- "Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions."
Music written in the Western tradition of art music, typically including symphonies, chamber music, and operas.
Music Theory: Covers the fundamental elements of music and how they work together to create harmonies, melodies, and rhythms.
Music History: Includes the development of music from the Middle Ages to contemporary times, as well as the various musical styles, periods, and movements within classical music.
Instruments: Introduces the different types of instruments used in classical music and how they are played, including strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and keyboard instruments.
Conducting: Explains the role of conductors in leading orchestras and ensembles, including conducting technique, score reading, and rehearsal strategies.
Composition: Covers the techniques and principles behind creating classical music pieces, including instrumentation, arranging, and formal structures.
Performance Practice: Explores the historical context and stylistic nuances of different periods of music and how they are interpreted in modern performances.
Vocal Techniques: Provides an overview of singing techniques used in classical music, including breath control, tone production, and diction.
Music Analysis: Examines the structural and harmonic aspects of classical music, including chord progressions, melody, and rhythm.
Music Criticism: Covers the art of evaluating performances, recordings, and compositions as well as writing about them in reviews, articles, and essays.
Music Appreciation: Introduces listeners to the various musical styles and techniques used in classical music, as well as the emotional and artistic impact they can have.
Baroque: Emphasizes ornate musical language and complex polyphony, usually featuring the harpsichord as a main part of the ensemble.
Classical: Marked by balance, structure, and clarity; features symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets as common forms.
Romantic: Characterized by emotional expression, elaborate harmonies, and colorful orchestration; features program music and character pieces.
Impressionism: Inspired by art movement of the same name, features delicate melodies and harmonies, often portraying visual imagery through music.
Modernism: Marked by experimentation and dissonance, often challenging traditional harmonic structure; includes works by composers such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bartók.
Minimalism: Uses repetitive structures and simple harmonies to create a meditative or trance-like effect; associated with composers such as Glass and Reich.
Contemporary: A broad term for music written in the present day, encompassing a diverse range of styles from neoclassical to electronic.
Early music: Refers to music written during the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, often performed on period instruments and with historically informed interpretation.
Opera: A form of musical theater featuring sung dialogue and accompanied by an orchestra; encompasses a wide range of styles and time periods.
Choral: Music written for choir or chorus, often accompanied by organ or orchestra, with roots in both sacred and secular traditions.
- "Classical music is often characterized by formality and complexity in its musical form and harmonic organization, particularly with the use of polyphony."
- "Since at least the ninth century it has been primarily a written tradition, spawning a sophisticated notational system."
- "Rooted in the patronage of churches and royal courts in Western Europe, surviving early medieval music is chiefly religious, monophonic and vocal."
- "Musical centers existed at the Abbey of Saint Gall, the Abbey of Saint Martial and Saint Emmeram's Abbey."
- "The 11th century saw the development of staff notation and increasing output from medieval music theorists."
- "By the mid-12th century France became the major European musical center."
- "The religious Notre-Dame school first fully explored organized rhythms and polyphony, while secular music flourished with the troubadour and trouvère traditions."
- "The Baroque period (1580–1750) saw the relative standardization of common-practice tonality, as well as the increasing importance of musical instruments."
- "Italy remained dominant, being the birthplace of opera, the soloist centered concerto genre, the organized sonata form as well as the large scale vocal-centered genres of oratorio and cantata."
- "Composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van Beethoven created widely admired representatives of absolute music."
- "The subsequent Romantic music (1800–1910) focused instead on programmatic music, for which the art song, symphonic poem and various piano genres were important vessels."
- "While philosophy and nationalism were embedded—all aspects that converged in the operas of Richard Wagner."
- "By the 20th century, stylistic unification gradually dissipated while the prominence of popular music greatly increased."
- "Trends of the mid-20th century to the present day include New Simplicity, New Complexity, Minimalism, Spectral music, and more recently Postmodern music and Postminimalism."
- "Increasingly global, practitioners from the Americas, Africa and Asia have obtained crucial roles."
- "Symphony orchestras and opera houses now appear across the world."
- "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."
- "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."