CONTENTS of Music History 102: As is usual with information on the history of Western music, this site has been organized according to the eras of history: After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Western Europe entered a time known as The Dark Ages — a period when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns, and Visigoths overran Europe. These years…
Musical composition , the act of conceiving a piece of , the art of creating music, or the finished product. These meanings are interdependent and presume a tradition in which works exist as repeatable entities. In this sense, composition is necessarily distinct from . Societal perspectives Whether referring to the process or to the completed work, composition…
The Donne Barocche, or Baroque Women, featured here are not singers or operatic characters, but composers, and the album, originally released on the Opus label in 2001 and rescued for reissue by NaГЇve broke new ground when it first appeared. All of the music comes from the last third of the 17th century and the first decade of the 18th. The names of composer/singer…
Baroque was first used to describe the style of European 17th and 18th century churches and public buildings and hence means ornate, bizarre, exuberant, extravagant. Baroque styles are many: early, middle and late Baroque, Italian, French, English and German Baroque. Plus also the individual style of the composers. Baroque period or baroque era 1600 - 1750…
Pre - 1600 A.D. We are lumping together Medieval and Renaissance music for expedience, since this repertoire is less frequently encountered in the concert hall and is generally considered a specialized taste. Most studies of Western art music begin with plainchant, the early music of the Catholic Church. Public interest in chant soared a few years back when the…
No other composer in the history of Western music quite compares to Johann Sebastian Bach. With the sole exception of opera, he mastered every existing genre of music and helped create several new ones, such as the keyboard concerto. It is no wonder that contemporaries held him in such high esteem. Soon after his death, however, he was all but forgotten, regarded…
Composers of the 17th and 18th century in German-speaking countries were open to the fascination of Italian and French models, and created a diverse and personal musical language. There came into being a buoyant, dense and tightly interwoven network, one often oriented towards Europe. To reduce the Baroque era in German-speaking countries to its most renowned…
What is “baroque, ” and when was the Baroque period? Derived from the Portuguese barroco, or “oddly shaped pearl, ” the term “baroque” has been widely used since the nineteenth century to describe the period in Western European art music from about 1600 to 1750. Comparing some of music history’s greatest masterpieces to a misshapen pearl might seem strange to…
Italy Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643): A student of Marc’Antonio Ingegneri in Cremona, Claudio Monteverdi quickly established himself as one of the most significant composers of his time. In 1592 he was appointed suonatore di vivuola (viol and/or violin player) to Duke Vincenzo I of Mantua; his third book of madrigals, published in 1592, shows the strong influence…
