You definitely need the wisdom of this article if any of these statements apply to you:

  • You failed music appreciation in junior high school.

  • You don't know the difference between a flute and a piccolo (you heathen!).

  • You think that "classical" music is anything composed before 1972 ("Stairway to Heaven" - now that's classic).

Even if all three of those statements apply to you, take heart: Learning about classical music is not as boring or difficult as you might imagine it to be. In fact, without realizing it, you're probably already familiar with many classical songs because they're everywhere - at the dentist office, in car commercials on TV, accompanying your favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon. Your cell phone may even play Beethoven's "Fur Elise" when it rings.

We're going to teach you the basics about classical music partly because we figured that a bum like you could use some breeding, but mostly because unlike listening to Eminem, listening to classical music can be a beautiful, powerful, and emotionally rewarding experience. And if those aren't good enough reasons for you to stick around for the lesson, becoming a classical music buff will make you a foolproof babe magnet.

Now, onto the world of Stravinsky, Mozart, and Beethoven. (By the end of this SYW they'll be Igor, Wolfie, and Lud-Master V. to you.)

(By the way, we have tons of music for you to listen to, but you'll need to download Real Audio Player or some other audio listening program. Don't panic though -- Real Audio is free).

1. LEARN ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

The Middle Ages: The Birth of Classical Music

Classical music wasn't always about violins and conductors. In fact, a bunch of monks and a man named Pope Gregory I are credited for starting it all. Singing had been going on for centuries before Pope Gregory came along, but he was the first to come up with the idea of writing music down…and sheet music was born.

Gregory gave each note that he could come up with (four in total) a corresponding letter: A through D. We still use these notes today, but E, F, G, and all the half notes between each note on the scale have been added since Gregory's time.

Soon, monks started writing and singing songs using Gregory's rules. These simple, yet meandering melodies were called Gregorian Chants. If you listen to them, they really sound like a bunch of monks singing in a monastery - spiritual, calming…and just a little soporific.

A few years later, a monk named Guido of Arezzo decided that writing A, B, C, and D was too babyish. He invented the music notations do, re, mi, fa, so, la, and ti, and drew them as notes on a staff. Notes and staffs are now a lot more complicated than when Guido first came up with them, but he can certainly be credited as being the first.

The Renaissance: Madrigals and Operas

During an age when visual art and religious beliefs were being reborn, music was not about to be left out. Madrigals, a form of vocal music that incorporated at least three voices (but often more), was created and quickly became popular. Madrigals involved being a team player, sounding beautiful and harmonic, and a fun technique called madrigalism. An example of madrigalism: when singers came across the word "happy" in their lyrics, they would sing that note happily. Or if they were singing about running down a hill, the notes would also descend.

Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi came up with the idea of adding musical accompaniment to madrigals. He also decided to make music more dramatic by inventing opera. If learning about opera interests you, we have thoughtfully written another article entitled, "SYW Learn About Opera?"

The Baroque Era

Around the late 1600s, it was fashionable for the royalty and rich households to employ a composer (sort of like a maid or a chauffeur). Composers also resided in churches and wrote music for mass. So writing music wasn't a hobby for composers like Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach - it was a high-pressure job. And they were the best at it, each creating hundreds of pieces that are still played and cherished today (along with hundreds of others that are lost forever because composers wrote and performed their music so casually).

The Classical Period

The classical period, which lasted from the mid-1700s to early 1800s, yielded some of the most popular composers in history. Classical music really became popular during this time, and everyone waited anxiously as composers, who were like 19th century Britney Spearses, came out with new concertos, sonatas, and symphonies. There were many one-hit wonders, but composers like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn rose to the top and stayed there. They defined classical music at the time.

The Romantic Era

During the romantic era (early to mid-1800s), music took a turn for the highly emotional and poetically personal. Structure, though still important, was second to expressing oneself freely. A beautiful sunset or a lovely member of the opposite sex would send a composer running for his quill pen. Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, and Strauss are just some of the romantic greats.

