How to Identify Classical Music
- 1). Relax and listen to the piece you want to identify. Listen first for the overall mood of the song. Classical music contains shifts in mood between movements and often within the same movement. These shifts in mood often prove sudden or gradual, ranging from powerful surges in the attack of the instruments to drops in volume that make the music almost hard to hear. A constant shift between cheerfulness or sadness often occur during classical pieces.
- 2). Listen for emphasis on piano and strong rhythmic changes. Classical music moves freely between different rhythms and features syncopation, staccato and even drawn out pauses for emphasis.
- 3). Note whether or not the music is homophonic. Much of classical music consists of a single recognizable melody with accompaniment, often played by strings or wind instruments. Classical music has a more popular melodic approach than Baroque and includes composers such as Mozart and Beethoven.
- 4). Listen for the absence of the harpsichord, which was replaced by the piano during the classical period. If you can look at sheet music, you'll see the absence of figured bass lines, due to composers of the period writing the accompaniments in full. Note how the music of the Romantic period breaks the conventions of the classical period by introducing large ensembles and highly charged emotional music. Beethoven provides an example of a Romantic period composer. He began at the end of the classical period and became one of the pioneers of the Romantic period. Note also the increased use of dissonance and more harmonic experimentation during the Romantic period than in either the Baroque or Classical periods.
