Changes

The Classical period occurred at a time of a rising [[middle class]] and intellectual enlightenment, and ended in the flames of the [[French Revolution]]. Music was no longer just the  purview of the [[nobility]] and the church. With the rise of the publishing business, common people began to engage in amateur music making for an evenings entertainment after a meal, Affordable theatre tickets helped insure that music was no longer just the past time of the idle rich. What's more, music making, music education, the publishing and distribution business, orchestras and ensembles in virtually every town, and manufacturing instruments meant jobs.

The Classical period occurred at a time of a rising [[middle class]] and intellectual enlightenment, and ended in the flames of the [[French Revolution]]. Music was no longer just the  purview of the [[nobility]] and the church. With the rise of the publishing business, common people began to engage in amateur music making for an evenings entertainment after a meal, Affordable theatre tickets helped insure that music was no longer just the past time of the idle rich. What's more, music making, music education, the publishing and distribution business, orchestras and ensembles in virtually every town, and manufacturing instruments meant jobs.

The enlightened thinkers of the classical period rejected much of the cultural contributions of the previous era, but not all. From the Baroque era [[Franz Joseph Hadyn]] and [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]] constructed [[sonata form]], the structure of Classical music, which survived well into the Romantic era, despite Romantics sometimes seeing it as old fashioned or against revolutionary precepts. Another is the classical age's strict meter - the [[metronome]] was invented in this timeframe to teach music students to observe strict meter.

The enlightened thinkers of the classical period rejected much of the cultural contributions of the previous era, but not all. From the Baroque era [[Franz Joseph Hadyn]] and [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]] constructed [[sonata form]], the structure of Classical music, which survived well into the Romantic era, despite Romantics sometimes seeing it as old fashioned or against the revolutionary precepts of Romanticism. Another is the classical age's strict meter - the [[metronome]] was invented in this timeframe to teach music students to observe strict meter.

Classical composers retained counterpoint, and built on it with new subtleties such as crescendo and diminuendo.

Classical composers retained counterpoint, and built on it with new subtleties such as crescendo and diminuendo.