classical instrument

Background of Classical Music: The Essentials

In today's world, classical music has fallen far outside mainstream tastes. When most people think of classical music, they tend to think of boring orchestral music played in a fancy concert hall for old people, elitists, or nerds. In reality, classical music is simply another genre of music for people to enjoy, and it is just as varied as popular music is today. Whereas popular music consists of a variety of genres, like pop, rap, hip-hop, rock, and country, classical music is similarly made up of different categories, the largest being the four major periods, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary. There is no single way to define classical music aside from music belonging to one of these four periods; however, some music written in the 20th and 21st centuries begins to straddle the line between classical and popular music, making it difficult to categorize a piece of music as belonging solely to the classical tradition. youtube