Welcome to the Classical Archives Music History Tour - a four-part historical series, with each segment dedicated to a major period of music history, from the 17th century to the present. These represent some of the gems of classical music as performed by our outstanding independent classical artists.

Each program presents around 2 hours of music, and is introduced by some brief commentary to acquaint the newcomer to classical music with some guidelines and important considerations as they enjoy the musical tour. Enjoy!

Subscribers, if desired, may listen to each complete concert with only one click by clicking on the appropriate Concert Ticket. Free users^(*) must use the individual buttons. If you wish to see all the files in the Archives for one of the composers featured here, click on the [more] link next to the composer's name. There, subscribers may download MP3 versions of the files offered here.

J.S.Bach

Vivaldi

We start with the Baroque era, a large period spanning roughly 1600-1750.

The word "baroque" means "misshapen pearl" which suggests the generally ornate and stylized approach to works of art, architecture, and music during these years. This is the period that saw the birth of opera, as well as the rise of purely instrumental forms such as the concerto and sonata; it is also the period in which modern-day harmony (major and minor keys, modulation, etc.) was developed. Our brief chronological tour begins with the Florentine composer Caccini, one of the founders of opera, and continues with a series of works by the most important musical figures of the Baroque - including those three masters all born in 1685: Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti.

In this program, moreover, one can see the international character of the Baroque, with composers from Italy, France, Germany, and England represented. The program concludes with two arias by the German composer Christoph Gluck, key among those responsible for bridging music into the next period, the Classical era.

Haydn

Mozart

Next in our tour is a segment dedicated to the Classical era, the period spanning roughly the years 1715-1800.

The musical designation "classical period" was first coined in the 1830s to refer especially to the "Viennese School" of Mozart and Haydn, but has since been broadened to subsume the entire period between the more heavily-ornate Baroque and the more emotionally-charged Romantic eras; while admittedly simplistic, the term "classical" does suggest the emphasis for orderly, balanced, and natural musical discourse that marks this period.

It is not unrelated that these years correspond to the Enlightenment and the rise of democracy, to which the straightforward and often "popular" approach to musical expression formed a logical counterpart. Our brief chronological tour begins with a "transitional" work by Pergolesi and continues with so-called "pre-Classical" works by Sammartini and J.C. Bach, and then moves into the full-blown Classical era with masterworks by Haydn and Mozart, as well as by Boccherini, Clementi, and others.

The concert concludes with an early work of Beethoven (himself a student of Haydn), already suggesting the changes to come in the Romantic era.

Beethoven

Brahms

The third segment is dedicated to the Romantic era, the period spanning roughly the duration of the 19th century.

The term "Romanticism" was first applied to trends in literature in the late 18th century, as an idealized revival of the Medieval "romance," and soon spread to its sister arts, painting and music. In each of these, the term embraces a belief in the power of human emotions, and especially in the vital expression of an artist’s innermost "truths" - in defiance of the rule-bound traditions of the preceding age. In music history, the term generally refers to the period between Beethoven’s maturity and the rise of the modernist trends of the early 20th century.

Our brief survey represents several of the most important musical trends of the era: the expansion of form and harmony in the instrumental works of Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms; the love of the piano miniature, as epitomized in salon favorites of Schumann and Chopin; the fascination with instrumental virtuosity in the works of Liszt and Paganini; the celebration of national or "folk" identity in a work of Smetana; the new realism of opera in arias by Bizet and Verdi, and finally the growing mannerism of subjective musical expression, as heard in Mahler’s orchestral song cycle, that in many ways signaled the exhaustion of the era - and which in turn opened the door to the new trends to come.

Bartok

Debussy

The final program is dedicated to the Modern era, the period spanning from roughly the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.

No period of art history has witnessed such tremendous stylistic diversity or such a swift rate of change as have the past 100 years, a reflection of the rapid societal and technological changes that have transpired during the same period. Music has kept up as well as any other art in reflecting the sometimes radical shifts in Western culture since 1900, as our brief survey reveals: at the beginning came an experimental, even multi-cultural, attempt to resolve the harmonic "dilemma" that emerged at the end of the 19th century, as seen in the works of Claude Debussy and Alban Berg; the intense pulse of the modern city found musical reflection in the sometimes jarring rhythms of Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev; the drive to study folk or "peasant" music found expression in the works Béla Bartók; and all the while there continued the public and private call for an emotional component in music, as manifested brilliantly in the works of Sergei Rachmaninov.

Our tour concludes with two more contemporary works, one by the post-Minimalist American composer Robert Moran, the other by the Russian composer Efrem Podgaits, who reveals that vocal music is still alive and well in the 21st century.