Timeline History of Music
The Renaissance
Generally considered to be from ca.1420 to 1600, the
Renaissance (which literally means "rebirth") was a time of great
cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and
sciences throughout Europe. With the rise of humanism, sacred
music began for the first time to break free of the confines of the
Church, and a school of composers trained in the Netherlands
mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music.
One of the early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions
reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da Palestrina.
Of course, secular music thrived during this period, and instrumental and dance music was
performed in abundance, if not always written down. It was left for others to collect and notate the
wide variety of irrepressible instrumental music of the period. The late Renaissance also saw in
England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known of which were composed by such
masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and others.
The Baroque Age
Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the
Baroque period (ca.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel
against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance.
This was a time when the many monarchies of Europe vied in
outdoing each other in pride, pomp and pageantry. Many monarchs
employed composers at their courts, where they were little more
than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions.
The greatest composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was
such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to
break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an
entirely new style of music.
It was during the early part of the seventeenth century that the genre of opera was first created by a
group of composers in Florence, Italy, and the earliest operatic masterpieces were composed by
Claudio Monteverdi. The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its
strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music
achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. Dances
became formalized into instrumental suites and were composed by virtually all composers of the
era. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas
and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel.
The Classical Period
From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architechts, and musicians moved
away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the
Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought
reminiscent of Classical Greece. The newly established aristocracies
were replacing monarchs and the church as patrons of the arts, and
were demanding an impersonal, but tuneful and elegant music. Dances
such as the minuet and the gavotte were provided in the forms of
entertaining serenades and divertimenti.
At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical center of Europe, and works of the
period are often referred to as being in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to
train in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard musical forms
that were to predominate European musical culture for the next several decades. A reform of the
extravagance of Baroque opera was undertaken by Christoph von Gluck. Johann Stamitz contributed
greatly to the growth of the orchestra and developed the idea of the orchestral symphony. The
Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string
quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven. During the same period, the first voice of the
burgeoning Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz Schubert.
The Romantic Era
As the many socio-political revolutions of the late eighteenthcentury established new social orders and new ways of life
and thought, so composers of the period broke new musical
ground by adding a new emotional depth to the prevailing
classical forms. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenthcentury (from ca. 1820 to 1900), artists of all kinds became intent in expressing their subjective,
personal emotions. "Romanticism" derives its name from the romances of medieval times -- long
poems telling stories of heroes and chivalry, of distant lands and far away places, and often of
unattainable love. The romantic artists are the first in history to give to themselves the name by
which they are identified.
The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of
the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert
Schumann ; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz ; and the
greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.
During the early nineteenth century, opera composers such as Carl Maria von Weber turned to
German folk stories for the stories of their operas, while the Italians looked to the literature of the
time and created what is known as Bel canto opera (literally "beautiful singing"). Later in the
century, the field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, while German opera was
virtually monopolized by Richard Wagner.
During the nineteenth century, composers from non-Germanic
countries began looking for ways in which they might express
the musical soul of their homelands. Many of these Nationalist
composers turned to indigenous history and legends as plots for
their operas, and to the popular folk melodies and dance
rhythms of their homelands as inspiration for their symphonies
and instrumental music. Others developed a highly personal
harmonic language and melodic style which distinguishes their
music from that of the Austro-Germanic traditions.
The continued modification and enhancement of existing instruments, plus the invention of new
ones, led to the further expansion of the symphony orchestra throughout the century. Taking
advantage of these new sounds and new instrumental combinations, the late Romantic composers
of the second half of the nineteenth-century created richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and
concertos. Two of the giants of this period are the German-born Johannes Brahms and the great
Russian melodist Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
The Twentieth-Century
By the turn of the century and for the next few decades,
artists of all nationalities were searching for exciting
and different modes of expression. Composers such as
Arnold Schoenberg explored unusual and unorthodox
harmonies and tonal schemes. French composer Claude
Debussy was fascinated by Eastern music and the
whole-tone scale, and created a style of music named
after the movement in French painting called Impressionism. Hungarian composer Béla Bartók
continued in the traditions of the still strong Nationalist movement and fused the music of
Hungarian peasants with twentieth century forms. Avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse
explored the manipulation of rhythms rather than the usual melodic/harmonic schemes. The triedand-true genre of the symphony, albeit somewhat modified by this time, attracted such masters as
Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich, while Igor Stravinsky gave full rein to his manipulation of
kaleidoscopic rhythms and instrumental colors throughout his extremely long and varied career.
While many composers throughout the twentieth-century experimented in new ways with
traditional instruments (such as the "prepared piano" used by American composer John Cage), many
of the twentieth-century’s greatest composers, such as Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini and
the Russian pianist/composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, remained true to the traditional forms of music
history. In addition to new and eclectic styles of musical trends, the twentieth century boasts
numerous composers whose harmonic and melodic styles an average listener can still easily
appreciate and enjoy.
More detailed information from http://www.ipl.org/div/mushist/