Nationalism in Classical Music

Prior to the mid-1800s, composers typically went to Vienna, Austria -the Mecca of classical music-to become great. But then it became fashionable to just stay home and compose music from there, instead. Composers like Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and others made up songs that had a bit of hometown flavor, and this style of incorporating your country's folk music into classical music was a hit, lasting until the beginning of the 20th century.

Twentieth-Century Classical Music

When a new century dawned, composers like Debussy, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Gershwin changed all the rules again by making their music very "visual." Their pieces were like musical movies. Disney took advantage of this fact and incorporated several twentieth-century pieces into Fantasia.

2. FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH THE VARIOUS SYLES OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

JJust as music isn't just music nowadays (it's pop, dance, hip-hop, etc.), classical music wasn't - and isn't - just classical music. The great composers had guidelines to follow and many even revolutionized a few of the standards.

  • Symphony. A symphony is the mother of all classical musical pieces. It is typically at least half an hour long, composed of four movements, and to play it, a full-body orchestra has to be involved. As you can imagine, a symphony is very hard create and all the great composers wrote at least a couple of symphonies to prove their greatness.

  • Sonata. Sonatas, like symphonies, can be just as long to play and contain just as many movements, but they are generally played by only one or a few players.

  • Sonatina. A sonatina is a baby sonata. It is still played by only one or a few players, but the length of the music is not as long, and there are noticeably fewer movements.

  • Concerto. A concerto is basically a song written for a solo player, but the soloist plays it with an orchestra backing him/her up. When played during a concert, the soloist stands or sits in front of the rest of the orchestra on the stage. Oftentimes, classical concert-goers go to performances mainly to hear the concerto.

  • Dance. Some classical music is meant to be danced to. Waltzes fall under this category. You can tell if a piece is a dance if it's repetitive and has a steady rhythm that you find yourself moving to. (Another dead giveaway is the word "dance" or "waltz" in the title.)

  • Serenade. Serenades were basically created to be background music. Kings and other important people used to order for them to be played during dinner parties and other functions where it was good to have music involved but not to the point where they were the focus of the gathering. Most serenades last for about half an hour and are generally uncomplicated, mild, and soothing to listen to.

  • Theme and Variation. A musical theme is a melody that's introduced at the beginning of a piece and repeated over and over again throughout the rest of the song with slight variations. It's quite simple, really, because only one tune is really involved, but it sounds great. Pachelbel's Canon in D is a wonderful example of a theme and its variations.

  • Rhapsody. Rhapsodies (and fantasias, the sisters of rhapsodies) have no form, so when you have no idea what category of classical music a song falls under, chalk it up as a rhapsody. This is not to say that these types of music were complete ramblings of notes - think of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, a song that's wacky and meandering, but you can still sing and violently bob your head along with it because it has a distinct tune and rhythm.

  • Tone Poem. Tone poems are similar to rhapsodies in that they have no specified structure. But their specialty is to tell a story. A great example of a tone poem is Sergei Prokofiev'sPeter and the Wolf. Or, for a more modern example, John William's Star Wars score.

  • Overture. Only a couple of minutes long, overtures (also known as preludes) were written to evoke a certain mood or emotion like tragic sadness or triumphant happiness. Nowadays, overtures are composed to be played before the curtain goes up at a Broadway show or opera.

  • Ballet. Some classical music was composed for the explicit reason of accompanying the ballet. In the beginning, ballet music was written to be background music so it wasn't very striking. But then Peter Tchaikovsky came along and revolutionized the genre with his stunning pieces and people started to listen to just the music without watching the dancing.

3. GET TO KNOW SOME GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR STYLES

There are so many great composers out there that it would be a major pain in the butt to write about them all, so we'll only do a sampling of who we consider to be the most interesting and revolutionary. Yeah, we're lazy. Deal.

Antonio Vivaldi
Johann Sebastian Bach
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Frederic Chopin
Peter Tchaikovsky
Igor Stravinsky
And the rest…

Antonio Vivaldi

  • All about Antonio. Vivaldi (1678-1741) was a (very) hardworking composer who wrote almost 700 pieces of music during his career. If you're thinking that he probably didn't date much, you're right. Vivaldi started off as a priest but was fired because he couldn't keep his music writing under control and often put his holier duties second. He ended up becoming a violin teacher at a music school for illegitimate girls. Don't ask.

