Ideological origins :

Both the English term “classical” and the German equivalent klassik developed from the French classique, itself derived from the Latin word classicus, which originally referred to the highest class of Ancient Roman citizens.[11][n 1] In Roman usage, the term later became a means to distinguish revered literary figures;[11] the Roman author Aulus Gellius commended writers such as Demosthenes and Virgil as classicus.[13] By the Renaissance, the adjective had acquired a more general meaning: an entry in Randle Cotgrave‘s 1611 A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues is among the earliest extant definitions, translating classique as “classical, formall [sic], orderlie, in due or fit ranke; also, approved, authenticall, chiefe, principall”.[11][14] The musicologist Daniel Heartz summarizes this into two definitions: 1) a “formal discipline” and 2) a “model of excellence”.[11] Like Gellius, later Renaissance scholars who wrote in Latin used classicus in reference to writers of classical antiquity;[12][n 2] however, this meaning only gradually developed, and was for a while subordinate to the broader classical ideals of formality and excellence.[15] Literature and arts—for which substantial Ancient Greek and Roman examples existed—did eventually adopt the term “classical” as relating to classical antiquity, but virtually no music of that time was available to Renaissance musicians, limiting the connection between classical music and the Greco-Roman world.[15][n 3]

It was in 18th-century England that the term ‘classical’ “first came to stand for a particular canon of works in performance.”[15] London had developed a prominent public concert music scene, unprecedented and unmatched by other European cities.[11] The royal court had gradually lost its monopoly on music, in large part from instability that the Commonwealth of England‘s dissolution and the Glorious Revolution enacted on court musicians.[11][n 4] In 1672 the former court musician John Banister began giving popular public concerts at a London tavern;[n 5] his popularity rapidly inaugurated the prominence of public concerts in the London.[19] The conception of “classical”—or more often “ancient music”—emerged, which was still built on the principles of formality and excellence, and according to Heartz “civic ritual, religion and moral activism figured significantly in this novel construction of musical taste”.[15] The performance of such music was specialized by the Academy of Ancient Music and later at the Concerts of Antient Music series, where the work of select 16th and 17th composers was featured,[20] especially George Frideric Handel.[15][n 6] In France, the reign of Louis XIV (r. 1638–1715) saw a cultural renaissance, by the end of which writers such as Molière, Jean de La Fontaine and Jean Racine were considered to have surpassed the achievements of classical antiquity.[21] They were thus characterized as “classical”, as was the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully (and later Christoph Willibald Gluck), being designated as “l’opéra française classique”.[21] In the rest of continental Europe, the abandonment of defining “classical” as analogous to the Greco-Roman World was slower, primarily because the formation of canonical repertoires was either minimal or exclusive to the upper classes.[15]

Many European commentators of the early 19th-century found new unification in their definition of classical music: to juxtapose the older composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and (excluding some of his later works) Ludwig van Beethoven as “classical” against the emerging style of Romantic music.[22][23][24] These three composers in particular were grouped into the First Viennese School, sometimes called the “Viennese classics”,[n 7] a coupling that remains problematic by reason of none of the three being born in Vienna and the minimal time Haydn and Mozart spent in the city.[25] While this was an often expressed characterization, it was not a strict one. In 1879 the composer Charles Kensington Salaman defined the following composers as classical: Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Spohr and Mendelssohn.[26] More broadly, some writers used the term “classical” to generally praise well-regarded outputs from various composers, particularly those who produced many works in an established genre.[11][n 8]

Contemporary understanding :

The contemporary understanding of the term “classical music” remains vague and multifaceted.[31][32] Other terms such as “art music”, “canonic music”, “cultivated music” and “serious music” are largely synonymous.[33] The term “classical music” is often indicated or implied to concern solely the Western world,[34] and conversely, in many academic histories the term “Western music” excludes non-classical Western music.[35][n 9] Another complication lies in that “classical music” is sometimes used to describe non-Western art music exhibiting similar long-lasting and complex characteristics; examples include Indian classical music (Carnatic and Hindustani music), Gamelan music, and various styles of the court of Imperial China (see yayue for instance).[1] Thus in the later 20th-century terms such as “Western classical music” and “Western art music” came in use to address this.[34] The musicologist Ralph P. Locke notes that neither term is ideal, as they create an “intriguing complication” when considering “certain practitioners of Western-art music genres who come from non-Western cultures”.[37][n 10]

Complexity in musical form and harmonic organization are typical traits of classical music.[1] The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) offers three definitions for the word “classical” in relation to music:[27]

  1. “of acknowledged excellence”
  2. “of, relating to, or characteristic of a formal musical tradition, as distinguished from popular or folk music”
  3. and more specifically, “of or relating to formal European music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, characterized by harmony, balance, and adherence to established compositional forms”.

The last definition concerns what is now termed the Classical period, a specific stylistic era of European music from the second half of the 18th-century to the beginning of the 19th century.