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"A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must feel all the emotions that he hopes to arouse in his audience." —C. P. E. BACH

Key Points

  • Two pre-Classical styles prevailed in the early eighteenth century: the decorative Rococo, in France, and the sensitive style (Empfindsamkeit), in Germany.
  • Several pre-Classical musicians wrote important music treatises and instruction manuals.
  • Taste in opera changed radically during this era; preferred styles were Italian comic opera and ballad opera (such as The Beggar's Opera), with familiar songs and spoken text.
  • Christoph Willibald Gluck's lyric drama brought about new operatic reforms in the later eighteenth century.

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