The music of Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, and Mozart captures the spirit of the eighteenth century more perfectly than any of the other arts. The music is upbeat and energetic, and there is a tone of optimism. The music does not reflect the fears and uncertainties of Alexander Pope, except, perhaps, Bach, as some of you students have pointed out. The music reflects the optimism of the intellectuals and scientists of the age, people who believed social change was possible and that the universe was understandable. The music of the medieval age (1100-1500) was very somber and composed for church services. In the Renaissance (1400-1600) folk songs dealing with love were very popular, but they were considered "profane" by the Church. Music takes a giant leap forward in the 1700s (eighteenth century). This music was not composed for the Church, but was usually commissioned by Kings for pleasure rather than worship which reflects a growing away from the preoccupations of religion. The music is worldly rather than spiritual.

But Newton's cosmos of the eighteenth century shows the universe nicely organized in "gradations just." (Pope, Essay on Man) If you compare the eighteenth century cosmos to the medieval you will see that all that has really changed is the position of the earth. Yes, that was a huge change from center of the universe in the Middle Ages to third rock from the sun by the eighteenth century. But in Newton's conception, the planets and stars still hang in neat orderly patterns and there is an end to the universe which is what is meant by "bounded"; compare Newton's cosmos with our own in the twentieth century and you will see that our universe is not bounded, not organized neatly, and is, indeed, too vast to ever be understood. The music reflects Newton's understanding of the universe: the music is orderly and the notes are "graded," the notes in a tight pattern. -- I'll stop muddling around here with my musically untrained description and let the musicologists explain: "Harmony [in the eighteenth century] was systematized so that chords followed one another in a more logical and functional way. Regularity became the ideal in rhythm, and in musical form - the distribution of sections of music in time -- we find a tendency toward clearly ordered, even schematic plans. Whether consciously or not, composers seem to have viewed musical time in a quasi-scientific way. They divided it up and filled it systematically . . . (Joseph Kerman, Listen, 3rd ed.)

The painting in the eighteenth century was dominated by the French. The classical (Greek and Roman) subjects that artists chose to paint reflect France's obsession with creating a democracy after the revolution. They revered the Greeks and Romans because those great ancient empires briefly created a representative government, a republic. Indeed, the Greeks invented the concept of democracy and created the first one in Athens, 500 years before the birth of Jesus. If you notice the furniture in the last painting of Napoleon, you will see that even the furniture made in the eighteenth century in France has a classical influence.

And none of the painting is religious. In the Middle Ages, all the painting was of religious subject matter, the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the crucifixion, saints, etc. In the Renaissance, artists are beginning to paint non-religious subject matter but many of the paintings depict religious figures. By the eighteenth century, most of the subject matter is secular (non-religious). The artists are interested either in the sensual, the beauty of the female form or in myths from the classical era.