  • Vivaldi's style. Vivaldi was into concertos in a big way. His most famous work, The Four Seasons, is a series of four concertos that really do sound like the winter, spring, summer, and fall.

Johann Sebastian Bach

  • All about Johann. Some call Bach (1685-1750) the father of piano. He was, in fact, known during his lifetime for his amazing organ playing and not so much for his composing. Yet, because he is no longer capable of giving concerts, it is Bach's works that make him great today.

  • Bach's style. Bach was a master at weaving several different tunes together and making them work as one song. (The technical term is "counterpoint.") If you listen carefully to any of his pieces, you'll be able to pick out at least two distinct melodies. It's pretty obvious in his well-known piece, Air on the G String (as in the violin string, you perv).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  • All about Wolfgang. Whether Mozart (1756-1791) really had a crazy laugh (as the movie Amadeus depicted) is debatable, but historians agree that he really was nuts. Well, you would be too, if music flowed profusely and unceasingly from your brain until the day of your death! There is no question that Mozart was a child prodigy and a musical genius; he composed hundreds of works without a thought. It was simply a matter of getting it all down on paper in time.

  • Mozart's style. Mozart was fond of scales (quick successions of consecutive notes in one key) and often incorporated them into his music. The scales complemented the fleeting, blithe, and spirited nature of his works. For a great example of Mozart's style, listen to his Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

Ludwig Van Beethoven

  • All about Ludwig. Beethoven (1770-1827) was not only a brilliant pianist and composer, he was a true artiste: sensitive, dramatic, and tragic. It was, unfortunately, a debilitating handicap that pushed Beethoven into greatness: he discovered much to his horror that he was going deaf at the age of 31. After this realization, Beethoven's music became fraught with the emotions he was desperately trying to express before he could no longer hear his own works. Sad, eh? At least his dramatic creations are still appreciated to no end by even those who can't tell classical music apart from a serenading troll.

  • Beethoven's style. Most of Beethoven's music is reflective of the stages of his life, so some of it is sweet sounding and mild, while other pieces are sweeping and grand, and still others are filled with drama and darkness. All of it is great -his symphonies, (like the famous fifth one), his sonatas (e.g. The Moonlight Sonata)-absolutely all of it.

Frederic Chopin

  • All about Fred. Before Chopin (1810-1849) came along, people thought that classical music was emotionally limited when played on the piano alone. Chopin changed all that by composing beautiful, diverse music for the piano. Ironically, Chopin was a skinny, sickly man who often couldn't make it through a concert of his own music. Fortunately, he was able to make a decent living off selling his music, giving piano lessons, and giving private concerts in people's homes. Imagine inviting Chopin over to tickle your ivories!

  • Chopin's style. One defining factor of a Chopin song is that they're always played on the piano. Stylistic features to look out for are blatant romance and passion - Chopin wrote lots of tender music like his Grand Valse Brillianteand fiery pieces like his Fant-Impromptu op. 66.

Peter Tchaikovsky

  • All about Peter. Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) lived like a true musician: his life was tragic, but he managed to change the course of classical ballet music before committing suicide at the age of 53. A big part of Tchaikovsky's problems was that he was rumored to be gay, which was reason enough for banishment in his home country of Russia. Despite his troubles, Tchaikovsky was capable of composing cheerful, bouncy music that ballet dancers pirouetted to - and soon, audiences were clamoring to listen to the music without the pirouetting ballet dancers.

  • Tchaikovsky's style. Like Beethoven, Tchaikovsky's musical style vacillated between the paradoxically weightless/rich music of his ballet compositions (for example, his famous Nutcracker Suite), and the dramatic nature of pieces like his famous 1812 Overture.

Igor Stravinsky

  • All about Igor. Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a real rabble-rouser. His music was so different from anything anybody had ever heard that people actually stalked out of his concerts en masse. To give the fools credit, Stravinsky's music is a little hard to handle if you're unfamiliar with it: he purposely set out to create dissonant, completely mismatching sounds. Somehow, they work.

