The Medieval Period
The Medieval period started out with music being used mostly in religious
settings and often only a single melody without harmony, such as the plainsong
chants used by monks. This evolved into "organum" or melodies playing at the
same time that were a fixed distance from each other. A good example of a
medieval musician was German nun Hildegard von Bingen.
The Renaissance Period
The Renaissance period (approx. 1450 - 1600) followed, in which music become
much more complex and was used for many more secular as well as sacred
purposes. More instrumental music appeared and choral music gained complex
harmonies. Examples of Renaissance composers are Palestrina and Monteverdi.
The Baroque Period
The Baroque period (approx. 1600 – 1750) saw the advent of new compositional
methods and forms. Composers experimented more with dissonant tonalities and
a variety of forms, many of them based on dances such as the rondo or the trio.
Well-known composers from this era include Johann Sebastian Bach and
George Frideric Handel.
The Classical Period
The Classical period (approx. 1750 – 1825) saw the rise of the piano as a
performance instrument. Melodies, textures, and forms both became simpler
than in the Baroque era. The symphony became a beloved form of composition
and orchestras became more complex. Famous classical composures include
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig Van Beethoven.
The Romantic Period
The Romantic period (approx. 1825 – 1900) saw music take a turn for the
dramatic. Harmonies and dynamics are more extreme and there are a greater
number of instruments introduced. Composers pushed the limits of what had
formerly been acceptable in dissonance, tempo changes, melody length and
many other factors. Romantic composures include Felix Mendelsohn, Johannes
Brahms, and Richard Wagner.
The 20th Century period (1900 – present) encompasses everything else that has
happened in music since the romantic era. It includes movements such as
ragtime, serialism, nationalism, jazz, rock and roll, pop, and world music.
Anything that can be imagined is now possible from extreme dissonance to
strange new instruments, to abstract music and new tonalities. Composers are
constantly inventing new ways to think about music. Some famous 20th Century
Composures include Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland and Arnold Schoenberg.
Medieval/ Renaissance Period
The musical era for the renaissance period extended from 1400 to the
beginnings of the 1600's. This period featured the rebirth of humanism and the
revival of cultural achievements. The Renaissance labeled a time for rebuilding
and reconstructing. The musicians and artists of this time produced work based
on individualism and freedom. This era took place after the medieval period, a
period known to be the longest and most remote period of music history from 800
to 1400. Early music in this time was different than present music, where during
this time a musical notation consisted of one note to be sung. This didn't change
until later in the middle ages when two or more melodic lines were sung called
polyphony.
• Adam de la Halle - also known as Adam the Hunchback, a French poet and
musician whose works include chansons and poetic debates.
• William Byrd - English composer of the Shakespearean age who is best know
for his development of the English madrigal.
• Jean de Castro - artist who wrote polyphony in a European prospective.
• John Dowland - English composer best known for his melancholy songs.
• Guillaume Dufay - Franco-Flemish composer, who became famous for his
knowledge of all the elements of composition.
• Giovanni Gabrieli - Italian composer best known for the culmination of the style
of the Venetian School.
• Vicenzo Galilei - Italian composer who became an influential member of the
Florentine Camerata, an informal meeting where literature, science and
arts were discussed.
• Hans Leo Hassler - German composer and one of the first to bring the
innovations of the Venetian style across the Alps.
• Guillaume de Machaut - French composer who helped develop the motet and
secular song forms.
• Hildegard von Bingen - Christian mystic female composer, who wrote
theological, botanical and medicinal texts.
• Tobias Hume - English composer and viol player who published music based
on the viol instrument.
• Johannes Ockeghem - famous composer of the Flanco-Flemish School in the
last half of the 15th century.
• G.P. da Palestrina - Italian composer that became famous through his output of
sacred music. He had a major impact on the development of Roman
Catholic church music.
• Josquin des Prez - Franco-Flemish composer, known to be the central figure of
the Franco-Flemish School and known by music scholars to be the first
master of polyphonic vocal music.
