Linea Tiempo

Ancient age (goes back to year 3300 BC)

Period: 600 BCE to 476

Music dates back to the Ancient Ages, where music probably aroused as monotonous sounds produced by daily activities, and it evolved to be represented with instruments in rituals, as it was believed to have magic properties.

Seikilos Epitaph

50

The oldest composition that we have found in its entirety. The inscription was found engraved on a pillar placed over the tomb that Seikilos had built for his wife. It was found on an Hellenistic town called Tralles (present-day Turkey).

Middle ages

Period: 476 to Oct 12, 1492

Most of music in the middle ages was religious and was interpreted in chapels by monks. It was very simple and with variable rithm, but it didn't really matter because the text was more important.

Gregorian chant

730

The Gregorian Chant consistes of a monodic chant in wich the text was much more important than the melody becauso of its religious theme.
After Guido d'Arrezo's work the partiture began to be written. To the end of the Medieval Ages, it became a thing of the past.

Guido d'Arezzo

991

Guido d'Arezzo was an Italian music theorist and pedagogue of High medieval music. A Benedictine monk, he is regarded as the inventor of the modern staff notation that had a massive influence on the development of Western musical notation and practice.

Guido d'Arezzo's Death

1050

He dies at age 59

Hildegard von Bingen

1098

Hildegard von Bingen also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history.

Bernart de Ventadorn

1135

Bernart de Ventadorn was a French poet-composer troubadour of the classical age of troubadour poetry. Generally regarded as the most important troubadour in both poetry and music, Generally regarded as the most important troubadour in both poetry and music.

Leonin

1135

Leonin was the first known significant composer of polyphonic organum. He was probably French, probably lived and worked in Paris at the Notre-Dame Cathedral and was the earliest member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the ars antiqua style who is known by name.

Perotin

1155

Perotin was a composer associated with the Notre Dame school of polyphony in Paris and the broader ars antiqua musical style of high medieval music. He is credited with developing the polyphonic practices of his predecessor Léonin, with the introduction of three and four-part harmonies.

Ars Antiqua

Period: 1170 to 1400

Period of time in wich music aquired polophony, but it remained purely religious. Notation indicated the pitch of notes but not the rythm this had to be sung in.

Hildegard von Bingen's death

Sep 17, 1179

She dies at age 81

Bernart de Ventadorn's death

1194

He dies at age 59

Leonin's death

1201

Leonin dies at age 66

Alfonso X the Wise

Nov 23, 1221

Alfonso X was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1 June 1252 until his death in 1284. Alfonso X commissioned or co-authored numerous works of music during his reign. These works included Cantigas d'escarnio e maldicer and the vast compilation Cantigas de Santa Maria ("Songs to the Virgin Mary"), which was written in Galician-Portuguese and figures among the most important of his works.

Perotin dies

1230

He dies at age 75

Alfonso X the Wise dies

Apr 4, 1284

He sadly died at age 62

Guillaume de Machaut

1300

Guillaume de Machaut was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the ars nova style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to separate the ars nova from the subsequent ars subtilior movement. Regarded as the most significant French composer and poet of the 14th century, he is often seen as the century's leading European composer.

Renaissance

Period: 1300 to 1600

The Renaissance was a period of time between the middle and modern ages. Although it also involved advancements on other camps, it flowered mostly in arts like music, art and even arquitecture, where works were based on those of Greeks and Romans.
It was mostly influenced by humanist ideas, were the human person was the center of everything.
Music began to be polyphonic and religious music mixed with profane music, which talked about normal people.

Ars Nova

Period: 1310 to 1377

Developmentes in notation were made; notes not only indicated pitch but also began to indicate rythm.
Secular music began to flourish with several aquired caracteristics only found in sacred music. Overall, ars nova had a greater expressiveness and variety than ars antiqua.

Francesco Landini

1335

Francesco Landini was an Italian composer, poet, organist, singer and instrument maker who was a central figure of the Trecento style in late Medieval music. One of the most revered composers of the second half of the 14th century, he was by far the most famous composer in Italy.

