18th c.

Galant & Classical

During the eighteenth century, galant styles favored tuneful melody and lighter textures alongside continuing contrapuntal traditions. Haydn and Mozart developed symphonic, chamber, and operatic forms within a world of court patronage, publishing, and expanding public concerts. Enlightenment culture shaped this environment, while Beethoven’s early career crossed the upheavals of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era.

Musical terms

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Key musical characteristics

Clear phrases and balanced forms
Public concerts and publishing expanded
Sonata practice organized large instrumental works
Orchestral color and standardized genres developed

Music theory concepts

Sonata principle: Large-scale tonal drama created through exposition, contrasting keys, development, and return.
Periodic phrase structure: Balanced antecedent and consequent phrases articulated by weaker and stronger cadences.
Common cadences: Perfect authentic, imperfect authentic, half, deceptive, and plagal cadential types.
Alberti bass: A broken-chord accompaniment pattern clarifying harmony while maintaining light texture.
Secondary dominants: Temporary dominant-function chords that tonicize scale degrees within a key.

Famous composers

Writers and poets

Voltaire
Jane Austen
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Visual artists

Jean-Antoine Watteau
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Francisco Goya

Key historical event

The French Revolution began in 1789 and transformed European politics, institutions, and patronage.

Notable invention

Bartolomeo Cristofori’s pianoforte enabled performers to shape dynamics through touch.