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- Concerto: instrumental work pitting a soloist against the orchestra. Mozart wrote a number of piano concertos featuring himself as the soloist.
- Piano sonata: multi-movement work for solo piano. All composers of the period contributed to this genre.
- String quartet: four-movement work for two violins, viola, and cello favored by Haydn, who established the grouping as the premiere chamber medium.
- Symphony: four-movement work for orchestra. Haydn composed 104 symphonies, Mozart 41, and Beethoven 9.
- Opera: as in the baroque period, a drama set to music and staged. Mozart was the most important opera composer of the period.
Musical genres
- Franz Josef Haydn (1632–1809): Viennese composer; see Musician Biographies.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): Austrian composer; see Musician Biographies.
- Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827): German late classical/early romantic composer; see Musician Biographies.
Major figures in music
- Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1764): French painter; Embarkation for the Isle of Cythera.
- Voltaire (1694-1778): French writer and philosopher; champion of individual liberties and critic of organized religion.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790): American statesman and inventor; Founding Father of the United States; publisher of Pennsylvania Gazette; Ambassador to France.
- Linnaeus (1707-1778): Swedish botanist; creator of scientific classification system for plants and animals.
- David Hume (1711-1776): Scottish philosopher and historian, proponent of empiricism.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): French philosopher; his ideas of liberty and equality taken up during French Revolution.
- Frederick the Great (1712-1796): King of Prussia; enlightened monarch who inaugurated freedom of the press and worship; accomplished flutist who employed one of J. S. Bach’s sons.
- Denis Diderot (1713-1784): French philosopher; chief editor of Encyclopedie.
- Adam Smith (1723-1790): Scottish economist and philosopher; author of The Wealth of Nations.
- Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792): English portrait painter.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): German philosopher of metaphysics and epistemology; author of Critique of Pure Reason.
- Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788): English portrait painter of fashionable society and children; Blue Boy.
- James Cook (1728-1779): English navigator and explorer of the Pacific.
- Catherine the Great (1729-1796): czarina of Russia.
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781): German dramatist, critic, and philosopher.
- George Washington (1732-1799): Revolutionary War general; first president of the United States.
- Jean Honore Fragonard (1732-1806): French portrait painter.
- John Adams (1735-1826): U.S. Founding Father and second president of the United States.
- James Watt (1736-1819): Scottish inventor of the steam engine.
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1743): U.S. Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, president of the United States, 1801 to 1809; lawyer, architect, statesman.
- Francisco de Goya (1746-1828): Spanish painter; portraits of royalty; other subjects include inhumanity of war.
- Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832): Utilitarian philosopher.
- Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825): French painter.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): German poet, novelist, playwright, and statesman; author of The Sorrows of Young Werther and Faust.
- Simon Bolivar (1758-1830): Latin American soldier and statesman; the “George Washington of South America;”; major figure in independence from Spain for Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
- Robert Burns (1759-1796): Scottish poet who wrote in the Scots language; Auld Lang Syne.
- Johann von Schiller (1759-1805): German poet, playwright, and historian; author of poem used by Beethoven in his Symphony #9.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821): Corsican-born general, emperor of France, 1804 to 1814.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831): German philosopher; writings on the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history, religion, and aesthetics.
- Jane Austen (1775-1817): English novelist; author of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park.
Other historic figures
Read also:
OpenStax, Music appreciation: its language, history and culture. OpenStax CNX. Jun 03, 2015 Download for free at https://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11803/1.1
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