Classical Music Characteristics

Instrumentation

Classical and popular music are often distinguished by their choice of instruments. There are few if any genres in which so many different instruments are used simultaneously by performing groups such as symphony orchestras, which often contain as many as 5 or so different types of string instruments including violins, violas, cellos, double basses and harp, 7 or more types of woodwind instruments, 4 or so types of brass instrument, and many diverse percussion instruments, sometimes as many as 10 different types.

Comparatively, most popular music genres involve fewer instruments. For instance a typical rock band will consist of a drummer, a guitarist or two, a singer or two, an electric bassist and, less universally, a keyboardist. Of course, crossover influences, such as string sections in pop recordings, are very popular as well, but rarely are backing strings considered to be part of pop or rock bands.

The instruments used in common practice classical music were mostly invented before the mid-19th century (often much earlier), and codified in the 18th and 19th centuries. They consist of the instruments found in an orchestra, together with a few other solo instruments (such as the piano, harpsichord, and organ).

Electric instruments such as the electric guitar appear occasionally in the classical music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Both classical and popular musicians have experimented in recent decades with electronic instruments such as the synthesizer, electric and digital techniques such as the use of sampled or computer-generated sounds, and the sounds of instruments from other cultures such as the gamelan.

None of the bass instruments existed until the Renaissance. In Medieval music, instruments are divided in two categories: loud instruments for use outdoors or in church, and quieter instruments for indoor use. Many instruments which are associated today with popular music used to have important roles in early classical music, such as bagpipes, vihuelas, hurdy-gurdies and some woodwind instruments. On the other hand, the acoustic guitar, for example, which used to be associated mainly with popular music, has gained prominence in classical music through the 19th and 20th centuries.

Form and technical execution

Whereas the majority of popular styles, such as rock music, lend themselves to the song form, classical music can also take on the form of the concerto, symphony, opera, dance music, suite, etude, symphonic poem, and others.

Classical composers often aspire to imbue their music with a very complex relationship between its affective (emotional) content and the intellectual means by which it is achieved. Many of the most esteemed works of classical music make use of musical development, the process by which a musical germ, idea or motif is repeated in different contexts or in altered form. The classical genres of sonata form and fugue employ rigorous forms of musical development.

Along with a certain desire for composers to attain high technical achievement in writing their music, performers of classical music are faced with similar goals of technical mastery, as demonstrated by the proportionately high amount of schooling and private study most successful classical musicians have had when compared to "popular" genre musicians, and the large number of secondary schools, including the conservatories, dedicated to the study of classical music. The only other genre in the Western world with comparable secondary education opportunities is jazz.

Complexity

Performance of classical music repertoire often demands a significant level of technical mastery on the part of the musician; proficience in sight-reading and ensemble playing, thorough understanding of tonal and harmonic principles, knowledge of performance practice and a familiarity with the style/musical idiom inherent to a given period, composer or musical work are among the most essential of skills for the competent, classically-trained musician.

Works of classical repertoire often exhibit artistic complexity through the use of thematic development, phrasing, harmonization, modulation (change of key), texture and, of course, musical form itself.

Larger-scale compositional forms (such as that of the symphony, concerto, opera or oratorio, for example) usually represent a hierarchy of smaller units consisting of phrases, periods, sections, and movements. Musical analysis of a composition aims at achieving greater understanding of it through the study of this complexity, leading to more meaningful hearing and a greater appreciation of the composer's style.

Emotion

What academics rarely talk about so much while they measure up the music in maths and the motives in semantics is that art touches us in our emotions. It reaches us through our senses and if we wish we can analyse it with our brains, but the reason that human beings create art, and enjoy the experience of it, is because of how it makes us feel.

When those emotions are in the range that we describe as sublime, awesome (when that meant something!) or mind shattering (or something similar to wondrous in the current vernacular) then such a work enters the realm of Literature or Classic status because it transcends it's time and place and speaks to all races and cultures.

It speaks to our hearts and souls.