• Salamone Rossi - Italian Jewish violinist and one of the first composers to
apply to instrumental music the principles of monodic song.
• John Taverner - English composer and first organist and master of the
choristers at Christ Church and his best known mass is based on a song
called, "The Western Wynde."
Baroque Period
The Baroque Era was a type of music genre from 1600 to 1750 based on
European classical music. During this period, musicians and artists used more
musical ornamentation, developed new instrumental playing techniques and
made changes to musical notation. This is the period when the opera genre
made its debut. The first operas were private affairs for Italian courts. In 1637,
the first public opera house opened in Venice, Italy and became a commercial
industry, allowing composers to try new techniques of composition and new
ideas.
• J.S. Bach - German composer who drew attention because of his secular
works for choir, orchestra and solo instruments.
• Dietrich Buxtehude - German-Danish organist whose works comprise a major
part of the standard organ repertoire.
• Francesca Caccini - female Italian composer and singer, which her stage work
"La Liberazione di Ruggiero," was best known as the first opera by a
woman composer.
• Francesco Durante - one of the best church Italian composers of his time with
his style and technique.
• George Frideric Handel - German-English composer who was famous for his
operas, oratorios, and concertos.
• Johann Adolf Hasse - German composer best know for his prolific operatic
output and developer of opera seria and 18th-century music.
• Johann David Heinichen - German composer who brought the musical concept
of Venice to the court of Augustus the Strong in Dresden.
• Jacques Martin Hotteterre - French composer who was most celebrated of a
family of wind performers and wind instrument makers.
• Jean-Baptiste Lully - French composer whose music playing the guitar and
violin is known for its power and its deep emotional character in its sad
moments.
• Marin Marais - French composer who was the master of the basse de viol and
leading French composer for the instrument.
• Claudio Monteverdi - Italian composer who developed two styles of
composition: the new bass continuo of the baroque period and the
heritage of Renaissance polyphony.
• Johann Pachelbel - German composer whose contributions to the development
of the chorale prelude and fugue techniques allowed him to be one of the
greatest composer's during the middle of the era.
• Henry Purcell - English composer and organist of sacred and secular music.
• Johann Joaquim Quantz - German flautist, flute maker and composer who is
best known for his piece called, "Versuch einer Anweisung die Flote
traversiere zu spielen," which expresses the techniques for flute playing.
• Thomas Ravenscroft - English composer of rounds and catches and known for
a series of collections of British folk music.
• Johann Theodor Romhild - German musician composer of the baroque era.
• Johan Helmich Roman - Swedish composer who is known as, "the father of
Swedish music," who best known compositions is the, "Music for a Royal
Wedding," which consists of 24 short pieces.
• Domenico Scarlatti - Italian composer whose music influenced the
development of the classical style. His 555 sonatas were almost all written
for the harpsichord.
• Heinrich Schutz - German composer and organist and he is thought to be the
one who wrote the first German opera.
• Antonio Soler - Spanish composer who is best known for his keyboard sonatas.
• Barbara Strozzi - female Italian composer and singer who is said to be the
most prolific composer of printed secular vocal music in Venice.
• Giuseppe Tartini - half Italian and half Venetian composer and violinist who's
most famous work is the "Devil's Trill Sonata."
• Georg Philipp Telemann - German composer and multi-instrumentalist who has
more than 800 credited works according to the Guinness Book of World
Records.
• Antonio Vivaldi - Venetian composer and famous virtuoso violinist whose best
known work is, "The Four Seasons," a popular series of four violin
concerti.
• Sylvius Leopold Weiss - German composer and lutenist who is considered to
be one of the most prolific composers of lute music in history who wrote
around 600 pieces for lute.
Classic Period
The Classical Era took place between 1750 and 1820 and artists and musicians
in this period moved away from the ornamented styles of the baroque period and
moved towards more of a clean, uncluttered style they thought would be
reminiscent to Classical Greece such as architecture, literature, and arts. This
was a period where artists geared more towards a style where a melody over a
subordinate harmony, a combination called homophony was preferred instead of
the styles of the baroque period. The musicians who played chords, even if they
interrupted the melodic tone of the song, became a new style feature for music.
