ABSTRACT
The concept of style in its classical form, musical style included, became fully established in the first third of the nineteenth century. Hegel found a common basis for the style system in the different forms of art.1 His position assumed both that it was "inadmissible [ ... ] to transfer the stylistic laws of one type of art to others,,2 and a special conformity which corresponded to the special features of "regular aesthetics". But the concept of "style" itself was formed very slowly. Its meaning changed considerably, absorbing meanings very remote from classical ones. This does not mean that compositions created in periods which had no need for a concept of "style" did not possess a style themselves - the system of ideas, stylistic laws and indicators changed. Both the theory of classical style and the practice of classicism are historically local phenomena. The laws of classical style are applicable to a certain tradition which had its own logic of development: establishment, flowering, maturity and transition to other forms or combination with them.
