Emotional States

• Another development that affected the musical style of the Classical period was the perception of emotional states.
• Difference of Emotional States

  • In the Baroque period, artists and scientists alike believed that a person could only be in one emotional state at a time, and would remain in that emotional state unless affected by outside stimuli.
  • In the Classical period, however, they learned that human emotional states were much more dynamic, changing from moment to moment.
• In music, this led to a wider variety of tonal material depicting different emotions within movements, as opposed to the Baroque norm of depicting only one emotional state per movement.