The sonata form of music began in this period and became the most important
form which was used to build up the first movement of large-scale works.
• Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - German musician and composer who was one of
the founders of the classical style who composed the rococo style.
• P.D.Q. Bach - fictional composer invented by musical satirist Professor Peter
Schickele, an American composer.
• Ludwig van Beethoven - German composer and pianist who was a crucial
figure between the classical and romantic eras.
• Luigi Boccherini - Spanish composer who is known for one particular minuet
from his String Quintet in E and the Cello Concerto in B flat major.
• Domenico Cimarosa - Italian composer who wrote more than 80 operas during
his lifetime.
• Muzio Clementi - Italian composer who is credited to be the first to write
specifically for the piano.
• Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia - Brazilian composer who wrote sacred and
secular pieces.
• Franz Joseph Haydn - Austrian composer also known as the "Father of
Symphony," and "Father of the String Quartet," for the works during the
classical period. He also helped developed the piano trio.
• James Hook - English organist and composer.
• Joseph Martin Kraus - German composer also known as, "the Swedish
Mozart," whose music pieces is classified as dramatic contrasts in in
register, character, and harmony.
• Friedrich Kuhlau - German-Danish composer who wrote a piano concerto, a
string quartet, and several works for the piano.
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - prolific and influential composer of the classical
era who composed over 600 works dealing with pinnacles of symphonic,
piano, chamber, concertante, operatic and choral music.
• Sigismund Neukomm - Portuguese composer who wrote a clarinet quintet,
several organ voluntaries, 10 operas, 48 masses, 8 oratorios and plenty of
other small works.
• Anton Reicha - French composer who is best remembered for his contribution
to the wind quintet literature and his role as a teacher.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Genevois philosopher writer and composer whose
political philosophy influenced the French Revolution.
• Antonio Salieri - Italian composer who developed the late 18th century opera.
• Fernando Sor - Spanish guitarist and composer who is best known for his
guitar compositions.
• Johann Wanhal - prolific writer and composer who works includes 100
quartets, approximately 73 symphonies, 95 sacred works and a numerous
of other small works.
• Carl Maria von Weber - German composer and one of the first composers of
the Romantic school.
Romantic Period
As time went by and life began to convey, composers in this time period from
1820 to the 1900 began using intense feelings in their music since in the
classical era, artists and composers had strict laws of balance and restraint to
consider. This was the period where melody became the dominant feature and
artists and musicians used their artistic developments to portray nationalism. The
length of compositions, tonal relationships, and new harmonies began to be
experimented by composers. There was an increased use of dissonance,
chromaticism, and color in artists' pieces. One of the new forms was the
symphonic poem, an orchestral work that told a story. Another new form was the
art song, a vocal musical work with tremendous meaning on the text. These two
forms allowed opera to become even more popular.
The Medieval Period (400-1400)
Prior to about 900, nearly all the music we have any record of is a simple, one
line structure called a plainchant. This was made up of one melodic line sung in
unison by everybody. More complex music existed, but as it was secular and
not sacred, we have very few, if any, written accounts of it.
Gradually, over the next 500 years, people began to expand on this simple
structure by adding voices. At first, these voices sung a fixed interval1 above or
below the original line. This was called an organum.
At some point, someone got the idea of having two different lines moving at
the same time but not having a fixed interval. Usually the higher of these lines
would be fairly florid, while the lower was a slower, pre-existing plainchant2.
By 1300, three and four voice compositions were being written. These works
are referred to as polyphonic (many voices), to distinguish them from the
monophony (single voice) of the simple plainchant.
The Renaissance (1400-1600)
By 1400 or shortly thereafter, several composers were writing polyphony in a
slightly different way. Instead of using a slower bottom voice and faster upper
voices, they made all voices equal in rhythmic variety. And instead of using
four different chants, they used a single chant which was stated in each of the
voices, upon their entrance, and the developed differently from one voice to
the next. This led to a more unified sounding work, and gave rise to a number
of contrapuntal (note-against-note) forms, such as the Canon (exact repetition
in all the voices), the Canzon (a succession of themes, each developed and
then discarded3), and the Fugue (one theme developed extensively).
