It’s Not All Classical?

Time Periods of Western Music

By: Athena Zapantis

Spoiler alert: Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, and Gershwin were all born in very different time periods. Spoiler alert number two: they’re not all Classical composers. Kind of. By some definitions, they’re all Classical composers, but if you say that in front of your musically-inclined friends, you may be in for a lecture. I’m here to bring that lecture to you, just so you don’t say mildly incorrect information in front of your friends.

First things first, we need to learn the names of the different time periods of Western music. If you’re gifted in art history, then you’ve already got a huge boost in knowing music history. In chronological order, the primary time periods are Baroque (1600–1750), Classical, (1750–1830), Romantic (1830–1900) and Contemporary (1900–present). This is not hard-and-fast; rather, these are approximate names for groups of works composed in roughly the same period of time with similar characteristics. Additionally, there are even more specific musical periods, which were smaller and less culturally impactful.

The Baroque period of music refers to the period in which people like Johann Sebastian Bach and Arcangelo Corelli lived. It is mainly characterized by polyphonic texture, use of ornamentation, terraced dynamics, and improvisation. Polyphonic texture is a type of musical texture in which two or more separate voices of equal importance are interwoven. This compositional technique can be seen in Bach’s famous fugues and even two-part inventions for the keyboard. Ornamentation was common in the Baroque period, with many composers including trills, mordents, and other ornaments. Additionally, especially on the keyboard instruments of the time (the harpsichord, clavichord, and organ), composers implemented terraced dynamics. Terraced dynamics are when the dynamics increase or

decrease by sections or steps rather than gradually. This is because the most popular keyboard instrument of the time, the harpsichord, did not have the capability of making crescendos (an increase in volume) or decrescendos (a decrease in volume). Why didn’t they use a piano, you ask? It wasn’t invented yet; it was invented towards the very end of the Baroque period around 1700. However, instruments like the violin created true gradual increases and decreases in volume during the Baroque period. Most surprisingly, the period involved much improvisation. Performers were given the freedom to and were expected to improvise sections of the music, such as adding ornaments and playing cadenzas (entire sections of the music that the performer created, often after a cadence in the music). The most famous Baroque composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, receives his fame for a reason—his 1,128 compositions characterize nearly every hallmark of the Baroque period. As such, Bach created the tonal and harmonic foundation for most of the Western music we know today.

The Classical period of music actually only entails the period from approximately 1750 to 1830. The Classical period most notably involves music with homophonic texture, obvious cadence points, the Alberti bass, and the Sonata and Sonatina forms. Homophonic texture

involves an obvious melody and an accompaniment which is not involved in the melody. For an example, take the exposition section of this Clementi piano sonata. There is a clear melody in the right hand, with the left hand playing accompaniment to support the right hand melody. Additionally, Classical composers used obvious cadences. The use of obvious cadence points has an intriguing history to it. Composers like Beethoven almost exclusively wrote for royalty and other rich nobles. As such, they were rather musically tasteless. They usually could not tell when a piece was over, and Classical composers were forced to create obvious and repetitive (and boring) Authentic cadences at the end of every piece, to drill a very obvious ending cadence into the tasteless nobles.

Hear a simple-sounding piece of music from the Classical period? It was likely written for a wealthy noble who had no idea what was going on. In addition, in the Classical period, the Sonata and Sonatina forms were developed. A sonata generally consists of three to four movements in which different forms and tempos are integrated. Notable composers of the Classical period you may have heard of are Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Clementi, and Kuhlau.

The Romantic period of music, contrary to its name, was about more than love. However, people do love it — the music of the Romantic period was the most popular of the four periods of music history. This is largely attributed to the fact that much of the music of the Romantic period is programme music — written about things, people, places, or feelings. In other words, the music of the Romantic period was more evocative than earlier periods, which was a revolutionary concept. The harmonies and rhythms became more complicated and the melodies became lyrical and in a singing style (cantabile, wink wink). No more obvious Authentic cadences from the Classical composers; those in the Romantic period preferred to make the cadence points more interesting and subtle. Composers like Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky exemplified these compositional techniques. Interestingly, one of the most famous Romantic composers for piano, Chopin, despite being regarded as the most thoroughly “pianistic” composer, actually detested the thought of programme music. That’s why none of his compositions are named anything evocative — it’s all just Waltz or Etude or Nocturne.

Notably, in between the Romantic and Contemporary periods of music, impressionism became popular. Similar to the blurred images that Claude Monet painted, composers like Ravel and Debussy painted musical images with non-metric rhythms and unclear tonalities. This created musical blurring. They used never-before-seen compositional techniques like usage of the whole-tone scales, Augmented triads, ostinato (repeated) figures, pentatonic

scales, and parallel intervals and chords. Impressionism isn’t only limited to blurry paintings — Debussy preferred to use the blur pedal to further exude a dream-like sound. Impressionistic music is delicate and beautiful. A fan of Clair De Lune? Now you know what I’m talking about.

Finally, our current time period is contemporary. Anything after 1900 is considered contemporary music. In contemporary classical music, music became a lot crazier. In acts of enlightened rebellion against structure, composers began straying far from the typical organized compositional techniques of the past. Before, most music was either in a major key or in a minor key. At this turning point, composers began to avoid major and minor tonalities, writing outside of these tonalities and adding completely non-tonal or “out” notes to chords. Quartal harmony (harmony based on the interval of a Perfect fourth) was introduced, which was previously an unwritten item on the “what not to do” list as a composer. Bitonality and polytonality, the use of two or more keys or tonal centers at the same time, became popular. Interestingly, contemporary composers not only used many keys, but also none. So, atonality, or the lack of a key or tonal center, was introduced. Ever hear a piece of crazy music and you struggle to stay with the beat because you have no clue where it is? That’s thanks to the introduction of irregular, complex, and changing meters in the Contemporary period. Serial (twelve-tone) music was introduced, a style of writing in which the twelve tones of the chromatic scale are arranged in a fixed style or series. The entire piece is based off of the intervals of the series. However, other Contemporary composers didn’t have so much hate for what came before them, and wrote music with polyphonic texture like in the Baroque period. Others wrote music in a Classical style,

referred to as Neo-Classical writing. Notable composers of the Contemporary period include Aaron Copland and Charles Ives. Some composers of the Contemporary period blurred the musical lines between contemporary classical and the newly-introduced Jazz. George Gershwin, composer of the famous Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris is considered a Contemporary composer, as well as a Jazz composer and a “third-stream” composer. Third-stream music, a sort of classical and Jazz fusion, appealed to people’s everyday life, and was universally appealing to those of the day.

To summarize, the periods of music are Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary. Respectively, their most notable composers are J. S. Bach, W. A. Mozart, and Chopin (the contemporary period is not over yet, so it’s hard to say who’s most notable). Again, it’s not all classical.

Source:

Johnson, Julie McIntosh. Basics of Keyboard Theory, Level 9. J. Johnson Music Publications, 2014.