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 == History of the Classical Period ==
 
===Baroque into Classical (1740-1770)===
 
 At first the new style took over baroque forms - the ternary "aria da capo" and the "sinfonia" and "concerto" - and simply composed with simpler parts and more emphatic sections. However, over time, the new aesthetic caused radical changes in how pieces were put together - the basic layouts changed. (See [[Sonata Form]]). Composers from this period sought dramatic effects, striking melodies, and clearer textures. One important break with the past was the radical overhaul of opera by [[Christoph Willibald Gluck]], who cut away a great deal of the layering and improvisional ornament, and focused on the points of [[modulation]] and transition. By making these moments where the harmony changes more focal, he created the ability for powerful dramatic shifts in the emotional color of the music. He used instrumentation, melody and changes in mode to highlight these moments.  Among the most successful composer, [[Gluck]] spawned many emulators, for example [[Antonio Salieri]]. Their emphasis on accessibility was hugely successful in opera, and in vocal music more widely: songs, oratorios and chorouses. These were considered the most important kinds of music for performance, and hence produced the highest public estimation for success. 
 
 The phase between the baroque and the rise of the classical, with its broad mixture of competing ideas and attempts to unify the different demands of taste, economics and idea, goes by many names. It is called "galant" or "rococo", or "pre-classical". It is a period where composers still working in the baroque style are still successful, if sometimes thought of as being more of the past than the present - Bach, Handel and Telemann all compose well past the point where the homophonic style is clearly on the rise. Musical culture was caught at a cross roads, the masters of the older style had the technique, but the public hungered for the new. One of the reasons why CPE Bach was held in such high regard: he understood the older forms quite well, knew how to present them in new garb, and with a variety of form. However, it was clear, even to him, that this was a point of transition - Carl Phillip Emmanuel though of it as a fall from older norms - to something else.
 
By the late 1760's there are flourishing centers of the new style in Italy, Vienna, Mannheim and Paris, dozens of symphonies are composed, and there are "bands" of players associated with theatres. Opera and vocal music is the feature of most musical events, with concerti and symphonies acting as instrumental interludes and introductions, for operas, and even church services. The norms of a body of strings supplemented by winds, and of movements of particular rhytmic character are established by the late 1760's in Vienna. But the length and weight of pieces is still set in a baroque context: individual movements still focus on one affect, their length is not significantly greater than baroque movements and there is not, yet, a theory of how to compose in the new style which is clearly ennunciated. It was a moment ripe for a breakthrough.

The composer who made this breakthrough, and integrated the various stylistic pressures first and most successfully was [[Joseph Haydn]]. In the late 1750's he began composing symphonies, and by 1761, and composed a tryptich "Morning", "Noon" and "Evening" which were solidly in the "contemporary" mode. As a "vice-kapellemeister" and later "kapellemeister", his output expanded, he would compose over 40 symphonies alone in the decade. And while his fame grew, as his orchestra was expanded and his compositions were copied and disseminated, his voice was only one among many.
 
 ===The Early Classical Style (1770-1790)===
 
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 == History of the Classical Period ==
 
===Baroque into Classical (1730-1760)===
 
 At first the new style took over baroque forms - the ternary "aria da capo" and the "sinfonia" and "concerto" - and simply composed with simpler parts and more emphatic sections. However, over time, the new aesthetic caused radical changes in how pieces were put together - the basic layouts changed. (See [[Sonata Form]]). Composers from this period sought dramatic effects, striking melodies, and clearer textures. One important break with the past was the radical overhaul of opera by [[Christoph Willibald Gluck]], who cut away a great deal of the layering and improvisional ornament, and focused on the points of [[modulation]] and transition. By making these moments where the harmony changes more focal, he created the ability for powerful dramatic shifts in the emotional color of the music. He used instrumentation, melody and changes in mode to highlight these moments.  Among the most successful composer, [[Gluck]] spawned many emulators, for example [[Antonio Salieri]]. Their emphasis on accessibility was hugely successful in opera, and in vocal music more widely: songs, oratorios and chorouses. These were considered the most important kinds of music for performance, and hence produced the highest public estimation for success. 
 
 The phase between the baroque and the rise of the classical, with its broad mixture of competing ideas and attempts to unify the different demands of taste, economics and idea, goes by many names. It is called "galant" or "rococo", or "pre-classical". It is a period where composers still working in the baroque style are still successful, if sometimes thought of as being more of the past than the present - Bach, Handel and Telemann all compose well past the point where the homophonic style is clearly on the rise. Musical culture was caught at a cross roads, the masters of the older style had the technique, but the public hungered for the new. One of the reasons why CPE Bach was held in such high regard: he understood the older forms quite well, knew how to present them in new garb, and with a variety of form. However, it was clear, even to him, that this was a point of transition - Carl Phillip Emmanuel though of it as a fall from older norms - to something else.
 
Baroque music started to virtually die off about 1760.
 
 ===The Early Classical Style (1770-1790)===
 
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