The Baroque/Classical transition

c. 17301760 At first the new style took over Baroque formsthe ternary da capo aria and
the sinfonia and concertobut composed with simpler parts, more notated ornamentation and more emphatic
division into sections. However, over time, the new aesthetic caused radical changes in how pieces were put
together, and the basic layouts changed. Composers from this period sought dramatic effects, striking melodies, and
clearer textures. TheItalian composer Domenico Scarlatti was an important figure in the transition from Baroque to
Classical. His unique compositional style is strongly related to that of the early Classical period. He is best known for
composing more than five hundred one-movement keyboard sonatas. In Spain, Antonio Soler also produced valuable
keyboard sonatas, more varied in form than those of Scarlatti, with some pieces in three or four movements.
Baroque music generally uses many harmonic fantasies and does not concentrate that much on the structure of the
musical piece, musical phrases and motives. In the classical period, the harmonic functions are simpler. However, the
structure of the piece, the phrases and motives, are much more important in the tunes than in the Baroque period.
Another important break with the past was the radical overhaul of opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck, who cut away a
great deal of the layering and improvisational ornament and focused on the points ofmodulation and transition. By
making these moments where the harmony changes more focal, he enabled powerful dramatic shifts in the emotional
color of the music. To highlight these episodes he used changes in instrumentation, melody, and mode. Among the
most successful composers of his time, Gluck spawned many emulators, one of whom was Antonio Salieri. Their
emphasis on accessibility brought huge successes in opera, and in vocal music more widely: songs, oratorios, and
choruses. These were considered the most important kinds of music for performance and hence enjoyed greatest
success in the public estimation.

Circa 17501775
By the late 1750s there were flourishing centers of the new style in Italy, Vienna, Mannheim, and Paris; dozens of
symphonies were composed and there were bands of players associated with theatres. Opera or other vocal music
was the feature of most musical events, with concertos and symphonies (arising from theoverture) serving as
instrumental interludes and introductions for operas and church services. Over the course of the Classical period,
symphonies and concertos developed and were presented independently of vocal music.
The "normal" ensemblea body of strings supplemented by windsand movements of particular rhythmic character
were established by the late 1750s in Vienna. However, the length and weight of pieces was still set with some
Baroque characteristics: individual movements still focused on one "affect" or had only one sharply contrasting middle
section, and their length was not significantly greater than Baroque movements. There was not yet a clearly
enunciated theory of how to compose in the new style. It was a moment ripe for a breakthrough.
The first great master of the style was the composer Joseph Haydn. In the late 1750s he began composing
symphonies, and by 1761 he had composed a triptych (Morning, Noon, and Evening) solidly in the contemporary
mode. As a vice-Kapellmeister and later Kapellmeister, his output expanded: he composed over forty symphonies in
the 1760s alone. And while his fame gre orchestra was expanded and his compositions were copied and
disseminated, his voice was only one among many.
While some suggest that he was overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven, it would be difficult to overstate Haydn's
centrality to the new style, and therefore to the future of Western art music as a whole. At the time, before the pre-

eminence of Mozart or Beethoven, and with Johann Sebastian Bach known primarily to connoisseurs of keyboard
music, Haydn reached a place in music that set him above all other composers except perhaps George Frideric
Handel. He took existing ideas, and radically altered how they functionedearning him the titles "father of
the symphony" and "father of the string quartet".

Circa 17751790
Haydn, having worked for over a decade as the music director for a prince, had far more resources and scope for
composing than most and also the ability to shape the forces that would play his music. This opportunity was not
wasted, as Haydn, beginning quite early on his career, sought to press forward the technique of building ideas in
music. His next important breakthrough was in the Opus 33 string quartets (1781), in which the melodic and the
harmonic roles segue among the instruments: it is often momentarily unclear what is melody and what is harmony.
This changes the way the ensemble works its way between dramatic moments of transition and climactic sections:
the music flows smoothly and without obvious interruption. He then took this integrated style and began applying it to
orchestral and vocal music.
Haydn's gift to music was a way of composing, a way of structuring works, which was at the same time in accord with
the governing aesthetic of the new style. However, a younger contemporary,Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, brought his
genius to Haydn's ideas and applied them to two of the major genres of the day: opera, and the virtuoso concerto.
Whereas Haydn spent much of his working life as a court composer, Mozart wanted public success in the concert life
of cities. This meant opera, and it meant performing as a virtuoso. Haydn was not a virtuoso at the international

touring level; nor was he seeking to create operatic works that could play for many nights in front of a large audience.
Mozart wanted both. Moreover, Mozart also had a taste for more chromatic chords (and greater contrasts in harmonic
language generally), a greater love for creating a welter of melodies in a single work, and a more Italianate sensibility
in music as a whole. He found, in Haydn's music and later in his study of the polyphony of Bach, the means to
discipline and enrich his gifts.

Mozart rapidly came to the attention of Haydn,

who hailed the new composer, studied his works, and considered the younger man his only true peer in music. In
Mozart, Haydn found a greater range of instrumentation, dramatic effect and melodic resource; the learning
relationship moved in two directions.
Mozart's arrival in Vienna in 1780 brought an acceleration in the development of the Classical style. There Mozart
absorbed the fusion of Italianate brilliance and Germanic cohesiveness that had been brewing for the previous 20
years. His own taste for brilliances, rhythmically complex melodies and figures, long cantilena melodies, and virtuoso
flourishes was merged with an appreciation for formal coherence and internal connectedness. It is at this point that
war and inflation halted a trend to larger orchestras and forced the disbanding or reduction of many theater
orchestras. This pressed the Classical style inwards: toward seeking greater ensemble and technical challengefor
example, scattering the melody across woodwinds, or using thirds to highlight the melody taken by them. This
process placed a premium on chamber music for more public performance, giving a further boost to the string quartet
and other small ensemble groupings.
It was during this decade that public taste began, increasingly, to recognize that Haydn and Mozart had reached a
higher standard of composition. By the time Mozart arrived at age 25, in 1781, the dominant styles of Vienna were
recognizably connected to the emergence in the 1750s of the early Classical style. By the end of the 1780s, changes

in performance practice, the relative standing of instrumental and vocal music, technical demands on musicians, and
stylistic unity had become established in the composers who imitated Mozart and Haydn. During this decade Mozart
composed his most famous operas, his six late symphonies that helped to redefine the genre, and a string of piano
concerti that still stand at the pinnacle of these forms. One composer who was influential in spreading the more
serious style that Mozart and Haydn had formed is Muzio Clementi, a gifted virtuoso pianist who tied with Mozart in a
musical "duel" before the emperor in which they each improvised and performed their compositions. Clementi's
sonatas for the piano circulated widely, and he became the most successful composer in London during the 1780s.