pre Beethoven. I've grown to appreciate the elegance of the "simpler" styles little by little as I've gotten older, but you may still see me dissing Mozart now and then. It's an ongoing process.

I wonder if there is a thread about complexity vs. simplicity in musical taste. And how do other aspects of the personality relate to those tastes?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Dedalus said:


> I ask this question because there for later eras there are clear game changers, at least as I understand it. Beethoven for example arguably caused the shift into romanticism. Wagner arguably created the late romantic idiom, and Schoenberg and Stravinsky arguably spawned the modern era of music. All I've heard is that Bach perfected the Baroque while his sons and the younger generation were doing classical while at the end of his life Bach was still doing the Baroque thing. So is there any single composer who caused the shift into the Classical period away from the Baroque period?


There is no single composer who effected the change from Baroque to Classical. Nor are there clear game changers accounting for any other transition between eras. All of the examples you cite are just after the fact simplifications and obfuscations of reality - the kind of thing that tends to happen when the authors of music history texts grub indiscriminately for a satisfying and easily digested narrative.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Brilliant post, EdwardBast, as usual. :tiphat:

Would just like to say, though, that simplification is what we have to do all the time, or our brains just couldn't cope.

Thus, Wordsworth is generally credited with kicking off the Romantic Movement in literature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads
But of course a lot of poets had already shown 'romantic' tendencies - Thomson, Burns, Blake - so a new label was invented: 'pre-Romantics'.

I think as long as we recognise that it's oversimplifying, there's nothing wrong in a thread like this.
In fact, it's fascinating - thanks, OP!

It will make me look more carefully at 'baroque' compositions, looking for seeds of the classical.
At least - it _might_ make me look more carefully, after Christmas... :lol:


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

violadude said:


> That seems to be a running theme in music history. Whenever music gets too complex composers try to reel it back to a more simple style, and then they quickly realize how boring it is and make it more complex all over again. A similar thing seems to have happened recently with regards to the original minimalist movement vs. the post-minimalist composers of today.


I think a case could be made that the modernists tried to simplify the complex emotional/structural/harmonic paraphernalia of late romanticism as well, but the simplification ended up creating unexpected complexities of its own.

Neoclassicism was also a reaction against the early modernist movement's continued elements of romanticism.


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> There is no single composer who effected the change from Baroque to Classical. Nor are there clear game changers accounting for any other transition between eras. All of the examples you cite are just after the fact simplifications and obfuscations of reality - the kind of thing that tends to happen when the authors of music history texts grub indiscriminately for a satisfying and easily digested narrative.


I think this must be somewhat or perhaps mostly correct. One good reason for this is if I counted right, no less than 13 composers have already been proposed as people who were involved in the transition from the Baroque to the Classical era. I suppose even though it can't be whittled down to a single person, I am curious about the transition between these two eras, as I personally don't have as firm of an understanding of how that transition took place compared to the later eras. I've listened to a handful of the suggestions put forth such as Johann Stamitz, and and G. B. Sammartini and indeed, I can see them both as transitional figures with elements of Baroque and Classical in them. Sammartini seems more Baroque to me (I think he was earlier?) and Stamitz seems more Classical, still they both seem transitional and not quite either one.

I thank Ingelou for her endorsement of this topic as I also find it quite fascinating. I essentially agree with her as well, that we like to simplify things and put them into boxes with labels, and it's just something we humans like to do. Yes, I know, the world doesn't work like that, but that doesn't mean I can't learn more about how this transition took place and who was instrumental (pun not intended) in it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Brilliant post, EdwardBast, as usual. :tiphat:
> 
> Would just like to say, though, that simplification is what we have to do all the time, or our brains just couldn't cope.
> 
> ...


I agree. It is good to look for unifying threads and turning points in history. I'm just saying that if they ever seem clear and easy to find, one had better look more closely. I'm glad the one from Baroque to Classical seems suitably messy and hard to pin down.  The sheer number of transitional figures mentioned above in this thread does justice to the complexity of the issues involved.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Weston said:


> You nailed it, violadude. It happens in the non-classical world too. Cool jazz simplified bebop. Punk was a back to basics reaction to overblown progressive rock, etc.
> 
> With very few exceptions I've leaned toward the more complex styles, hating the change back toward the simple until I learn better. For many years I wouldn't listen to anything post-Bach / Pre Beethoven. I've grown to appreciate the elegance of the "simpler" styles little by little as I've gotten older, but you may still see me dissing Mozart now and then. It's an ongoing process.
> 
> I wonder if there is a thread about complexity vs. simplicity in musical taste. And how do other aspects of the personality relate to those tastes?


Is it really true that Mozart's music is really simpler than (eg) Sweekinck's or Buxtehude's? When I read books about Mozart, it all sounds pretty complicated.

People in the 17th century who didn't like baroque said (I think) it was ugly, and that it didn't have enough hooks.

For me the move to classical style was a sort dumbing down, designed to open up the music to people who just want to lie back and let the lovely music wash over them. But underneath the bonnet the engine may have some pretty complicated things going on -- but listeners, as opposed to techies -- needn't bother their heads about such things.

With baroque you may have to pay a bit of attention and notice the voices twerking round each other, sometimes even causing nasty cacophonies.

By the way, when I say baroque I mean people like Titelouze and Frescobaldi and some of Bach (but you have to be careful with Bach because he had a foot in both camps.) In France, the dumbing down had already set in with Lully, for example.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Agree with violadude. There were earlier precursors, but the "galante"-era composers (the Bach boys and the Manheimers among others) set up the final shift to "classical" music. To my knowledge, that style appears first, unmistakably, in early Haydn. His perfection of sonata form ended forever the monopoly of the "single affect" idea. From the 1760s forward, serious music would often involve multiple affects and themes working either together or in opposition in the same movements.


Now hold on a minute. Are you implying that (eg) a a capriccio by Frescobaldi has one affect, or a toccata by Buxtehude or a suite by Froberger. Because if so, that's a lie.

All before 1760 (I think, I haven't checked)


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## Gouldanian (Nov 19, 2015)

Without a doubt who _introduced_ the classical era is Joseph Haydn. Who perfected it and gave it identity is LVB.


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