The classical style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven Book

Charles Rosen is one of the great musicologists of the twentieth century and in The Classical Style he does a marvelous job characterizing the classical style as epitomized by its three great masters, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Of all the formal principles that have defined any period, the elements of classical style are perhaps most amenable to formal analysis. The classical period is principally characterized by sonata form and tonality. We can agree with Sir Donald Tovey that we do violence to compositions by interpreting them as if sonata form constitutes a set of binding rules rather than a post-facto abstraction of what the masters of the classical period actually did. Nonetheless, the principles of tonality may be expressed with an intellectual clarity which is more elusive when characterizing, say, a canon or polyphonic mass.

This is a reflection of the ideals of the classical period, whose audiences delighted in elegance and structural economy. Classical composers highlighted the structural contours defining works by emphasizing modulation and calling attention sectional boundaries with an intensified emphasis cadence. Elegance of structure was taken by the classical masters as an end in itself, and their harmonies glide on a framework they trace and enact. That is in itself a large part of the game of classical composition.

An understanding of the classical period is not only relatively easy to acquire, but of central importance to understanding nearly all subsequent composition. With the arguable exceptions of minimalism and some wings of the avant garde, nearly every important composition in the Occident since Haydn is either tonal or a reaction against tonality. Tonal harmony is the very foundation of our music theory to this day, and understanding its history and development can open up a deeper understanding of everything from Verdi to Schoenberg to Robert Johnson to Kylie Minogue.

Rosen makes all of this remarkably evident and comprehensible in dazzling prose that astonishes the reader with his insight on every page. I'm not a musicologist and browsed through a lot of the close passage analysis that comprises a big chunk of the book, but I still got my money's worth many times over.