How Did Classical Music Change Over Time

During the medieval times, which was the period between c1150-c1400, the music created started out in the form of a monody, which meant music was written as a single line. This is the earliest period where we can be pretty sure of how the music that survived actually sounded. The manuscripts for music during this time were often influenced by religion through the churches, which was a common place of learning. It was during the 11th to 13th century where monody music turned into organum music, music written with multiple lines. Although the music began to change, the rules regarding rhythm and melody were rather strict, which repressed the organum music and led to the Ars Nova period, which took up the 14th century; this music was mostly performed …show more content…
However, despite the changes taking place, composers still produced mostly choral writing, or wrote instrumental music that seemed like it was written to included voices. Classical music began to truly come about during the last half of the 16th century when, after 300 years, composers began to change the way they wrote their music. They began to use the major and minor scales instead of the system that had been used for hundreds of years. This was also the period with music written for unaccompanied voices, anthems, psalms and much more. There were many prominent composers of this time, a few of them being Duarte Lobo, Palestrina, and …show more content…
It was this era that brought about symphonies, sonatas, concertos and more as the main focus became on the structure within music. There were many people who played a role in the forming of classical music, such as Boccherini, Gluck, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s children: Johann Christian, Wilhem Friedmann, and Carl Phillip Emanuel. Another two contributors whose names are well known and who played a very important part in the Classical era: Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
This type of music from the classical period flowed into the Early Romantic era, which took place between c1830 and c1860, but at this point it began to change. Classical music during the Early Romantic period began to have storylines behind the music and often had more instruments playing than before. Composers tried to express themselves with much more passion and a wider range of emotion for the audience while playing arduous musical pieces. There were six composers that ruled this period of time: Chopin, Schumann, Verdi, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and