Classical (1730-1815)
Classical music was a shift towards tonality after the chromaticism and lack of central pitch in earlier eras. The sonata form was heavily used and adapted during this period. Vienna was the center of the music world, housing Mozart and Beethoven among many others.
The symphony also came into use, but in a short form that was later expanded by Beethoven. This period of time (1750-1800) was the age of the Enlightenment. Many great thinkers came out of this era, including Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1776), Voltaire (Candide, 1759), Galileo Galilei, & Rene Descartes.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788)
Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782)
Ludwig van Beethoven (ca. 1770-1827)
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

Romanticism
Romanticism is a genre descended from the medieval romance, a tale written about heroes or events in one of the Latin (Roman) dialects. The symphony became the mammoth form we are most familiar with in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, & Mahler. Operas, like Wagner's Ring Cycle, became epic productions, having huge orchestras and taking several hours or even days to perform completely. The end of the Romantic age saw the creation of many different genres. Nationalism arose, Debussy experimented with Impressionistic sounds, and Satie began writing his short satirical works.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Anton Brucker (1824-1896)
Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)
Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Edward Hagerup Grieg (1843-1907)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881)
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Erik Satie (1866-1925)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Alexander Skryabin (1872-1915)
Piotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Impressionist
Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) Opera
Georges Bizet (1838-1875) Opera
Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) Opera
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) Opera
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) Opera
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Opera
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) Opera
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Opera
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) Opera

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Dates & background information courtesy of:
Grout, Donald and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. 6th ed. W.W Norton: New York, 2001.

Prepared by the Popular Materials Dept., 2005