Rococo in music is the galant style: transparent homophonic textures replace dense Baroque polyphony. Melody becomes paramount, adorned with exquisite agréments (ornaments). The ideal is lightness, elegance, and pleasure for the aristocratic salon.
Its leading masters were the French harpsichordists François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau, with their character miniatures, and Domenico Scarlatti (555 keyboard sonatas). In the German lands, the sensitive style (Empfindsamer Stil) of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach became the bridge to the Viennese Classicism of Haydn and Mozart.
