As a spin-off from this thread:
Here a proposal for Classical genres to be added to the database.
Since classical music is a very different beast from popular music I thought it would be good to create a separate topic for it so that aficionados of classical music can easier chip-in and comment.
I believe it is pretty much impossible to create any solid taxonomy for classical music.
Different relevant concepts as ‘region’, ‘period’, composition format’, ‘style’ etc. will all fight each other, conflict or overlap.
So the best thing to do in my opinion is to have a list of genres for classical music that contains relevant descriptions that could fall into either: period, composition, style, or any other relevant and descriptive category.
So they are probably better to be considered and judged as useful ‘keywords’ than as strict ‘music genres’.
In reality it will often take two or three of such keywords to describe a classical recording appropriately. One single ‘genre’ tag would almost never suffice.
20th century
Aria
Ballet
Brazilian classical
Byzantine chant
Byzantine music
Cambodian classical
Cantata
Cello concerto
Cello sonata
Chamber music
Chinese classical
Choral
Choral symphony
Church cantata
Classical era
Concerto
Concerto grosso
Early music
Early romantic
Étude
Impressionist
Korean classical
Late romantic
Latin american classical
Madrigal
Mass
Modernist
Motet
Neo-classical
Neo-romantic
Operetta
Oratorio
Ottoman classical
Overture
Persian classical
Philippine classical
Piano concerto
Piano sonata
Plainsong
Postmodernist
Renaissance
Romantic
Serial
Sonata
Song cycle
Suite
Symphonic poem
Thai classical
Violin concerto
Violin sonata
Wedding cantata