Guillaume de Machaut dies

Apr 13, 1377

He dies at age 77

Francesco Landini dies

Sep 2, 1397

Francesco Landini passes away at age 62

Johanne Gutenberg invents movable-type printing press

1450

Until that moment, all books had to be written by monks in monasteries, and that made them extremley valuable and expensive; a possesion that only a few could afford. But towards 1450, Johanne invented the printing press with movable types, wich allowed to make books far more quickly and made them cheaper. The first printed book was the "42 line Bible", that had 42 lines per page.

Juan del Encina

Jul 12, 1468

Juan de Fermoselle, better known as Juan del Encina, was a poet, mussician and theatral author from Spain in times of the Catholic Kings. He is remembered as one of the most important profane music-author from the Renaissance in Spain.
As a dramatist, he is considered the father of spanish theater. The start of his career can be traced to Christmas 1492, when he presented before the dukes of Alba two theatrical pieces where some pastors announce the birth of Christ.

Cristóbal de Morales

1500

He was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance. Almost all of his music is sacred, and all of it is vocal, though instruments may have been used in an accompanying role in performance. Morales was the first Spanish composer of international renown. His works were widely distributed in Europe, and many copies made the journey to the New World. Many music writers and theorists in the hundred years after his death considered his music to be among the most perfect of the time.

Antonio de Cabezón

1510

Antonio de Cabezón was a musician and a spanish renaissance composer. Blind from childhood, he quickly rose to prominence as a performer and was eventually employed by the royal family. He was among the most important composers of his time and the first major Spanish keyboard composer.

Martin Luther posts his famous 95 theses

1517

Luther never intended, initially, to challenge the church hierarchy or the pope. Martin Luther's 95 Theses of 1517 were an invitation to discuss policies and practices of the Church he found troublesome and unbiblical. The original document was intended for an ecclesiastical audience, but thanks to the advent of the printing press c. 1440, they spread the theses throughout Germany and on to other nations igniting the Protestant Reformation.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Feb 2, 1526

Giovanni was an Italian composer of late Renaissance music. Primarily known for his masses and motets, Palestrina had a big influence on the development of church and secular music in Europe, especially on the development of counterpoint.

Juan del Encina dies

1529

He dies at the age of 61

Orlando di Lasso

1531

Lassus stands as one of the leading composers of the later Renaissance. Creator of a great quantity of compositions, his music varies considerably in style and genres, which gave him unprecedented popularity throughout Europe. A great story about him is that he was kidnapped around three times due to the sweetness of his voice.

Andrea Gabrieli

1533

Andrea Gabrieli was an Italian composer and organist of the late Renaissance. He was the first internationally renowned member of the Venetian School of composers, and was extremely influential in spreading the Venetian style in Italy as well as in Germany. Gabrieli was a prolific and versatile composer, and wrote a large amount of music, including sacred and secular vocal music. His works include over a hundred motets and madrigals, as well as a smaller number of instrumental works.

Maddalena Casulana

1544

Maddalena Casulana was a composer, laud interpreter and an Italian singer from the late Renaissance. She was the first female composer that had an entire volume of her own music printed and published.
Extremely little is known about her life, other than what can be inferred from the dedications and writings on her collections of madrigals.

Tomás Luis de Victoria

1548

Tomás Luis de Victoria was a Roman Catholic priest, chapel master and famous polyphonist composer of the Spanish Renaissance. He is considered one of the most relevant and advanced composers of his time, with an innovative style that heralded the imminent Baroque. His influence reaches the twentieth century, when he was taken as a model by the composers of Cecilianism. He was "admired above all for the intensity of some of his motets". In his life in Rome he may have had encountered Palestrina.

Cristóbal de Morales dies

1553

He dies at the age of 53.

Carlo Gesualdo

Mar 8, 1566

Carlo Gesualdo, prince Venosa and count of Conza was an Italian composer and is remembered as one of the most significant figures in music by the end of the Renaissance. The most extended fact about his life was the murder of her first wife and her lover when caught "in fraglante delito". His music is among the most experimental and expressive of the Renaissance, and without question is the most wildly chromatic.

Antonio de Cabezón dies

Mar 26, 1566

Antonio de Cabezón dies at the age of 56 years.

Claudio Monteverdi

May 15, 1567

Claudio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history.

