New reading group begins! 'The Classical Style'

The Classical Style by Charles Rosen 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Week 1: Overture 

Schedule: 

5/25/2026 Overture 

6/1 Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples. 

I   INTRODUCTION 

6/8 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century 

6/15 2. Theories of Form 

6/22 3. The Origins of the Style 

II   THE CLASSICAL STYLE 

6/29 1. The Coherence of the Musical Language 

7/6 2. Structure and Ornament 

III   HAYDN FROM 1770 TO THE DEATH OF MOZART 

7/13 1. String Quartet 

7/20 2. Symphonies 

7/27  

IV   SERIOUS OPERA 

V   MOZART 

8/3 1. The Concerto 

8/10 2. String Quintet 

8/17 3. Comic Opera 

VI   HAYDN AFTER THE DEATH OF MOZART 

8/24 1. The Popular Style 

8/31 2. Piano Trio (Doomed Music) 

9/7 3. Church Music 

VII   BEETHOVEN 

9/14 1. Beethoven 

9/21 2. Beethoven’s Later Years and the Conventions of His Childhood 

9/28 Epilogue 

At the end of first grade they put some of the first graders in the second grade classroom for the last few weeks of school. One day the second grade teacher told us about Franz Joseph Haydn. She said he had become famous, but then, as now, some people fell asleep at the concerts, so he wrote a special piece for them, and she played us the second movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOLy6JxEDLw&list=RDVOLy6JxEDLw&start_radio=1 

This utterly delighted my first grade mind. I could think of nothing cooler. I went home and told my mom about it, and she got me an LP of Haydn’s Surprise and Clock Symphonies that Christmas. I listened to them over and over again over the decades. 

Around December 1990 I read Joseph Kerman’s The Beethoven Quartets which blew me away, and in 1991 I read a bunch of other Kerman books. In Kerman’s Contemplating Music he raved about Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style, so it read it that summer, and I’ve read it over and over again over the past 25 years, along with all of Rosen’s other books. I also love Rosen’s piano playing. I love the synergetic experience of reading him and then listening to his recordings and trying to grok the music. Thank you for joining me on this voyage to Esterhazy, Salzburg, Vienna, and beyond.