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 Baroque music started to virtually die off about 1760.
 
===The Middle Classical Style (1760-1790)===
 By the late 1750'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 1750's in Vienna. But the length and weight of pieces is still set with some baroque characteristics: 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 is thought by some to have 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.
 
 While overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven, it is difficult to over state Haydn's centrality to the new style, and the future of Western concert music, at the time, before Mozart and Beethoven, with [[Johann Sebastian Bach]] known primarily to connisseurs of keyboard music, Haydn reached a place in music which set him above all other composers except perhaps [[George Friedrich Handel]]. Occupying a place equivalent to perhaps the Beatles in the history of Rock and Roll. It was he who, more than any other single individual, realized that the new style which had evolved, needed to be written according to new ideas and principles. He took existing ideas, and radically altered how they functioned - earning him the nicknames "father of the [[symphony]]" and father of the [[string quartet]]. One might truly say that he was the father of the [[sonata form]] -  which, in its classical incarnation, relied on dramatic contrast, tension of melody against harmony, rhythm and involving the audience in the playing out of the dramatic structure of a work the cardinal virtues of the new style.
 
 <eod> <sod> 
 Baroque music started to virtually die off about 1760.
 
===The Early/Middle Classical Style (1760-1790)===
 By the late 1750'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 1750's in Vienna. But the length and weight of pieces is still set with some baroque characteristics: 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.
 
Many attribute this breakthrough to be made by C.P.E. Bach, Gluck, and several others. In addition, C.P.E. Bach and Gluck are often considered to be founders of the classical style.

The composer who was the first great master of the style 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.
 
 While overshadowed by Mozart and Beethoven, it is difficult to over state Haydn's centrality to the new style, and the future of Western concert music, at the time, before Mozart and Beethoven, with [[Johann Sebastian Bach]] known primarily to connisseurs of keyboard music, Haydn reached a place in music which set him above all other composers except perhaps [[George Friedrich Handel]]. Occupying a place equivalent to perhaps the Beatles in the history of Rock and Roll. It was he who, more than any other single individual, realized that the new style which had evolved, needed to be written according to new ideas and principles. He took existing ideas, and radically altered how they functioned - earning him the nicknames "father of the [[symphony]]" and father of the [[string quartet]]. One might truly say that he was the father of the [[sonata form]] -  which, in its classical incarnation, relied on dramatic contrast, tension of melody against harmony, rhythm and involving the audience in the playing out of the dramatic structure of a work the cardinal virtues of the new style.
 
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