Western Music Time Periods

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 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, with some ideas from the old period continuing into the new one and some new ideas appearing before the previous period ends. Often, these periods corresponded to the ideas in art and literature of the same era. It’s easy to put art on a different timeline than the rest of history, but artists were living through their current events and reacting to them as they created their works.

Western 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 periods, along with examples of composers, and a brief description of the style.

 

Antiquity Period:  Before 500 BCE
Musical Compositions:

  • hymns

  • instrumental dance music

  • storytelling songs such as The Odyssey

Composers:

  • mostly anonymous

  • Enheduanna, a Sumerian priestess wrote 42 hymns

Style:

  • largely unknown since notation uses a different system


Medieval Period:  500-1400 CE
Musical Compositions:

  • chant

  • instrumental music

  • troubadours

  • art song

Composers:

  • Hildegard of Bingen

  • Léonin

  • Pérotin

  • John Dunstable

  • Guillaume Dufay

Style:

  • early compositions feature only one line of music

  • later compositions have more than one line

  • dance music

  • songs with a strong melody

Renaissance Period:  1400-1600
Musical Compositions:

  • chansons and motets (types of songs)

  • musical settings of the Catholic Mass

  • madrigals

  • opera

  • instrumental dances

Composers:

  • Josquin des Prez

  • Giovanni da Palestrina

  • Thomas Tallis

  • William Byrd

  • Tomás Luis de Victoria

Style:

  • music for entertainment

  • more complicated and emotional songs

  • “word painting” to illustrate meaning in the music

  • beginnings of opera and other staged musical performances

Baroque Period:  1580-1750
Musical Compositions:

  • opera

  • oratorio

  • cantata

  • concerto

  • sonata

  • fugue

  • dances

Composers:

  • Johann Sebastian Bach

  • Antonio Vivaldi

  • Georg Frederic Handel

  • Arcangelo Corelli

  • Dominico Scarlatti

  • Alessandro Scarlatti

  • Henry Purcell

  • George Philipp Telemann

Style:

  • use of improvisation: making up parts while performing

  • dances used as concert pieces

  • larger groups of musicians and the start of the orchestra we recognize

  • more complex compositions with more than one movement

  • many lines of music going on at the same time

  • opera, cantatas, and oratorios became established forms

Classical Period:  1750-1820
Musical Compositions:

  • symphony

  • concerto

  • sonata

  • opera

  • string quartet

Composers:

  • Ludwig van Beethoven

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  • Franz Joseph Haydn

  • Johann Christian Bach

  • Wilhelm Friedmann Bach

  • Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

  • Luigi Boccherini

Style:

  • lighter, clearer texture

  • importance of a melody with accompaniment below

  • piano becomes the most important keyboard instrument

  • clear structure and forms, especially sonata form, a standard structure for the first movement of symphonies, concertos, and sonatas

  • increased size of the orchestra

Romantic Period:  1800-1910
Musical Compositions:

  • symphony

  • concerto

  • sonata

  • opera

  • string quartet

  • tone poem

  • art song

  • song cycle

  • etude

  • rhapsody

Composers:

  • Johannes Brahms

  • Franz Schubert

  • Gustav Mahler

  • Frédéric Chopin

  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  • Hector Berlioz

  • Richard Wagner

  • Jean Sibelius

  • Felix Mendelssohn

  • Franz Liszt

  • Giuseppi Verdi

  • Antonín Dvořák

  • Vincenzo Bellini

  • Giacomo Puccini

  • Gioachino Rossini

  • Ferruccio Busoni

  • Jacque Offenbach

Style:

  • new musical structures and forms

  • wider use of harmonies

  • emphasis on melody, especially long ones

  • wider range of dynamics

  • larger orchestra

  • program music, where an outside influence, such as art or literature, is portrayed in purely instrumental music

  • nationalism, the use of folk songs or stories from the composer’s native country as well as the use of other languages, not just Italian, French, or German in opera

  • idea of the virtuoso performer and the musician as an artist

Modernism:  1890-1975
Musical Compositions:

  • symphony

  • concerto

  • sonata

  • opera

  • string quartet

  • tone poem

Composers:

  • Igor Stravinsky

  • Arnold Schoenberg

  • Sergei Prokofiev

  • Aaron Copland

  • Alexander Scriabin

  • Benjamin Britten

  • Claude Debussy

  • Charles Ives

  • Dmitri Shostakovich

  • Witold Lutosławski

Style:

  • styles becomes wider and more varied

  • further movement toward more complex harmonies, sometimes breaking traditional harmonic rules altogether

  • rise of atonal music and later serial music which do not use the traditional scale

  • influence of jazz

  • influence of popular music

  • extended instrument technique including speakers, recording, and other synthesized or prerecorded sounds

Contemporary:  1950-present
Musical Compositions:

  • opera

  • chamber music

  • symphony

  • band music

  • film score

  • concerto

  • sonata

Composers:

  • Olivier Messiaen

  • John Cage

  • Györgi Ligeti

  • Philip Glass

  • Steve Reich

  • David Maslanka

  • Arvo Pärt

  • Jennifer Higdon

  • Missy Mazzoli

Style:

  • even more styles ranging from completely atonal to neoclassical

  • influence of jazz, pop, and other music

  • wider variety of composers from different backgrounds

  • electronic music

  • mixed media performance including art or taped music combined with a live performance

  • minimalism, using small motives and changing those ideas very slowly and subtly