MUS 353 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Johann Christian Bach, Rondo, Da Capo Aria
Document Summary
Public demand for instrumental music grew steadily over the course of the classical era, driven in part by the increasing internationalization of the music publishing trade, in part by the growing affluence of middle- and upper-middle-class musical amateurs. These amateurs sought out the latest chamber music, an publishers made a profit selling it to them. Since antiquity, theorists and musicians had considered vocal music superior to purely instrumental music. Jean-jacques rousseau like plato criticized instrumental music arguing that without words, music could please the senses, but it could not embody concepts or reasons. The german philosopher immanuel kant likewise deemed instrumental music to be more pleasure than culture . At the same time, instrumental music was winning newfound respect. It was a language of the heart , governed by its own rules of syntax and rhetoric. The idea that instrumental music was a language in its own right had first appeared in the early 1700s.
