The Rococo marked in Italy a profound transformation of musical spirit: from Enlightenment rationality there emerged a more intimate, elegant, and sentimental taste. Sound became lighter and more transparent, melody took center stage, while counterpoint yielded to the cantabile line and the pleasure of natural harmony.

In the theatres of Venice and Naples, in the courts of Parma and Turin, the galant style triumphed as the language of a refined and brilliant society. Music became an expression of feeling, reflecting a new sensibility also found in painting, literature, and the decorative arts.

In this climate of apparent lightness yet great formal refinement, new musical architectures matured — from sonata form to the modern symphony — which would mark the transition to the neoclassical language. Italy, once again, set the style for Europe.

Rococo and the Emergence of Feeling (1740–1770)

Opera, Sentiment, and Literary References

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Italian composers of opera buffa began to show a new sensitivity toward Rococo taste, drawing inspiration from contemporary comedies and novels. The success of sentimental and semi-serious works such as Cecchina, la buona figliola (1760) by Niccolò Piccinni was largely due to the libretto by Carlo Goldoni, who modeled the plot on the heroine of the famous English novel Pamela by Samuel Richardson.

Giovanni Paisiello also followed European literary fashion, drawing inspiration from the French theatre of Caron de Beaumarchais for his celebrated The Barber of Seville. In these works, the blending of tones became a defining feature: comic characters stood alongside figures of nobility, while musical language alternated between buffo and solemn traits, gradually bringing opera seria and opera buffa closer together.

The Structure of Opera and Baldassarre Galuppi

All operas of the period opened with an introductory sinfonia, followed by recitatives to develop the action and by arias, true moments of lyricism and vocal virtuosity. Although choruses were rare in Italian theatres, the opera finales brought all the characters together on stage, creating a theatrical effect of great vitality.

Among Venetian masters stands out Baldassarre Galuppi (1706–1785), known as “Il Buranello”. A pupil of Antonio Lotti, he spent almost his entire career in Venice, where he also served as maestro of the Cappella of San Marco. The author of over one hundred operas, Galuppi favored Goldoni’s comic libretti: their collaboration produced more than half of the opera buffa staged in Venice between 1750 and 1770, with successes such as Il filosofo di campagna and Il mondo alla roversa.

Galuppi’s music is recognizable for its rhythmic vitality, the inclusion of popular elements, and the rich timbral palette of his orchestration, perfectly reflecting the brilliant and light taste of the Rococo.

The Querelle des Bouffons in Paris

A crucial episode for European musical culture was the arrival in Paris, in August 1752, of an Italian company that staged La serva padrona by Giovan Battista Pergolesi. The success was immediate and overwhelming: for nearly two years the company continued performing other Italian operas, sparking a controversy that became known as La Querelle des Bouffons.

Europe’s intellectual capital divided into two factions: the coin du roi (the king’s corner), in favor of French music, and the coin de la reine (the queen’s corner), composed of intellectuals and connoisseurs who defended Italian art. Among the latter stood out Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who praised the simplicity and melodic spontaneity of Italian opera buffa, opposing it to the solemnity of the French tragédie lyrique.

The Parisian public was won over by the liveliness and freshness of everyday plots, the direct language, and the expressive immediacy of Italian melodies. The dispute, though lacking a truly comparable basis — since it contrasted opera buffa and opera seria — had a decisive outcome: it encouraged the birth of French Opéra-comique, a new theatrical genre more agile, realistic, and communicative, in perfect harmony with the spirit of the Enlightenment.

The Galant Style and Instrumental Music

The period between 1740 and 1770 is known as the Rococo, a term borrowed from the decorative arts. The music of this time, often defined as the galant style, is distinguished by its brilliant, pleasantly ornamented character and by the new centrality of feeling over pure Enlightenment reason. Taste turned toward spontaneity and nature, favoring a more direct and melodic language.

In this thirty-year span, profound transformations took place:

• Abandonment of contrapuntal conception in favor of melody, placed at the center of composition.
• Decline of the basso continuo, replaced by harmonic accompaniment realized on the keyboard (first the harpsichord, later the fortepiano).
• Spread of the Alberti bass, based on broken chords, typical of the new style.
• More clearly defined melodic phrases structured in periodic form, especially in slow movements.

These innovations paved the way for the great instrumental forms of Neoclassicism: the sonata, the symphony, and the concerto.

The Birth of Sonata Form

Sonata form, understood as the structure of the first movement (usually an Allegro), became the common model for sonatas, symphonies, concertos, and chamber music. The transition from binary form to the new three-part, two-theme form was the result of a collective evolution, yet clearly of Italian origin.

Among the pioneers of this transformation were Domenico Scarlatti, Giuseppe Tartini, and Carlo Tessarini, but a leading role belongs to Giovanni Benedetto Platti, author of the 6 Sonatas “in the Italian taste” published in 1742.

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The essential principle of sonata form is the dialectical opposition of two distinct themes, articulated in three sections:

1. Exposition – The first theme is presented in the tonic, followed by a modulatory bridge that introduces the second theme in the dominant.
2. Development – The themes are transformed and modulated, creating harmonic tension and dramatic variety.
3. Recapitulation – The tension resolves and the themes return in the tonic, confirmed by a concluding coda.

This structure, though flexible, became the foundation of the entire musical architecture of the eighteenth century. Sonata form represented for homophonic music what the fugue had been for polyphonic music: the highest expression of the balance between logic and beauty.

The Development of the Symphony and Chamber Music

The modern concert symphony originated from the Scarlattian opera sinfonia, structured in the three movements Allegro – Largo – Presto. These introductions, not thematically connected to the opera, could soon be performed as independent pieces.

The concert symphonies, which replaced the chamber concerto grosso, began to appear around 1730. Among the first masters to cultivate the new form was Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1701–1775) of Milan, whose three-movement symphonies — written for strings alone — spread throughout Europe, profoundly influencing even the young Joseph Haydn.

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In the Rococo period, the main musical forms — sonata, symphony, quartet, concerto — tended to converge toward a shared structure of three or four movements:

• Allegro – in sonata form
• Adagio – cantabile or lyrical in character
• Minuet and Trio – optional, with a dance-like flavor
• Final Allegro – in rondo or sonata form

The orchestra itself also became more stable, founded on a core of strings with the addition of winds — oboes, bassoons, horns — and at times flutes and trumpets, for an average ensemble of 20–25 performers.

With the decline of the trio sonata, the main form of string chamber music became the quartet (two violins, viola, and cello, without basso continuo). Although the first Sonatas for four without basso continuo are due to the Italian Alessandro Scarlatti, it was Luigi Boccherini — active in Spain — who defined the quartet’s character as a “musical conversation”, also composing numerous trios and quintets that anticipated neoclassical language.