19-06-2016, 03:49
Strangeris Wrote:Thank you for your answer!"Classical" with a capital 'C' does refer to a specific period though within what most call classical music.Most people apart from music historians would call Wagner or Rachmaninoff "classical music", but they are much later than what is denoted the Classical period. J.S. Bach probably ushered in that period; Mozart is considered the archetypal Classical composer. Beethoven is spoken of as marking the end of the Classical era and the beginning of the Romantic era, which followed it.
Well, yeah, but thought it might have a specific name, because Classical is not that accurate, I believe, when it has a variety of genres itself.
The difference is that Classical music tended to follow rather well established conventions. Many works were named after dances, eg. scherzo, pavane, valse (waltz) because they were written with the intention that they would be danced to. Symphonies were always in four parts, and each part was supposed to be in a particular tempo. Beethoven instigated the move away from all that, writing music intended to be heard for it's own sake.
By the time you get to the early 20th century, the music of people like Debussy and Ravel, which is generally considered part of the classical music genre, is as different from the Classical music of Bach and Mozart as Duke Ellington is from Bob Marley.
