Classical music

[2] Since at least the ninth century it has been primarily a written tradition,[2] spawning a sophisticated notational system, as well as accompanying literature in analytical, critical, historiographical, musicological and philosophical practices.

A foundational component of Western culture, classical music is frequently seen from the perspective of individual or groups of composers, whose compositions, personalities and beliefs have fundamentally shaped its history.

The earliest extant music manuscripts date from the Carolingian Empire (800–888),[3] around the time which Western plainchant gradually unified into what is termed Gregorian chant.

[5] Beginning in the early 15th century, Renaissance composers of the influential Franco-Flemish School built off the harmonic principles in the English contenance angloise, bringing choral music to new standards, particularly the mass and motet.

The fugue technique championed by Johann Sebastian Bach exemplified the Baroque tendency for complexity, and as a reaction the simpler and song-like galant music and empfindsamkeit styles were developed.

In the shorter but pivotal Classical period (1730–1820) composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van Beethoven created widely admired representatives of absolute music,[8][9] including symphonies, string quartets and concertos.

Many composers actively avoided past techniques and genres in the lens of modernism, with some abandoning tonality in place of serialism, while others found new inspiration in folk melodies or impressionist sentiments.

After World War II, for the first time audience members valued older music over contemporary works, a preference which has been catered to by the emergence and widespread availability of commercial recordings.

Increasingly global, practitioners from the Americas, Africa and Asia have obtained crucial roles,[3] while symphony orchestras and opera houses now appear across the world.

Both the English term classical and the German equivalent Klassik developed from the French classique, itself derived from the Latin word classicus, which originally referred to the highest class of Ancient Roman citizens.

[13] By the Renaissance, the adjective had acquired a more general meaning: an entry in Randle Cotgrave's 1611 A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues is among the earliest extant definitions, translating classique as "classical, formall [sic], orderlie, in due or fit ranke; also, approved, authenticall, chiefe, principall".

[21] In the rest of continental Europe, the abandonment of defining "classical" as analogous to the Greco-Roman World was slower, primarily because the formation of canonical repertoires was either minimal or exclusive to the upper classes.

[33] The musicologist Ralph P. Locke notes that neither term is ideal, as they create an "intriguing complication" when considering "certain practitioners of Western-art music genres who come from non-Western cultures".

[46] This was due to the complete absence of surviving Greco-Roman musical works available to medieval musicians,[46][n 12] to the extent that Isidore of Seville (c. 559 – 636) stated "unless sounds are remembered by man, they perish, for they cannot be written down", unaware of the systematic notational practices of Ancient Greece centuries before.

[47][n 13] The musicologist Gustave Reese notes, however, that many Greco-Roman texts can still be credited as influential to Western classical music, since medieval musicians regularly read their works—regardless of whether they were doing so correctly.

[49] Greek influences in particular include the church modes (which were descendants of developments by Aristoxenus and Pythagoras),[50] basic acoustical theory from pythagorean tuning,[39] as well as the central function of tetrachords.

Woodwind instruments included the double-reed shawm (an early member of the oboe family), the reed pipe, the bagpipe, the transverse flute, the recorder, the dulcian, and the crumhorn.

Notable Renaissance composers include Josquin des Prez, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, John Dunstaple, Johannes Ockeghem, Orlande de Lassus, Guillaume Du Fay, Gilles Binchois, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Giovanni Gabrieli, Carlo Gesualdo, John Dowland, Jacob Obrecht, Adrian Willaert, Jacques Arcadelt, and Cipriano de Rore.

[68] During the Baroque era, keyboard music played on the harpsichord and pipe organ became increasingly popular, and the violin family of stringed instruments took the form generally seen today.

While double-reed instruments like the oboe and bassoon became somewhat standardized in the Baroque, the clarinet family of single reeds was not widely used until Mozart expanded its role in orchestral, chamber, and concerto settings.

Composers such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss continued to develop the western classical tradition with expansive symphonies and operas, while the likes of Jean Sibelius and Vaughan Williams infused their compositions with nationalistic elements and influences from folk songs.

The euphonium is featured in a few late Romantic and 20th century works, usually playing parts marked "tenor tuba", including Gustav Holst's The Planets, and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.

Prominent composers of the early 20th century include Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Arnold Schoenberg, Nikos Skalkottas, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Karol Szymanowski, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Cécile Chaminade, Paul Hindemith, Aram Khachaturian, George Gershwin, Amy Beach, Béla Bartók, and Dmitri Shostakovich, along with the aforementioned Mahler and Strauss as transitional figures who carried over from the 19th century.

The written quality of the music has enabled a high level of complexity within them: fugues, for instance, achieve a remarkable marriage of boldly distinctive melodic lines weaving in counterpoint yet creating a coherent harmonic logic.

[109] As late as February 1996, the Vienna Philharmonic's principal flute, Dieter Flury, told Westdeutscher Rundfunk that accepting women would be "gambling with the emotional unity (emotionelle Geschlossenheit) that this organism currently has".

5, Aram Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance", Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" from Die Walküre, Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee", and excerpts of Aaron Copland's Rodeo.

Similarly, movies and television often use standard, clichéd excerpts of classical music to convey refinement or opulence: some of the most-often heard pieces in this category include Bach's Cello Suite No.

1, Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain (as orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov), and Rossini's "William Tell Overture".

The approach has been popularized in a book by Don Campbell, and is based on an experiment published in Nature suggesting that listening to Mozart temporarily boosted students' IQ by 8 to 9 points.

[124] This popularized version of the theory was expressed succinctly by the New York Times music columnist Alex Ross: "researchers... have determined that listening to Mozart actually makes you smarter.