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which The Marriage of Figaro was based. Comic theater and comic opera, it seemed, not only reflected social change, but could also provoke it.
The Advent of the Piano
Finally, the newly affluent middle class was not content merely to attend con- certs and operatic performances; they also wished to make their own music at home. Most of this domestic music-making centered around an instrument that first entered public consciousness in the Classical period: the piano. Invented in Italy about 1700, the piano gradually replaced the harpsichord as the key- board instrument of choice—and with good reason, for the piano could play at more than one dynamic level (hence the original name pianoforte, “soft-loud”). Compared with the harpsichord, the piano could produce gradual dynamic changes, more subtle contrasts, and—ultimately—more power.
Those who played this new domestic instrument were mostly amateurs, and the great majority of these were women (Figure 7.6). A smattering of French, an eye for needlepoint, and some skill at the piano—these were signs of status and gentil- ity that rendered a young woman suitable for marriage. For the nonprofessional woman to play in the home, however, a simpler, more homophonic style of key- board music was needed, one that would not tax the pre-
sumed technical limitations of the performer. The spirit of
democracy may have been in the air, but this was still very
much a sexist age. It was assumed that ladies would not
wish, as one publication said, “to bother their pretty little headswithcounterpointandharmony,”butwouldbecon-
tent with a tuneful melody and a few rudimentary chords
to flesh it out. Collections such as Keyboard Pieces for La-
dies (1768) were directed at these new musical consumers.
Elements of Classical Style
watch . . . Mozart’s combative aria, “Se vuol ballare,” from Le nozze di Figaro, online.
watch . . . a performance of Mozart’s Variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” performed on a replica of the pianoforte that Mozart purchased in 1783, online.
Fashions change. At the beginning of the eighteenth cen-
tury, sophisticated men powdered their faces, painted
on “beauty spots,” and wore elaborate wigs (see Figure
6.8, portrait of George Frideric Handel). By century’s end
a simpler, more natural style was in vogue (see Thomas
Jefferson’s appearance in Figure 7.1). So, too, did musical
style evolve during the eighteenth century. Compared with the relentless, ornate, and often grandiose sound of the Baroque era, Classical music is lighter in tone, more natural, yet still full of high drama. It is even capable of humor and surprise, as when Joseph Haydn explodes with a thunderous chord in a quiet passage in his “Surprise” Symphony (1791). But what in precise musical terms creates the levity, grace, clarity, and balance we hear in Classical music?
Figure 7.6
Marie Antoinette, in 1770 at
the age of fifteen, seated at an early piano. In 1774, this Austrian princess became queen of France, but in 1793, at the height of French Revolution, she was beheaded.
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