I think that Bach's crowning achievement was to pull baroque music out of a sort of mire, in which heaviness, thick textures and a formulaic approach to a sort of layered musical structure, with quite a heavy bass line, often seemed to be the order of the day, especially in pieces for larger ensembles. It isn't helped by some of the big-band performances we used to get, thankfully a phenomenon we seem to be evolving away from. Bach's incredible use of harmony was in contrast to, er, some less imaginative efforts by lesser lights of the era. After him there was nowhere else to go for baroque, which is where Haydn and Mozart come in. To me, they were the giants of the classical era, Haydn the worthy (in more senses than one) creator and Mozart taking the classical style to a pinnacle in music that I don't think has ever been eclipsed. Helen's not fully relating to Mozart rang a bell, in that a good mate of mine, a superb teacher of music and multi-instrumentalist, doesn't "get" Mozart either. He considers it to be light, tinkly and not demanding enough. Well light the candles, pour a glass, shut out the noise and put on the slow movement of Piano Concerto no 21. There's a singing tune going on, on first hearing sounding like all those things I've just said. But listen to what's going on "underneath." There's profound restlessness and disquiet, an emotional quiet storm going on. Then whack up the volume and put on the finale of the Jupiter Symphony, a tour de force, visionary and forward-looking, a complex yet thoroughly coherent masterpiece of driving force (I feel the same about the first movement of the Prague Symphony, my favourite). Beethoven sort of bestrode the classical and romantic periods but he's no revolutionary. True, his works broke all the rules about length, he knew how to "shock" via dynamic extremes and he ditched (almost) the elegance of minuets in favour of spiky scherzos, etc. But he returned again and again to the old forms, fugue and variation, paid explicit homage to Bach and Palestrina even in his late music and used only the forces of Haydn and Mozart. His very last string quartet, the last completed work, was homage to those two, deified!

Unenlightened and subjective opinion only. Shoot!