Bertil van Boer - Music in the Classical World: Genre, Culture, and History

Scholarship on music of the Classical Period is vast and often kaleidoscopic in nature, especially if one includes the extensive research in other languages. For example, the literature on both Haydn and Mozart is vast and exhaustive in itself, with more appearing annually that explores intimate facets of their life, works, and legacy. In order not to overwhelm the reader, here are a few suggestions of main sources, from which one can branch out into numerous avenues of interest. It should be noted that this list does not include articles or websites, as these may be found through search engines such as JSTOR, RILM, or web search engines. The few suggestions here are to gain a basic acquaintance with the literature; other readings can be found on www.routledge.com/cw/vanboer

Blanning, Tim. The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 16481815 (New York: Viking/Penguin, 2007).

Cobban, Alfred, ed. The Eighteenth Century: Europe in the Age of the Enlightenment (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969).

Keefe, Simon, ed. The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Pauly, Reinhard. Music in the Classical Period (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988 [3rd Edition]).

Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music II: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

van Boer, Bertil. Historical Dictionary of Music in the Classical Period (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012).

Zaslaw, Neal, ed. The Classical Era: From the 1740s to the End of the 18th Century (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989).

Gjerdingen, Robert. Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

McClelland, Clive. Tempesta: Stormy Music in the Eighteenth Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017).

Ratner, Leonard. Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer, 1980).

Rosen, Charles. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1972).

Carse, Adam. The Orchestra in the XVIIIth Century (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1950).

Donnington, Robert. The Interpretation of Early Music (New York: Norton, 1992 [Revised Edition]).

Spitzer, John and Neal Zaslaw. The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution 16501815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Brown, A. Peter, Mary Sue Morrow, and Bathia Churgin. The Symphonic Repertoire: The Eighteenth Century (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012).

Drummond, Pippa. The German Concerto: Five Eighteenth-Century Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).

Riley, Matthew. The Viennese Minor Key Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Mozart (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Will, Richard. The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Wolf, Eugene K. The Symphonies of Johann Stamitz: A Study in the Formation of the Classic Style (Utrecht: Bohn, 1981).

Hepokoski, James and Warren Darcy. Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Marshall, Robert. Eighteenth Century Keyboard Music (New York: Schirmer, 1994).

Kirkendale, Warren. Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979).

Newman, William S. The Sonata in the Classical Era (New York: Norton, 1972).

Feldman, Martha. Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007).

Hunter, Mary. The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozarts Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

Robinson, Michael. Naples and Neapolitan Opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

Strohm, Reinhard. Dramma per musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

Baumann, Thomas. North German Opera in the Age of Goethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Brown, Bruce Alan. Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

Flaherty, Gloria. Opera in the Development of German Critical Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).

Mattson, Inger, ed. The Gustavian Opera: Swedish Opera, Dance and Theatre 17711809 (Stockholm: Royal Academy of Music, 1991).

Ritzarev, Marina. Eighteenth-Century Russian Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).

Knouse, Nola, ed. The Music of the Moravian Church in America (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008).

Smither, Howard. A History of the Oratorio III: The Oratorio in the Classical Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).

Heartz, Daniel. Music in the European Capitals: The Galant Style 17201780 (New York: Norton, 2003).

Helm, Eugene. Music at the Court of Frederick the Great (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1960).

Jones, David Wyn. Music in Eighteeth Century Austria (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996).

Jones, David Wyn. Music in Eighteenth Century Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).

McVeigh, Simon. Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Baker, Geoffrey and Tess Knighton, eds. Music and Urban Society in Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Boyd, Malcolm. Music in Spain during the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Cripe, Helen. Thomas Jefferson and Music (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979).

Findeizen, Nikolai. History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008).

Murray, Sterling. The Career of an Eighteenth-Century Kapellmeister: The Life and Music of Antonio Rosetti (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2014).

Russell, Craig. From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Clark, Caryl, ed. The Cambridge Haydn Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Geiringer, Karl. Haydn: A Creative Life in Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982 [Revised Edition]).

Heartz, Daniel. Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School 17401780 (New York: Norton, 1995).

Heartz, Daniel. Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven 17811802 (New York: Norton, 2009).

Jones, David Wyn. The Life of Haydn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Landon, H. C. Robbins. Haydn Chronicle and Works . 5 volumes (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 19761980).

Landon, H. C. Robbins. The Mozart Compendium (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991).

Wolff, Christoph. Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune: Serving the Emperor 17881791 (New York: Norton, 2012).

Boyd, Malcolm, ed. Music and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

There is perhaps no other period in music history that has fired the imagination more than the Classical Period. It was a time when much of our modern thought was formulated and developed, when scientific achievement finally began to break loose from the fetters of religion that had dictated its concordance with doctrine, when political rearrangements spelled the demise of the feudal order and fostered the creation of nations defined by their language and culture, and when the focus in social life, philosophy, and the arts began to revolve around the human element. There was, for the first time, belief in a progressive future for humankind, expressed in the epithet ad astra per aspera (to the stars through difficulties or challenges), indicating that human beings were to achieve a future by themselves, no matter what the cost. This, in turn, meant that the rigid class structures that had been in existence for over a millennium began to break down, aided and abetted by a renewed interest in a global perspective as another wave of exploration began to bring Europe into contact with other cultures around the world, stimulating new thoughts and concepts.