Their works especially stressed improving humanity's condition through the use of reason and common sense in order to provide liberty and justice for all. Newton's mathematics and optical theory showed that humans can observe, study, define, and test the world around them and can also mathematically measure and prove natural occurrences.īesides Locke and Newton, Enlightenment thinkers included Voltaire, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, and Immanuel Kant. Locke stressed that knowledge is gained through accumulated life experience rather than by acquired outside truth. In that decade, Newton published Principia Mathematica and John Locke published his " Essay Concerning Human Understanding." These two works provided the philosophical, mathematical, and scientific foundation for the Enlightenment's great developments. The seeds for the Enlightenment can be found in England in approximately the 1680s. Publications and scientific discoveries of these thinkers proving and understanding many of nature's laws spurred the paradigm shift of logic referred to as the Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment.
Philosophers and theorists across Europe began to questioning these norms and issues and began suggesting instead that humanity could benefit from change. Our use of the Classical period to refer to music of roughly 1750 to 1815, however, should not be confused with our broader use of the term "classical music" to refer to art music (music that does not otherwise fall within the spheres of popular music or folk music).īeginning towards the end of the 16th century, citizens in Europe became skeptical of traditional politics, governance, wealth distribution, and the aristocracy. As we will also see, this music has often been perceived as emulating the balance and portion of ancient Greek and Roman art, the time period to which the word "classical" is affixed within literature and art history, as well as the wider field of history. For one, the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven has served as the model for most composers after their time and is still played today in this way, the music is "classic" in that it has provided an exemplar and has stood the test of time.
Music scholars have referred to this time as the Classical period in music for several reasons. Although born in different European regions, all three spent a substantial amount of time in Vienna, Austria, which might be considered the European musical capital of the time. Its music is dominated by three composers whose works are still some of the best known of all Western art music: Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Of all the musical periods, the Classical period is the shortest, spanning less than a century.
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