Classical

Originating Location: Italy, Greece, France, Turkey, Syria, Iberia and Egypt.

Originating Styles: Early Christian religious music, plainchant, folk styles, theater and market music, Greek and Roman music theory.

Originating Era: Between the 6th and 9th century.

Early Middle Ages: Rome, Hispania, Gaul, Milan, and Ireland

 * Pope Gregory I
 * St. Godric
 * Hildegard of Bingen
 * Hucbald
 * Notker Balbulus
 * Odo of Arezzo
 * Odo of Cluny
 * Tutilo

High Middle Ages: France

 * Léonin
 * Pérotin
 * William IX of Aquitaine
 * Chastelain de Couci
 * Beatriz de Dia

Late Middle Ages: France and Italy

 * Guillame de Machaut
 * Francesco Landini

Early Renaissance: Flanders, Germany, England, and Italy

 * Guillame Dufay
 * John Dunstaple
 * Martin Luther
 * Jacob Obrecht
 * Johannes Ockeghem
 * Leonel Power
 * Josquin des Prez

Late Renaissance: Italy, Flanders, and England

 * Jacques Arcadelt
 * John Dowland
 * Andrea Gabrieli
 * Giovanni Gabrieli
 * Orlando de Lassus
 * Claudio Monteverdi
 * Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
 * Thomas Weelkes

Baroque and Rococo: Germany, France, England, and Italy

 * Johann Sebastian Bach
 * Arcangelo Corelli
 * George Friderich Handel
 * Jean-Baptiste Lully
 * Henry Purcell
 * Antonio Vivaldi

Early Classicism: Germany, Austria, and Italy

 * Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
 * Luigi Boccherini
 * Christoph Willibald Gluck
 * Joseph Haydn
 * Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
 * Johann Stamitz

Late Classicism: Germany, Austria, and Italy

 * Ludwig van Beethoven
 * Johannes Brahms
 * Frederic Chopin
 * Felix Mendelssohn
 * Franz Schubert
 * Robert Schumann
 * Gioachino Rossini
 * Carl Maria von Weber

Early Romanticism: Germany, France, Italy, Czechia, Hungary, and Russia

 * Hector Berlioz
 * Mikhail Glinka
 * Franz Lizst
 * Niccolo Paganini
 * Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
 * Giuseppe Verdi
 * Bedřich Smetana
 * Richard Wagner

Late Romanticism: America, Austria, Czechia, England, Finland, Italy, Norway, and Russia

 * Ernest Bloch
 * Antonin Dvorak
 * Edward Elgar
 * Edvard Grieg
 * Charles Ives
 * Gustav Mahler
 * Modest Mussorgsky
 * Giacomo Puccini
 * Sergei Rachmaninov
 * Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
 * Ottorino Respighi
 * Jean Sibelius
 * Richard Strauss
 * Ralph Vaughan Williams

Neoclassicism, Neoromanticism and Neobaroque: Britain, Russia, Germany, and America

 * Béla Bartók
 * Aaron Copland
 * Alberto Ginastera
 * Paul Hindemith
 * Gustav Holst
 * George Lloyd
 * Carl Nielsen
 * Francis Poulenc
 * Sergei Prokofiev
 * Max Reger
 * Dmitri Shostakovich
 * Igor Stravinsky
 * Heitor Villa-Lobos

Impressionism, Post-Romanticism and Expressionism: France and Austria

 * Louis Andriessen
 * Claude Debussy
 * Gabriel Fauré
 * Olivier Messiaen
 * Maurice Ravel
 * Erik Satie
 * Arnold Schönberg
 * Albarn Berg
 * Anton Webern

Minimalism: America and the Netherlands

 * John Adams
 * Louis Andriessen
 * John Cage
 * Philip Glass
 * Karel Goeyvaerts
 * Henryk Górecki
 * Arvo Pärt
 * Steve Reich
 * Terry Riley
 * John Tavener
 * LaMonte Young

Popular form: America and Austria

 * Johann Strauss I (Waltz)
 * Johann Strauss II (Waltz and Operetta)
 * Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Blues)
 * George Gershwin (Jazz and Operetta)
 * Scott Joplin (Ragtime)
 * William Grant Still (Blues and Spirituals)
 * Leonard Bernstein (Film and Musical)
 * Danny Elfman (Film)
 * Ennio Morricone (Film)
 * John Williams (Film)

Key Albums

 * Igor Stravinsky - The Firebird Suite

Genre Description
Western Classical is the oldest type of "serious" music. It's a huge blanket term for basically all forms of court, church and upper-middle class music, and sometimes important popular composers. Classical music can be vocal; between song and operatic theater, or instrumental; solo instrument and big orchestral ensembles -- there are many classical pieces for solo piano, violin or harpsichord. Most people think that classical music was written centuries ago, but there is still classical music being written today, though usually for a much smaller market, unless it is in a romantic or classical style. A lot of 20th/21st Century classical, however, is much more experimental than it was before (But also much more fragmented), making it interesting for smaller groups of music specialists but not for a broader market.

Artists in this genre
This only includes artists for whom there are recordings.

Conductors

 * Claudio Abbado
 * Leonard Bernstein
 * Sir Colin Davis
 * Bernard Haitink
 * Sir Neville Marriner
 * André Previn
 * Simon Rattle
 * Georg Solti
 * Georg Tintner
 * Pinchas Zukerman

Pianists

 * Leif Ove Andsnes
 * Claudio Arrau
 * Vladimir Ashkenazy
 * Daniel Barenboim
 * Vladimir Feltsman
 * Vladimir Horowitz
 * Lang Lang
 * Maurizio Pollini
 * Sergei Rachmaninoff

Violinists

 * James Ehnes
 * Fritz Kreisler
 * Jascha Heifetz
 * Victoria Mullove
 * Anne-Sophie Mutter
 * Isaac Stern

Other

 * Terre Thaemlitz
 * Elvis Costello
 * Frank Zappa

Labels in this genre

 * BIS
 * BMG
 * Capitol
 * Columbia
 * Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
 * EMI
 * Harmonia Mundi France
 * MCA
 * Mercury
 * Naxos
 * PolyGram
 * Sony
 * Warner Brothers