Galant music

In music, galant refers to the style which was fashionable from the 1720s to the 1770s. This movement featured a return to simplicity and immediacy of appeal after the complexity of the late Baroque era. This meant simpler, more song-like melodies, decreased use of polyphony, short, periodic phrases, a reduced harmonic vocabulary emphasizing tonic and dominant, and a clear distinction between soloist and accompaniment. C. P. E. Bach and Daniel Gottlob Türk, who were among the most significant theorists of the late 18th century, contrasted the galant with the "learned" or "strict" styles (Bach 1753, passim; Türk 1789, p. 405). The German empfindsamer Stil, which seeks to express personal emotions and sensitivity, can be seen either as a closely related North-German dialect of the international galant style (Heartz and Brown 2001a; Heartz and Brown 2001b; Palmer 2001, xvii; Wolf 2003), or as contrasted with it, as between the music of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, a founder of both styles, and that of Johann Christian Bach, who carried the galant style further and was closer to classical.