Adventures with Beethoven

Scene Two

Time Periods in Music History

Music has been around for as long as people have left their traces in history. Music is the one non-essential for life that was developed in early civilizations around the globe. Because of this, music has a long history and is divided into time periods to help make it easier to track its evolution and compare and contrast different styles. Although historians give dates to each period and give descriptions of that time period’s characteristic style, these dates are not set in stone. Although we may say a period ends in 1750, for example, that doesn’t mean everyone woke up on January 1, 1751 and started writing music in a new style. There is some crossover for each period. Some ideas from the old period continue on into the new one and some new ideas appear before the previous period ends. Often these periods corresponded to the ideas in art and literature. Sometimes we forget that musicians, artists, and authors are part of the time period in which they lived. It’s easy to put art on a different timeline that the rest of history. But artists were living through their current events and reacting to them. 

Music is generally broken up into nine main styles. There are common names and compositions in most of them, although certain periods are much more familiar to us as listeners. Some periods require different instruments than are found in a modern orchestra, such as viols, harpsichords, and recorders, or techniques such as ornamentation and chord realization. Some music cannot be performed by modern ensembles. In the case of music from thousands of years ago, we know that some archaeological fragments are pieces of music, but we have not found a way to read the ancient notation to be able to perform the songs. Below is a list of the main musical time periods, along with examples of composers and a brief description of the style.