What Is Classical Music? A Beginner’s Guide – Blog

What is classical music?

Classical music is usually associated with fancy concert halls and orchestras filled with string, brass, and woodwind instruments—ensembles so big that a conductor will lead them through each piece of music. These pieces often feature approaches to rhythm, melody, and harmony that might feel somewhat “conventional” or “dated,” especially when compared to today’s radio hits.

It can be easy to get the impression that all classical music sounds the same or is constrained by its own traditions, but peeling back the curtain reveals a rich history that spans multiple decades and distinct sonic movements. In this article, we explore what makes a piece of music “classical” and dive into the genre’s sonic journey through the years.

Feel free to use the table of contents below to easily navigate to a specific section.

What you’ll learn:

Let’s dive in!

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Understanding classical music

Origins and evolution

The term classical music (more specifically, western classical music) usually refers to the work of European composers written in the second half of the 1700s and the first half of the 1800s.

However, the origins and impact of this genre stretch well beyond these boundaries. Its roots can be traced back to early liturgical traditions of the Christian church in the Middle Ages. The official religious music of that time was known as plainchant or plainsong—a single melody sung in unison, following the rhythm of the text being recited. The Gregorian chant is the most well-known style of plainsong, dating all the way back to the eighth century; it instantly makes you think “medieval” when you hear it.

Over time, the approach to music creation gradually shifted from the single-melody monophonic approach of a Gregorian chant to polyphony, in which multiple melodies are written to harmonize with one another. This formal music theory began to be taught and the art form continued to grow in its melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic complexities. The end result is the characteristic sound we associate with classical music today.

Key elements

While classical music has seen literal centuries of evolution, a few core elements have remained pretty consistent throughout that journey.

• Written notation: A strong reliance on what we refer to as sheet music was absolutely key in order to fully capture a composer’s ideas on paper. Of course, it also enables the live performance of their piece by a musician or ensemble.
• Structured forms: These pieces often fell into specific categories, each with their own rules. For example, a sonata is written for a solo instrument (like a violin), often with an accompaniment like a piano, and usually consists of four movements (or sections). Compare that to a symphony, which usually consists of four longer movements and is composed for a full orchestra of around a hundred musicians! Dozens upon dozens of different forms were introduced over the years.
• Craft and complexity: Compositional skill is valued from multiple angles. From the methodical sculpting of harmony and rhythm to the introduction and repetition of motifs or themes, the music’s meaning is closely tied to the composer and is meant to evoke a deeply intellectual and emotional response from the listener beyond just simple entertainment.
• Live performance: Since the vast majority of classical music was written before the invention of sound recording technology, the only way for you to hear it on its release was in a live setting like a church or a concert hall.
• Acoustic instrumentation: Similarly, a general absence of electronics during these times meant that the human voice as well as handcrafted instruments like strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion were ever-present. The result is an incredibly strong sonic aesthetic that often makes it tough to separate music from the concept of “classical” once an orchestra is involved.

Important periods and composers

Now that we’ve set the stage, let’s explore what some of the most iconic movements in classical music brought to the table. While the Medieval and Renaissance periods do contain that aforementioned important shift from monophony to polyphony, the Baroque period is—in my humble opinion—where things really start to pop off.

Baroque

Stretching from 1600 to 1750, the Baroque period saw the birth of numerous popular dramatic forms like opera, oratorio, fugue, sonata, and concerto. Not only that, but the major-minor tonal system of music theory was also introduced during this era.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and George Frideric Handel are easily the most well-known Baroque composers, and for good reason—their music transcends time. While ensemble works like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons violin concerto and Handel’s Messiah oratorio are instantly recognizable to this day, don’t sleep on those solo pieces. My top picks are Bach’s suites for solo cello and his Goldberg Variations, which were originally composed for harpsichord.

Classical

While sacred music (which characterized much of the Baroque period) was still composed during the Classical era of 1750 – 1820, balance shifted towards secular music due to changing social and philosophical factors in Europe.

This is where the genre really hit its stride, in part because composers focused on refining concepts from prior periods. Forms like the symphony and sonata were further elevated in their importance, notation became more detailed to help performers interpret sheet music more precisely, and ensembles expanded to include new instruments like woodwinds or replace existing ones (like the piano overtaking the harpsichord).

If Joseph Haydn is known as the “Father of the Symphony,” then I think Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could be coined “the Prolific Prodigy” (he wrote his first piece at five years old), and Ludwig van Beethoven would be “the Titan of Transformation.” Why transformation? His earlier work was definitely rooted in Classical ideals, but then evolved to essentially bridge the stylistic gap between this era and the next—truly ahead of its time.

Romantic

The period between 1820 and 1900 experienced a shift away from the more rigid, formal nature of the Classical era towards more adventurous compositions that emphasized individualism, emotion, and narrative.

Sources of expression ranged widely from core human feelings like passion and anguish to concepts of national identity, folklore, and fantasy. These features were deeply influenced by the intellectual and artistic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries known as Romanticism. Along with more virtuosic performances and larger orchestral ensembles, music of the Romantic era saw greater use of techniques like stolen (expressive shifts in tempo), even more intense shifts in dynamics (loud vs. soft), and expanded harmonic language like key changes and dissonance.