Middle Ages

The reign of King William Rufus

Jan 2, 1087

He was the second son of William the conqueror. In England Rufus removed the Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm, and everyone else who tried to object to his behaviour. He was hated by the people who dislike the court and the favor that King William II showed to Ranulf Flambard, whom he appointed Bishop of Durham in 1099. Rufus had never showed any interest in women. He did not marry, nor produce any heirs to the English throne. He died by being shot by an arrow.

Music Notation

Sep 29, 1100

During the 11th century, Guido of Arezzo was one of the first to develop musical notation, which made it easier for singers to remember Gregorian chants. Guido was a monk of the Benedictine order from the Italian city-state of Arezzo. Recent research has dated his Micrologus to 1025 or 1026; since Guido stated in a letter that he was thirty-four when he wrote it, his birthdate is presumed to be around 991 or 992.

Instruments in the Middle Ages

Sep 29, 1100

The Flute - Similar to our modern flutes. This type of Musical instruments played by flute-minstrels of the Middle Ages The Trumpet - Long instrument made of metal, often in four parts - often associated with fanfares and pageants The Pipe - The pipe was an extremely basic instrument usually having only three melody holes The Shawn - The shawn was a reed instrument with vent holes Recorder - The recorder was also an extremely basic instrument with melody holes The Bagpipe - The Bagpipe was

High Middle Ages Music

Sep 29, 1200

The surviving music of the High Middle Ages is primarily religious in nature, since music notation developed in religious institutions, and the application of notation to secular music was a later development. Early in the period, Gregorian chant was the dominant form of church music; other forms, beginning with organum, and later including clausulae, conductus and the motet, developed using the chant as source material.

The Black Death ravages Europe for the first of many times.

Sep 2, 1347

The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population, reducing the world's population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400. This has been seen as creating a series of religious, social and economic upheavals which had profound effects on the course of European history. It took 150 years for Europe's population to recover.

The Great Schism

Sep 29, 1378

The French Pope Clement V (aka Raymond Bertrand de Got) (1264 - 1305 - 1314 (50)) had moved the seat of the Papacy from Rome to (you guessed) France - firstly Poitiers, then more permanently to Avignon in the early 1300s. Gregory XI returned the Papacy to Rome in 1376, but after his death two year's later, rival Popes appeared in Avignon, Rome, and at the final stage a third - the "Anti-Pope" Baldassare Cossa, John XXIII - mostly in Bologna.

Battle of Agincourt

Oct 11, 1415

Henry V and the deadly English longbow men beat the French in what turned out to be a "dead cat bounce" towards the end of the Hundred Years' War.

Joan of Arc lifts the siege of Orleans for the Dauphin of France

May 2, 1429

The siege continued for months. At around this same time, Joan of Arc appears at the court of Charles. Charles allows Joan to lead a relief force in April. In May, Joan attacked the English in unison with a force from Orleans and drove the English from their positions. The next day they abonded the siege; momentum now lay with the French.

Invention of the printing press

Sep 29, 1440

The Printing Press was probably the greatest invention of this time. This made books cheaper and easier to afford for the poor. This intern caused many poor citizens who couldn't read before to learn how to read. The printing press was invented in Germany by a man named Johann Gutenberg. He invented it in 1440 in Mainz. It was the greatest invention of that period of time because the church couldn't lie about things that were written in the bible. This was the major factor for increase in knowle

Fall of Constantinople (Byzantine Empire ends)

May 28, 1453

Fall of Constantinople to the armies of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II - the end of a 1,129 year empire that, along with the Muslim centres of Baghdad and Cordoba, had kept some of the classical flame alight during the European dark ages.

Finding of America

Dec 17, 1492

Columbus' first expedition departed Spain on 2 August 1492 and the "New World" (=Bahamas) was sighted at 2am on 12 October 1492. In accordance with his contract, Columbus was made Admiral of the Ocean Sea, viceroy of his discoveries and owner of 10% of any new wealth.

Dance music of the Renaissance

Feb 10, 1500

Throughout the Renaissance instrumental dance music flowered and thrived, and was composed, or more likely improvised, by many people. Musicians whose names have come down to us collected much of this existing music and had it published in various volumes over the years. The Terpsichore of Michael Praetorius (c.1571-1621) and the dance music of Tielman Susato (c.1500-1561) represent some of the outstanding examples of dance music from the late Renaissance

Northern Composers

Aug 27, 1500

The early fifteenth century was dominated initially by English and then Northern European composers. The Burgundian court was especially influential, and it attracted composers and musicians from all over Europe. The most important of these was Guillaume Du Fay (1397–1474), whose varied musical offerings included motets and masses for church and chapel services, many of whose large musical structures were based on existing Gregorian chant.

Ninety-Five Theses

Oct 31, 1517

On 31 October 1517, married Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg - the launch of the Reformation and the Protestant Movement which, facilitated by the recent inventions of printing and cheap paper, was to sweep Northern Europe.

Finding of Cape Hope

Dec 25, 2010

sailed to India via the Cape of Good Hope. On the way he named his southern African landfall "Natal" after making it ashore there on Christmas Day 1497. In fact the Cape of Good Hope, and thus the existence of a sea route to India, had been discovered by the Portuguese navigator Bartolomé Dias in 1488 in the wake of several earlier Portuguese expeditions down the west coast of Africa, and it is odd that almost another decade elapsed before an expedition was mounted to exploit it.