Giovanni Gabrieli

1574

Giovanni Gabrieli was a composer and an organist who lived and died in Venice. He was one of the most influential musics of the School of Venice, living all through Renaissance and into Barroque.
Though Gabrieli composed in many of the forms current at the time, he preferred sacred vocal and instrumental music. All of his secular vocal music is relatively early in his career, and later he concentrated on sacred vocal and instrumental music that exploited sonority for maximum effect.

Andrea Garbriei dies

Aug 30, 1585

He dies at the age of 52.

Maddalena Casulana dies

1590

She dies at the age of 46.

Giovvani Pierluigi da Palestrina dies

Feb 2, 1594

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina dies at the age of 68.

Orlando di Lasso dies

Jun 14, 1594

Orlando di Lasso dies at the age of 62.

Baroque

Period: 1600 to 1750

The art became more refined, with the survival of a certain classicist rationalism, but adopting more dynamic and forms and a taste for the surprising and anecdotal. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to the rest of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, then to Austria, southern Germany, and Poland.

Giacomo Carissimi

Mar 18, 1605

Giacomo Carissimi was an Italian composer and music teacher. He is one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque or, more accurately, the Roman School of music. Carissimi established the characteristic features of the Latin oratorio and was a prolific composer of masses, motets, and cantatas. He was highly influential in musical developments in northern European countries through his pupils, like Kerll in Germany and Charpentier in France, and the wide dissemination of his music.

Tomás Luis de Victoria dies

1611

Tomás Luis de Victoria dies at the age of 63.

Giovvani Gabrieli dies

Aug 12, 1612

He dies at the age of 55.

Carlo Gesualdo

Sep 8, 1613

He dies at the age of 47.

Barbara Strozzi

Aug 6, 1619

Barbara Strozzi was an Italian composer and singer of the Baroque Period. During her lifetime, Strozzi published eight volumes of her own music, and had more secular music in print than any other composer of the era. This was achieved without support from the Church or consistent patronage from the nobility.

Monteverdi dies

Nov 29, 1643

Antonio Stradivari

1644

Antonio Stradivari was an Italian violin maker from Cremona, renowned for crafting some of the finest stringed instruments in history. His violins, known as "Strads," are prized for their craftsmanship and sound quality. Stradivari's legacy endures, with his instruments remaining among the most valuable and sought-after in the world.

Henry Purcell

Sep 10, 1659

Henry Purcell was an English composer of Baroque music.
Purcell's musical style was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest English opera composers, Purcell has been assessed with John Dunstaple and William Byrd as England's most important early music composer.

Giacomo Carissimi dies

Jan 12, 1674

Barbara Strozzi dies

Nov 11, 1677

Antonio Vivaldi

Mar 4, 1678

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian composer, violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, Vivaldi ranks amongst the greatest Baroque composers and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers. He pioneered many developments in orchestration, violin technique and programmatic music. He consolidated the emerging concerto form into a widely accepted and followed idiom.

Georg Philipp Telemann

Mar 24, 1681

Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. He is one of the most prolific composers in history, at least in terms of surviving oeuvre. Telemann was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the leading German composers of the time, and he was compared favourably both to his friend Johann Sebastian Bach, who made Telemann the godfather and namesake of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, and to George Frideric Handel, whom Telemann also knew personally.

Georg Friedrich Händel

Feb 23, 1685

Handel was a German-British Baroque composer known for his operas, oratorios, and concertos. After training in Halle and working in Hamburg and Italy, he settled in London in 1712. His music, influenced by both German and Italian traditions, became a pinnacle of the Baroque style, and he is recognized as one of the greatest composers of his time.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Mar 31, 1685

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German Baroque composer known for his vast output, including the Brandenburg Concertos, cello suites, keyboard works like the Goldberg Variations, and choral pieces such as the St Matthew Passion. Regarded as one of the greatest composers in Western music, his influence has endured since the 19th-century Bach Revival.

Purcell dies

Nov 21, 1695

Stradivarius

1700

A Stradivarius is one of the string instruments, such as violins, violas, cellos, and guitars, crafted by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari, in Cremona, Italy, during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. These instruments are known for their craftsmanship, tonal quality, and lasting legacy, and are considered some of the finest ever made. Stradivari's violins, in particular, are coveted by musicians and collectors, with many selling for millions of dollars.