Most of the development during this period was made in Italy. This is only
natural as the Catholic church was the dominant force during this period, and
was headquartered in Rome. Many of the best musicians wrote masses and
other works for the church; nearly all of these works are in Latin, as this was
the language used for services at the time. However, with the Reformation and
rise of Protestantism in the latter half of the 16th Century, the nature of music
had to change.
The Baroque Period (1600-1750)
One of the major changes in daily life around 1600 was the switch from the
Catholic church to various Protestant religion4. The result of this change was
that the language of the services switched from Latin to German. Because most
people had not spoken Latin, the masses could be as ornate as the composer
desired. But if the language was understandable by the majority of the people,
the music should be simple enough that they could understand the words. As a
result, the Catholic Latin mass was no longer needed, but new German services
were. New hymns (chorales) were written to provide music for these services.
These were primarily homophonic (simple chordal structure) in nature,
contrasting with the polyphony that continued in instrumental and Latin works.
By the mid-1700s, polyphony had reached its peak. Several composers began to
explore simpler styles of composition, such as symphonies and concertos, which
had been foreshadowed in preludes, partitas, and other non-polyphonic forms
of the Baroque period. This, along with a gradual secularisation of music, led to
the Classical period.
The Classical Period (1750-1800AD)
This is a rather curious period in musical history. Very little was done to change
the basic musical language, aside from the abandonment of polyphony. The
major contribution during this period was the enlargement of many aspects of
music. The orchestra was developed, the opera was made into a more
continuous work, and the level of complexity in writing was reduced
somewhat. However, this brief period introduced a more virtuositic style of
playing on many instruments, and set the stage for a major harmonic expansion
during the next century.
The Romantic Period (1800-1900AD)
The shift from the Baroque to the Classical had resulted in a change of thought
from the horizontal (polyphony and the sense of line) in music to the vertical
(chordal structure). The romantic period led to a massive enlargement in what
was acceptable as far as chordal progressions went. By the middle of the 19th
Century, composers had begun to 'borrow' chords that technically should not
have been used in the way they were5. This resulted in a breakdown of
tonality, and by the later part of the period, nearly any chord could be used
with very minimal preparation. Modulations to distant keys were sudden and
severe.
The scale of works also continued to expand. By the end of the century,
massive operas of three or more hours were being written; symphonies of an
hour and a half were common, and perhaps 200 or more players would be
needed to perform these titanic works. Everything seemed to be getting bigger;
even chamber works were of a scale only dreamed of before.
The 20th Century
By 1900, something had to happen to change music. Several things did, all of
which had a pronounced effect on the next 100 years of writing.
Firstly, popular and 'classical' music began to separate. Jazz, and then Rock,
became the music of the masses, and classically-trained composers found
themselves without the numbers of listeners that their predecessors had
enjoyed. Secondly, many composers abandoned the idea of a tonal centre,
consonance, or harmonic progression altogether, resulting in atonality,
dissonance, and free use of borrowed chords becoming common. And
eventually, the 'classical' world fractured into many different groups, most of
which began to write much smaller pieces again. Some would even revolt
against the preciseness of notation that many Romantic composers prided
themselves on, leaving some or all aspects of their works to chance.
No prominent school of thought has yet arisen to claim that it is the true 20th
Century descendant of Romanticism. As such, many scholars think that the 20th
Century Period will continue until the middle of the 21st Century.
1
Usually a fourth or fifth interval above.
Also known as the cantus firmus.
3 Sometimes separated by short sections of very little polyphony
4 In Germany, the major religion was Lutheranism.
5 That is, chords from keys only distantly related to the tonic would be
introduced during the course of the progression.
2
http://michael-young.suite101.com/the-major-periods-of-western-music-a199874
http://www.datehookup.com/content-the-development-of-western-music.htm
http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/A290981