The western tradition of music has its origins in the chanting tradition of the early Christian era. Monotonous religious music dominated the medieval era. During the high baroque music of the eighteenth century, Bach created a corpus of different genres of music that showed the influence of the Reformation on musical style, and was renowned as the "Father of modern Western Music." Later in the century, the Classic style of Haydn and Mozart dominated the music of Western Europe, with the symphony, sonata, and string quartet predominating. As the link to the romantic era that dominated the nineteenth century, Beethoven is a point of departure for many of the trends that existed in the era. The era saw the development of symphony as a genre, grand opera and character pieces for piano. The early Romantic composers include Schubert, Weber, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Chopin. In the 20th century, Wagner led the romantic opera to its highest form.

西方音乐是从基督教圣歌开始发源的。中世纪时期，旋律单调的圣歌占了乐曲创作的大部分，直到18世纪巴洛克时期，巴赫总结了前人传统并对圣歌加以革新，因此他被尊称为西方现代音乐之父。之后，在古典音乐大师海顿和莫扎特的影响下，交响乐、奏鸣曲和弦乐四重奏成为主流。19世纪，贝多芬在古典音乐和浪漫主义音乐之间起了承上启下的作用，交响乐进一步成为独立的音乐类型，钢琴更加流行，戏剧得到进一步发展。这一时期涌现出了舒伯特、韦伯、柏辽兹、门德尔松、舒曼、肖邦等大作曲家。20世纪，在瓦格纳的推动下，浪漫主义歌剧发展到顶峰。 sSZgrjUttEsJQIHwM6HDBwPwc38u3qqTR0SOV7flFPBe/dMxqjUE3QjQlQkH+lc0