what is classical music?

In music, the term classical is used in two different ways: one general, the other specific.

In the general sense, classical music is music written in the educated and formal European tradition of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, any kind of music that is formally and artistically more sophisticated and enduring than other, less stringent types of music such as popular music, folk music, jazz, and Dixieland.

Classical music of this kind includes symphonies, operas, sonatas, song cycles, and lieder. It is the kind of music one usually hears played in the symphony hall, music from the pen of composers ranging from Tchaikovsky to Mahler to Copeland to Berg and up to the present. In this general sense, classical music is a term that can be applied to music that also can be put into other categories. For example, Romantic music is considered classical.

In a narrower but equally valid sense, the term classical music also means music characterized by or adhering to the well-ordered, chiefly homophonic musical style of the latter half of the 18th and the early 19th centuries. Haydn and Mozart are classical composers in this sense of the word.

The term classical is applied to the works of the kind Haydn and Mozart wrote because they are thought to adhere to the principles of ancient Greek and Roman art generally. Their works are classical because they adhere to artistic principles like symmetry, balance, and proportion that are associated with Greek and Roman classical-era literature, architecture, sculpture, and other enduring art forms. Many ancient Greek and Roman works treated subjects drawn from Greek or Roman art or mythology; but a classical work of music does not have to treat these kinds of classical subjects to be considered classical. A musical work of the 18th or 19th centuries can be (and usually is) dubbed classical mainly because of its style.

The term classical is not strictly limited to works from the 18th and 19th centuries that bear the characteristics of ancient classical art. Sergei Prokofiev's Second Symphony, popularly known a as the Classical Symphony, is a case in point. Prokofiev was a Russian writing in the 20th century; his symphony is called classical because it emulates values and characteristics of works like those written by Haydn and Mozart.

It is common for classical characteristics (in the general sense) to spill over into the works of other, non-classical genres, performers, and composers and vice versa. For example, spirituals, Christmas carols, military marches, and popular songs are often transcribed for performance by a symphony orchestra.

Interestingly, George Gershwin, perhaps best known for his wonderful popular songs and ballads composed for sheet music stores, the stage, movies, radio, and records, wrote several important pieces for classical orchestra. Among them is Rhapsody in Blue, a "classical" work inspired by jazz motifs that is usually played in the symphonic concert hall. Rhapsody in Blue was commissioned by Paul Whiteman and premiered in New York's Aeolean Hall in 1924 with Gershwin at the piano, Whiteman at the podium, and Whiteman's jazz orchestra on the stage. Whiteman, known as the King of Jazz, is credited with introducing jazz to mainstream audiences during the 1920s and 1930s. Despite its strong classical structure and overtones, the Rhapsody became Whiteman's theme; and Whiteman established the Whiteman Awards for compositions in a “symphonic jazz” style.

Benny Goodman provides another example of how classical music and musicians can cross over to and from other genres. Goodman, who was known as The King of Swing, was famous as a master of the jazz clarinet; he specialized in the Chicago clarinet style. As a classical clarinetist he recorded with the Budapest String Quartet and commissioned classical works by the contemporary composers Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, and Aaron Copland, which he recorded and played in concert hall and at non-concert hall venues.