Why do so many pieces of classical music have only a technical name (Sonata #5, Concerto 2 in A minor, symphony #4, etc.) instead of a “name” like Fuhr Elise or Eine Kline Nachtmusik?

Question

I can only speak for myself, but this makes it really hard to keep track of the songs I like. I love listening to classical music but if you asked me my favorite artists I would have difficulty telling you specifics.

In: 8720

Answer 1

The technical names of Fur Elise and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik are “bagatelle” and “serenade” respectively (although the former doesn’t really have a name as it was not published in Beethoven’s lifetime- ‘fur Elise’ was simply the dedication he wrote on the manuscript). And Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was not meant to be an evocative title, it simply means “a little serenade” and I believe is how Mozart privately noted the piece in his personal catalogue.

To your larger point, for most of the Baroque and Classical periods, music was largely seen as an “abstract” art, so the names and forms reflected this view. In the nineteenth century and later, music came to be seen by many composers as “programmatic” (more directly representative of nature, emotions, actions etc) and descriptive titles became more fashionable for some types of pieces (e.g symphonic poems of Liszt, many piano works by Schumann etc).