Classical Showcase

No. 251 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast251

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A few weeks ago, we shared a montage of Baroque music by composers other than the usual suspects, and this week we are doing the same, this time for the Classical period.

When we think of classical music periods, we have to look at them in the context of the aesthetics of their time, and not necessarily in terms of a hard time box. As a case in point, consider the Romantic period – in music, this period covers most of the Nineteenth century, yet we could argue that some of Mozart’s late symphonies and piano concerti (dating from the latter part of the Eighteenth century) certainly presage Romantic traditions Ditto for the music of Rachmaninov, who was active well into the Twentieth.

The same applies to the Classical era, which we could simplistically assign to the Eighteenth century, but certainly spills over to the 1800s. Also, “late baroque” music can be thought of as “early Classical”. The inclusion of Georg Christoph Wagenseil, William Boyce and Charles Avison who all were active in the first quarter of the 1700s in today’s montage is indicative of this fact.

The works of our montages’ composers provide good examples of music composed following the tradition well-established by the likes of Haydn, Mozart and Salieri. One can find some of their influence in the concerti by Meridante and Cramer.

I think you will love this music too.