Transition of Music from Classical Era to the Postmodern Era
Classical to the Post-Modern Eras In this essay, I’m going to trace the development of Classical Music from the late 1750s to the Post-Modern era in the 2000s and provide a brief history of music, and how they link together to form what we have today. There are many preconceptions of what the history of music is. Some people think it is mainly a biography of composer’s lives, but they are wrong. The history of music is primarily the history of musical style. In order to appreciate this, it is essential to become acquainted with the different sounds and to hear them in their contexts. Fashions in history change with the generations, like fashions in musical tastes. Lets first start with the classical music, Classical is an era; it is from about 1730 to just after 1800. A few people who contributed to the music in the Classical era are: Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Classical period focused on the opposite types of sounds- music during that period was orderly, uncluttered, well planned and precise. Music was expected to be technically pleasing and grounded in certain traditions and styles that had been approved by the public, often quite formal. Composers were seen as workers who were hired to write music that would please their employer (Sagebiel). The classical period of music combined harmony, melody, rhythm, and orchestration more effectively than earlier periods of music. The classical period is best known for the symphony, a form of a large orchestral ensemble. The symphonic pieces generally had three movements, the sonata, the minuet and the finale. Building of the achievements of earlier composers, Haydn, and Mozart brought the symphony to its peak in the last twenty years of the 18th century. Haydn excelled in rhythmic drive and development of theme-based music (Bishop 325). Mozart also added to the symphony by contrasting memorable lyric themes in full sounding orchestral settings. There are many styles of music
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