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I've taken a recent interest in learning classical pieces. (Right now, I can only listen to them.) Can anyone tell me if these are Romantic, Baroque, etc, or what classification of classical music they belong to?

Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven
Fur Elise - Beethoven
Nocturne Op 9-2 - Chopin
Canon in D - Pachelbel

Thanks!

Typically you would classify based on when the composer was writing them. Beethoven is an interesting case since he can be viewed as a bridge from classical to romantic. Technically he'd be a classical composer, but it doesn't seem right to call all his compositions "classical." With that in mind, I'd classify as follows:

Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven - early Romantic
Fur Elise - Beethoven - Classical
Nocturne Op 9-2 - Chopin - definitely Romantic
Canon in D - Pachelbel - Baroque

alot of people would argue the romanticism of moonlight sonata. oh, confusing beethoven...

all Beethoven's music are considered as Classical, whether or not it contains or has romantic nature. the point is that Beethoven, although original and creative and inventive in his own way, he never abandoned classical music forms and foundation, such as sonata forms. he is master of forms actually, which means he could develop a huge symphony or sonata based on only some small motifs. while Romantic composers, such as Chopin, write music only loosely based on or following any form structure. Chopin's sonatas are just like that, structurally not very uniformed with the movements, while in any of Beethoven's sonatas, each movement leads to another logically or emotionally, just as Moonlight sonata.

I'd like to add that some people (myself included) instead of referring to this music in general as classical, they call it academic. Classical is a period of academic music, so it might be inapropriate to refer to some of these pieces as "classical."
In the end it's excellent music and you can appreciate its greatness no matter what you call it.

All-

Thanks for the great replies! Thanks, especially, Nina for taking a stab at classifying the pieces. I had no idea that the labels referred to periods as opposed to style. I have found that some classical music is boring and annoying to me, while others are beautiful and very moving. I just figured that if the pieces I enjoyed al belonged to a single group, that would make investigating new pieces that much easier.

Yep, you're right (which is why I said technically LvB would be classical), but it always seems a bit inappropriate to lump him in with the other strictly "classical" composers. There were Romantic period composers who nonetheless followed classical structure in their composing, for example. Beethoven is always a bit grey for me. His early stuff is clearly classical, but his late works are so different...

Yes Nina, especially consider Brahms, a late Romantic era composer whose compositional style is deeply rooted in the Classical era.

Nina, you are right. the only argument i want to make is that moonlight sonata was written in Beethoven's middle period, not even among his late works (such as the last 5 piano sonatas or quartets or symphony no.9), which should fall into Classical anyway but not Romantic at all.

What is considered to be the first "Romantic" piece?

I seriously doubt there is one; there's enough debate on where to set the "Romantic Era" start line, if it's a good idea to set one at all, let alone an individual piece.

Beethoven is considered by most to be the transitional composer from Classical to Romantic era even though many that followed him were strictly classical in form and style i.e. Schubert, Mendelsohn.

So far as a definitive piece of early romantic era music, how about his 5th Symphony? This work was greatly influenced by the French Revolution and the point of change in the political, social and artistic arena of Western Europe. It could be argued endlessly that while this piece may be classical in structure and form is decidely romantic in musical content. When viewed in its totality, is there a more romantic piece in musical literature covering such a broad range of emotion?

Makes sense to me!

ok, i guess a lot of things said here are debatable and maybe there is no definite answer regarding to Beethoven. but i prefer not to think Beethoven even remotely as a Romantic composer. the tragic about Romantic composers, at least to me, are the excessiveness in their music expressions, while Beethoven never was in this sense. i got bored listening to many Romantic composers' music, such as Mahler's symphonies, Brahms's piano solos/sonatas, etc., and yet Beethoven never cease to amaze me with any genre of his music...