i just learned something new in my late 18th early 19th century music history class. There were no PERIODs period. It was just a rough estimate. They just decided that 1750 sounded good for the beginning of the classical period because Bach died. The book we are studying from is Reinhard Pauls "Music in the Classic Period" This is funny to me, but probably draws people in and then changes their mind. He calls the periods "styles" because they overlap so much. He uses the "for instance" with the rococo which isn't fully baroque and isn't quite yet classical, but is lumped into the baroque. it foreshadows the lightness of the classical style. (also, he calls classics 'music that is timeless') classical music is lumped altogether, sometimes, to mean just that!
Some of the styles he calls: late baroque, mid-century style(1740-70), classic style (1770-1800), early romanticism (from 1800) and following through on his idea, i guess mid and late romanticism (post romantic: as my teacher calls the last few nocturnes of faure') and modern, post modern, where are we now? my teacher says we are returning to tonality. what is it called? we went through expressionism, minimalism, serialism. is it another "ism?" maybe tonalism?
ok. i ponder too much. what do i like. everything. from ancient music (very interesting to hear how tunes travel), to folk music of bartok and kabalevsky, to russian music and more melodious things like schuman's a minor piano concerto (i think it's the a minor i liked) and WOMEN composers, too, like Cecile Chaminade. To me, every composer brings something to the table. I like poetry and music combined so i must be a romantic classicist. beethoven reminds me of shakespeare, which reminds me of mozart which reminds me of da ponte (which i am now reading about and admire) which reminds me of the rococo period which reminds me of the "golden mean" of which Mike May wrote an article entitled "did mozart use the golden mean?" it is kind of interesting. I found it by typing in mike may or americanscientist.org/template and then mike may.