The genres of music that arose in the Classical period, replacing those of the Baroque era, continued to hold their own in the nineteenth century, and all the way through the first half of the twentieth. Indeed, they are still in use today, at least in the sense that their names are still encountered. Not surprisingly, the style, the number of movements, and the forms employed today bear little relation to norms from two hundred and more years ago. But it is still true that if you compose a large, impressive concert piece for orchestra, the best way to convey that fact to conductors, musicians, and audiences is to name it a symphony.

One reason for the prominence of the symphony in the Classical era is its close association with a crucial development in the sociology of music, discussed in Chapter 12: the growth of public concerts. As concerts became more and more frequent, people felt a need for some genre that would make an effective, substantial focus for these occasions. Symphonies answered the need — and in turn required more variety and flexibility of sound than anything orchestras of the early eighteenth century could provide. The symphony spurred a major technical development within music, the evolution of the Classical orchestra (see page 156).

The symphony, then, is rightly viewed as the crowning achievement of Viennese Classical music — but when any musician acknowledges this, he or she wants to add a plea in the same breath: Please don’t forget the other genres that grew up alongside the symphony, for in these genres you will find music just as beautiful, music that has become for us just as precious. In Chapter 14 we study the sonata, the Classical concerto, the string quartet, and — in the field of opera — Italian opera buffa (comic opera).