style galant

The term Style galant, also called Rococo, refers to a homophonic, light-hearted and ornamental musical style of the 18th century, especially in France and Italy.

The galant style was an 18th-century movement in music, visual arts and literature. In Germany a closely related style was called the empfindsamer Stil (sensitive style). Another close relative is rococo style.

The Galant Style of music could be considered as a transitional style between the Baroque and Classical Periods of music. It lasted from about the 1720s to the 1770s. The word "galant" derives from French, where it was in use from at least the 16th century.

Rococo is a style of fantasy -- it is a state of mind that aims to charm. The "style galant" in music aimed to do very much what the rococo was doing in applied art and architecture. Its primary objective was to appeal to the widest audience, and hence music had to be simple and natural for both listener and performer.

Traits characteristic for composers of this school are a particular fondness for Adagio movements and precise attention to ornaments and dynamics, as well as the liberal use of appoggiaturas ("sigh" figures) and frequent melodic and harmonic chromaticism.

Classical era music, the music of Haydn and Mozart, was born out of the Age of Reason-the Enlightenment which extended from the 1730's-1780's It was a period of rebirth of the renaissance in which the primary focus was on Humanism - the interests and values of people.

German popular music of the 20th and 21st century includes the movements of Neue Deutsche Welle (Nena, Hubert Kah, Alphaville), disco (Boney M., Modern Talking, Dschinghis Khan, Milli Vanilli, Bad Boys Blue), metal/rock (Rammstein, Scorpions, Accept, Helloween), punk (Die Ärzte, Böhse Onkelz, Nina Hagen, Die Toten ...

Germans view schlager as their country music, and American country and Tex-Mex music are both major elements in schlager culture.

Main Characteristic Variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before. Variety of keys, melodies, rhythms and dynamics (using crescendo, diminuendo and sforzando), along with frequent changes of mood and timbre were more commonplace in the Classical period than they had been in the Baroque.

classicism, aesthetic attitude and art style based on or reiterating themes, techniques, and subjects of art from ancient Greece and Rome (spanning approximately from the formation of Greek city-states in the 8th century bce to the decline of the Roman Empire in the 5th century ce).

Rococo was perhaps the most rebellious of design styles. Often described as the final expression of the Baroque movement, it was exceptionally ornamental and theatrical – a style without rules.

Neoclassicism arose partly as a reaction against the sensuous and frivolously decorative Rococo style that had dominated European art from the 1720s on. But an even more profound stimulus was the new and more scientific interest in Classical antiquity that arose in the 18th century.