Classifying Eras

[DavidW]

Yeah well Hornteacher's system is thorough, but too elaborate for my tastes.  And just saying modern or 20th century is too sweeping.  There just has to be a middle ground.   Is there?

[Dana]

      That's why I go with expressionism - except for a few romantic holdouts, most people said "to hell with form, I'm going to write the music as I hear it expressing itself, in raw emotional form." If some of these expressionists still held to some loose traditional formats, like Shostakovich, it was still just a framework for the emotional content to express itself. If you withhold the repeat eras (neo-classicism and so-called neo-romanticism), this is the biggest unifying trait that I see in most 20th century music. The biggest trouble, of course, is that most people will hear the term expressionism and think "oh, you mean the Second Viennese School."

[marvinbrown]

Since Nos. 3 and 4 are the major portion of my listening, I'll only comment on those.  For "Romantic," you might want to add "Late-Romantic," just to cover all of those composers.  And depending on how much Wagner you have (and how obsessed familiar you are with him), perhaps he needs his own unique designation.  

--Bruce

The late Romatic period should cover Liszt, WAGNER, Mahler, Bruckner, Debussy etc. yeah I can see this being a group all on its own.

  PS: I think Eduard Hanslick just turned in his grave  !

 marvin

[schweitzeralan]

For the purposes of cataloging my collection I have run into this problem of dividing into appropriate eras.  I actually have a reason to want to figure this out, but it's an interesting question in of itself.

Tentative Attempt #1:

• Baroque
• Classical
• Romantic
• Modern

Problem #1: the baroque era is so long that it feels criminal to make it one era.  Monteverdi and Bach really sound different.  So would you split it?  And if so around what date or event?

Problem #2: the turbulent period inbetween the baroque and classical eras really shouldn't be lumped with classical should it?

Problem #3: the romantic era evolved very quickly.  Mendelssohn and Wagner hardly occupied the same musical sphere.  Should this era be also split?

Problem #4: the absolute biggest problem is that 20th and 21st century have several styles and schools, it seems disingenuous to lump them all together.  What would be a good way to categorize the music in the 1900-present time?

From a "lay," but devoted listener I like: Pre-Modernism; Modernism; Post Modermism.  Then of course there are the recognized "isms" developed within the Modernist ethos, like, neo-Primitivism; serial; neo-classicism; expressionist; et. al.
Professional theorists may categorize differently.

[71 dB]

I have 3 baroque periods:

Early Baroque 1600-1650 (Monteverdi, Schütz, Rossi...)
Mid Baroque 1650-1700 (Tunder, Rosenmüller, Charpentier, Buxtehude,...)
Late/High Baroque 1700-1750 (Vivaldi, J. S. Bach, Handel,...)