Musicon / Musical education / Definitions of Classical
-Definitions of Classical
There are, among all the terms used in music, no words of vaguer meaning than Classic and Romantic. The idea which they convey most widely in conjunction is that of antithesis. When the Romantic School of composers is discussed it is almost universally presented as something opposed in character to the Classical School. There is little harm in this if we but bear in mind that all the terms which have come into use to describe different phases of musical development are entirely artificial and arbitrary–that they do not stand for anything absolute, but only serve as platforms of observation.
If the terms had a fixed meaning we ought to be able, since they have established themselves in the language of history and criticism, to describe unambiguously and define clearly the boundary which separates them. This, however, is impossible. Each generation, nay, each decade, fixes the meaning of the words for itself and decides what works shall go into each category. It ought to be possible to discover a principle, a touchstone, which shall emancipate us from the mischievous and misleading notions that have so long prompted men to make the partitions between the schools out of dates and names.
The terms were borrowed from literary criticism; but even there, in the words of Archbishop Trench, “they either say nothing at all or say something erroneous.” Classical has more to defend it than Romantic, because it has greater antiquity and, in one sense, has been used with less arbitrariness.
“The term,” says Trench, “is drawn from the political economy of Rome. Such a man was rated as to his income in the third class, such another in the fourth, and so on, and he who was in the highest was emphatically said to be of the class, classicus, a class man, without adding the number as in that case superfluous; while all others were infra classem. Hence by an obvious analogy the best authors were rated as classici, or men of the highest class; just as in English we say ‘men of rank’ absolutely for men who are in the highest ranks of the State.”
Thus Trench, and his historical definition, explains why in music also there is something more than a lurking suggestion of excellence in the conception of “classical;” but that fact does not put away the quarrel which we feel exists between Classic and Romantic.
From: H. Krehbiel’s, How to Listen to Music; excerpts, edited by Musicon