Derived from the Portuguese barroco, or “oddly shaped pearl,” the term “baroque” has been widely used since the nineteenth century to describe the period in Western European art music from about 1600 to 1750. Comparing some of music history’s greatest masterpieces to a misshapen pearl might seem strange to us today, but to the nineteenth century critics who applied the term, the music of Bach and Handel’s era sounded overly ornamented and exaggerated. Having long since shed its derogatory connotations, “baroque” is now simply a convenient catch-all for one of the richest and most diverse periods in music history.
Classical music is a tricky genre, mainly because to the uninformed everything before jazz sounds like it! Indeed, Classical music and Baroque music both use orchestras to produce their distinctive sounds, but the way in which each does it is truly different. For example, Baroque music is very heavy, whereas Classical music is light, almost airy.
Indeed, Classical music greatly emphasized homophonic melodies, meaning that there was a single melody that all the instruments played, instead of the layered melodies of the Baroque period. This allowed for Classical pieces to be much more powerful, whereas Baroque pieces were just pretty in comparison.
Following the death of J.S. Bach in 1750, composers began to rebel against the strict rules of Baroque music. Particularly, they were tired of the overly-intricate stylings of layered melodies that could only display so much technical mastery. In short, the composers knew that their musicians, and themselves, were capable of so much more.
As such, music during this period moved away from the ornate nature of music before, instead searching for clarity. Often, there would be only one melody, and this was played with each instrument contributing its own range and voice to the piece as a whole.
With this newfound clarity came a period of extensive growth for one innovation of Baroque music that the Classicists were loathe to rid themselves of: the opera. Suddenly, with precision of music, the story of the characters could become more pronounced, allowing dramatic interest to be complimented by pointed musical contributions rather than dictated by heavy melodies. There are several composers of music from this era, but the three most famous composers from the Classical Music era are: Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven.