Instrumental Music Genres

The most comprehensive list of instrumental music genres available on the Internet

We’re building the most comprehensive list of instrumental Music Genres on the web, we hope to build the list of popular instrumental music genres and welcome your help! Send an email to add @ musicgenreslist dot com if you feel any instrumental music genres are missing and we’ll add to complete the public music list.

Classical Instrumental – The instrumental category covers works for a single instrument, mostly keyboard and plucked instruments. Keyboard instruments include the piano, harpsichord and organ. The most popular keyboard form is the piano sonata (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert made major contributions). During the Romantic period smaller forms became very popular, among them miniature tone poems and national dances such as mazurkas and polonaises. Many virtuosos/composers also wrote technical display pieces for their own use in concerts, including transcriptions of songs and opera arias. J.S. Bach, Handel, Couperin, Scarlatti and Soler are among the most important composers for the harpsichord. There is also a vast range of music for solo guitar (Sor, Giuliani and many 19th century and contemporary Spanish and Latin American composers) and lute (Weiss, Dowland). The relatively limited number of solo works for other instruments includes music for the solo violin and solo cello. Bach’s sonatas and partitas for violin solo are perhaps the best-known for these.
Source: Naxos Music

Marching Band Genre – Can be a brisk marching music suitable for troops marching in a military parade or a march to be played for processions – either has a distinct beat, generally driven by percussion and horns.

Instrumental Music Genres

• March (Marching Band)
• Classical March
• Military March

The Science of Instrumental Music Classification (download PDF)