Today we explore a lit­tle of the music writ­ten at the bor­ders of the Clas­si­cal and Roman­tic eras, focus­ing on the work of some well-known com­posers born in the last 30 years of the 18th Cen­tu­ry. It’s also time for a new episode of our Sec­ond Life trav­el series, “Where’ve You Been?” — Episode 10, which vis­its the Gallery Air­ship Limon­cel­lo (see sep­a­rate entry).

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the term ‘clas­si­cal music’ refers specif­i­cal­ly to the musi­cal peri­od from 1750 to 1820. The tran­si­tion from the clas­si­cal peri­od of West­ern art music, which last­ed around 1750 to 1820, to Roman­tic music, which last­ed around 1815 to 1910, took place in the eigh­teenth and nine­teenth cen­turies. Com­posers began tran­si­tion­ing their com­po­si­tion­al and melod­ic tech­niques into a new musi­cal form which became known as the Roman­tic Era or Roman­ti­cism due to the imple­men­ta­tion of lyri­cal melodies as opposed to the lin­ear com­po­si­tion­al style of Clas­si­cal music.