Classical music
Classical music is a phrase used to refer to music created since the medieval period, scored for a wide range and sometimes a large number of acoustic (non-amplified) instruments.
Broadly speaking, the term is commonly used as a misnomer, as music is divided into eras, not necessarily different styles or genres which exist in all eras. Strictly speaking, "Classical music" refers to the time roughly from 1750 - 1800.
The history is broken into several major divisions:
- Renaissance (1400-1500)
- Baroque (1600-1750)
- Low Baroque (1600-1650)
- Middle Baroque (1650-1700)
- High or Late Baroque (1700-1750)
- Classical era (1750-1803)
- Romantic era (1803-1927)
- Early Romantic (1803-1857)
- Late Romantic (1857-1927)
- Electric era (1927-present)
Although there are not strict temporal divisions, each period has tended to reflect other things that were going on in society and civilization at the time. Each period has a handful of better known composers who represent the style in people's minds.
The Baroque era takes its name from architectural styles of the period. The word baroque literally means "grotesque," a term given to the era in the Classical period. The Classical era borrowed the term from the literary styles of the period.
The Romantic era is born out of the revolutionary age of the French Enlightenment, is much more expansive than the hard-and-fast rules of the Classical period, encompasses the entire 19th century and basically died in the First World War.
The Electric age begins with the end of acoustic recordings and beginning of motor-driven, electric recordings. Amplification and radio also played a part. Stylistically, due to America's standing in the world immediately after the First World War, jazz and blues became popular worldwide although harmonically speaking, jazz and blues have their roots in the late Romantic.
The term classical music also include music systems from non western cultures as well. This includes Indian Classical Music, Chinese Classical music and Japanese traditions.
Liszt at piano with Dumas, Hugo, Sand, Paganini and Rossini.