During the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century,  classical music in Brazil was strongly influenced by the music style practiced in Europe, particularly the Viennese classical style. The first major Brazilian composer was José Maurício Nunes Garcia, a priest who composed several sacred pieces and some secular music. He wrote the opera Le Due Gemelle ("The two twins"), the first opera written in Brazil, a work nowadays lost. About 250 works written by him are known presently. Elian Álvares Lobo composed the first Brazilian opera with a libretto in Portuguese: "A Noite de São João" (Saint John's Party Night).

Near the end of the 19th century, Carlos Gomes produced a number of Italian-style operas, such as Il Guarany, based on a novel by José de Alencar. Brasílio Itiberê was another prominent classical composer, the first to use elements of Brazilian music in Western classic music, in his Sertaneja (1869).

In 1922, the Week of Modern Art revolutionized Brazilian Literature, painting and music. Heitor Villa-Lobos led a new vanguard of composers who used Brazilian folk music in their compositions.

By the end of the 1930’s, there were two main schools of Brazilian composition. Camargo Guarnieri was the head of the Nationalist school, inspired by the writer Mário de Andrade. Other composers including Guerra Peixe, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez, Francisco Mignone, Luciano Gallet and Radamés Gnattali. Beginning in 1939, Hans Joachim Koellreutter, creator of the Live Music Group, founded another school, characterized by the use of dodecaphonism (twelve-tone composition) and atonalism (music that lacks a tonal centre or key). Other composers in this school included Edino Krieger, Cláudio Santoro and Eunice Catunda.