Classical classical music?

Classical music.

So what is classical music, anyway?  Besides what they play on NPR stations in between listener pledge drives?  "For a pledge of just $50, that's less than $5 a month, you can get this lovely collection of Beethoven symphonies, performed under the direction of Maestro Schickele at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople..."

There's a tendency to think of classical music as a personal musical preference, as one genre out of several alternatives.  There's rock, country, jazz, pop... and there's classical.  But classical music has a history that distinguishes it from all the rest.  In rock, for example, there's no question that the music of Tame Impala in 2013 is different from Nirvana in 1993, which in turn is very different from The Who in 1973 or Bill Haley and the Comets in 1953.  It's obvious that the style of these artists is very different, so much so that perhaps it's only by convention that we lump them all in the same genre.  But yet, this only represents 60 years of musical history. Millions of people alive today remember them all, and some of them will still be around in 2033 to listen to whatever comes next.  

80 years ago, there was no such thing as rock music.  80 years ago was 1933 - the depth of the Great Depression.  Irving Berlin had a hit song, "Easter Parade", that was published that year.  In the same year, Béla Bartók premiered his Piano Concerto No. 2 in Frankfurt.  And Bartók is considered to be a modern composer!

Go back another 80 years. It's 1853.  Stephen Foster is all the rage, with songs like "Camptown Races" and "My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night".  In 1853 Franz Liszt wrote his masterwork, the Piano Sonata in B minor.

Back another 80 years. In 1773, Mozart wrote his Symphony #25 in G minor. In 1693, Johann Sebastian Bach was 9 years old.  He would begin studying music under his brother Johann Christian Bach the following year.  In 1613, the first performance piece commonly recognized as an opera - Euridice, by Italian composer Jacopo Peri - celebrated its 13th birthday.

The history of classical music goes back over 1000 years.  We have musical scores that date all the way back to the 8th century.  We have records of individuals, famous and noted in their time, who lived and wrote music even earlier than that, although their music has since been lost.

And yet, this thousand-plus years of musical history all goes under one common name: classical music.

Classical music????  Where did that name come from, anyway?  Among "classical" music aficionados, classical isn't a type of music.  It's a specific period of music, lasting from approximately 1750 to 1820.  

In the classical music biz, we divide the entirety of classical music (properly termed concert music) into a number of different musical periods.  In chronological order, these are:

• Medieval - from antiquity up to about 1400.  This was the era of Gregorian chant.  Polyphonic music began to develop towards the end of the medieval period.
• Renaissance - from 1400 to 1600.  This period saw increased use of instrumentation in performances, multiple simultaneous melodic lines, and the use of supporting instrumentation in the bass.
• Baroque.  Ah yes, the Baroque!  This was the time of Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel.  The Baroque era saw the invention of the opera, the development of counterpoint, the establishment of major and minor keys, the use of the harpsichord and organ - so many wonderful things!  The Baroque period lasted from 1600 (the year Jacopo Peri composed Euridice) to 1750 (the death of J.S. Bach).  The year 1750 is a fuzzy line, however, as by then a shift in compositional style was already well underway.
• Classical - from 1750 (or so) until 1825.  Haydn and Mozart fall into this category.  The Classical era saw the birth of the symphony as a musical form.  (Bach didn't write a single symphony!  Did you know that?)  The first pianos were built.  Many of the wind instruments began to be more frequently used.  
• Romantic - from 1825 until the early 20th century or so.  During the Romantic period, differences in national style were accentuated.  Many Romantic era composers used folk music as inspiration for their work.  The idea of the theme of a piece was no longer restricted to just a tune, but could be a rhythmic motif - as in Beethoven's Symphony #5, or an idea or mood - as in Gustav Mahler's Das Klagenlied.
• Impressionist.  Impressionism as a musical movement appears in France from about 1875 to 1925.  Properly speaking, it's part of the Romantic movement, but it's easy to pull it out because it's so, well, French.  Debussy, Ravel, and Satie fit the bill.
• 20th Century.  A bit of a misnomer.  Quite a few composers, such as Rachmaninov and Mahler, continued to write stylistically Romantic music well into the 20th Century.  But the 20th century saw an utter explosion of musical innovation: from the atonal and 12-tonal works of Berg, Stravinsky, and Weber, to quintessentially American composers such as Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, and Ives, and then forward to the minimalism of Terry Riley, John Cage, Steve Reich, Henryk Górecki, and John Adams.
• 21st Century.  It's a bit early to say what the 21st century will be known for.  But composers like Adams, Salonen, and Dutilleux are still at it and writing.

Next time - the guy who put the Classical symphony on the map!