  • Stravinsky's Style. It's whatever the complete opposite of Mozart is. Off beats, jarring chords, surprising crescendos - these are the trademarks of Stravinsky. When he launched his most infamous piece, The Rite of Spring, it infuriated crowds and caused riots. Strangely enough, audiences gave him standing ovations for it a year later.

And the rest…

Just because we don't have room for the rest of these musical masters doesn't mean that you should be deprived of their music. Here are some songs that a classical music novice such as yourself should look out for as an introduction to each artist:

  • George Frideric Handel:

  • Joseph Hadyn:

  • Franz Schubert:
Water Music, Suite No. 2: Alla Hornpipe

Symphony No. 94 in C Major (Surprise)

Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished)
  • Felix Mendelssohn:

  • Johannes Brahms:

  • Franz Liszt:
The Wedding March

Hungarian Dance

Hungarian Rhapsody
  • Johann Strauss:

  • Hector Berlioz:

  • Antonin Dvorak:
The Blue Danube Waltz

Symphonie Fantasique

Symphony No. 9
  • Sergei Rachmaninoff:

  • Claude Debussy:

  • George Gershwin:
Piano Concerto No. 2

Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

Rhapsody in Blue

4. TALK THE TALK

Wouldn't it be great if the next time you visited your dentist and heard Bach playing in the waiting room, you were able to lean over to the comely person in the next seat and casually remark, "No one does counterpoint as well as Bach!" Much classier than "I'm in for a root canal - what about you?", huh?

So here's a handy list of words and terms you can sprinkle into your conversation as you're discussing classical music. Bonus points if you can identify the composers of songs, and even if you can't, you can always use all you've learned about each composer's unique style to say that a piece "is certainly reminiscent of the great Chopin" or whomever.

The way music sounds
Music composition

The way music sounds

  • Atonal. When a piece of music sounds dissonant to the ear, it's atonal. That doesn't necessarily mean that the song sounds bad. A lot of jazz music, for example, is atonal.

  • Crescendo. When music gets louder and louder, the volume growth is called a crescendo. A good crescendo doesn't sound like a sudden crash of music; it rises steadily and evenly.

  • Tempo. Tempo refers to the speed of the piece. If you listen to different recordings of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, you might be surprised to find that they are played at different speeds. Tempo is a conductor's prerogative, although the composer usually specifies a range of tempos in which the music should be played.

  • Rubato. When a player uses rubato, he/she varies the tempo a bit by either speeding up or slowing down a little in one phrase and making up the time in a later one. This slight bending of the rules is the equivalent of poetical license while writing poetry.

  • Cadence. Occasionally it'll happen that the entire orchestra stops playing for a couple of seconds. They're not taking a break - at least, not one that they've decided to insert into the piece. They've come to the cadence (or pausing point of a piece/end of a movement).

  • Counterpoint. A combination of two or more different melodies that still sound good together is called the counterpoint. Like Row, Row, Row Your Boat sung by you and the Three Tenors, each person starting from a different point in the song.

Music composition

  • Cadenza. Some movements end with a cadenza, which is a solo. When the orchestra stops playing, a soloist keeps going and shows off for some time ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes.

  • Exposition. The first movement of a symphony piece is usually the exposition - where all the main themes are introduced (or exposed, if you will) for the first time.

  • Movements. These are the different sections in a whole classical piece. Most symphonies have four movements and most concertos have three. Movements of a piece often sound unlike each other, but they are related. When a piece is played, there is usually a pause between movements. If you're at a classical concert, don't ever be the first one to clap after the orchestra stops playing - it might not be the end of the whole song, but the end of a movement (and you shouldn't clap between movements). To be safe, wait until at least a dozen people are clapping before you putting your own hands together, or you just might end up looking very silly.

And now that you know a thing or two about classical music, perhaps one day when you just happen to be visiting Vienna, Austria, you'll drop by the famous cemetery in which many of the great composers are buried side by side. Just promise us you won't disturb them as they decompose! (Sorry, we couldn't resist.)