Christoph Willibald Gluck

Jun 2, 1714

Christoph Willibald Gluck was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. He had a great prominence in the Habsburg court at Vienna.
With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck introduced more drama by using orchestral recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria.

Joseph Haydn

Mar 31, 1732

Haydn was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led him to be called "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String quartet".

Antonio Stradivari dies

Dec 18, 1737

Antonio Vivaldi's death

Jul 28, 1741

He passed away at age 63

Bach dies

Jul 28, 1750

Nannerl Mozart

Jul 30, 1751

Maria Anna Mozart was a highly regarded musician from Salzburg, Austria. In her childhood, she made tremendous progress as a keyboard player under the tutelage of her father Leopold, to the point that she became a celebrated child prodigy, touring much of Europe with her parents and her younger brother Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Though the mayority of her compositions were atributed to her brother, modern historians have discovered lots of her works, and they are as magnificent as they can be.

Wolfang Amadeus Mozart

Jan 27, 1756

Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

Händel dies

Apr 14, 1759

Maria Theresia von Paradis

May 15, 1759

Maria Theresia von Paradis was a pianist and Austrian composer. At the age of three she lost completely her sight sight, but that didn't stop her from becoming a great musician. She had an enormous implication in the musical sector, specially for the blind.
She gave at least 40 concerts in Paris, and even Amadeus Mozart knew of her ability and praised her for it. In Paris she met Valentin Haüy, that did a great labor to help blind people and founded the first school for the blind.

Telemann dies

Jun 25, 1767

Ludwig van Beethoven

Dec 17, 1770

Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. During this time, Beethoven began to grow increasingly deaf. From 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.

Mozart dies

Dec 5, 1791

Wolfang Amadeus Mozart passes away

Rossini

Feb 29, 1792

Gioachino Rossini was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born to parents who were both musicians, Rossini began to compose by the age of twelve, and was known as a child prodigy.

Schubert

Jan 31, 1797

Despite his short life, Schubert left behind more than 600 Lieder and other vocal works, seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. Born in Vienna, Schubert showed uncommon gifts for music from an early age. His father gave him his first violin lessons and his elder brother gave him piano lessons, but Schubert soon exceeded their abilities. At the age of eleven, he became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt school

Hector Berlioz

Dec 11, 1803

Berlioz was born in France. His father was a doctor and sent the young Hector in 1821 to Paris to study medicine. Berlioz was horrified by the dissection process and despite his father's disapproval, he abandoned the career to study music. He attended the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied composition and opera, being greatly impressed by the work and innovations of his teacher Jean-François Lesueur.

Louis-Hector Berlioz

Dec 11, 1803

Berlioz was a French Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy, choral pieces including the Requiem and L'Enfance du Christ, his three operas Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict, and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette and the "dramatic legend" La Damnation de Faust.

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Feb 3, 1809

Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream (which includes his "Wedding March"), the Italian and Scottish Symphonies, and much more.

Haydn dies

May 31, 1809

Franz Joseph Haydn passes away

Chopin

Mar 1, 1810

Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading composer of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation". All of Chopin's compositions feature the piano. Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, some chamber music, and 19 songs set to Polish lyrics.

Robert Schumman

Jun 8, 1810

Robert Schumman was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic era.
He was born with no musical connections, and was initially unsure whether to pursue a career as a lawyer or to make a living as a pianist-composer. He studied law at the universitiy of Leipzig, but his main interests were music and Romantic literature. His hopes for a career as a virtuoso pianist were frustrated by a progressing problem in his right hand, and he concentrated on composition.

Franz Liszt

Oct 22, 1811

Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of his era, and his piano works continue to be widely performed and recorded.

Richard Wagner

May 22, 1813

Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), whereby he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama.

Giuseppe Verdi

Oct 10, 1813

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born to a family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti, whose works significantly influenced him. In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also served briefly as an elected politician.

Clara Schumann

Sep 13, 1819

Clara Schumann was a German pianist, composer, and piano teacher. Regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, she exerted her influence over the course of a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital by lessening the importance of purely virtuosic works. She also composed solo piano pieces, a Piano Concerto, chamber music, choral pieces, and songs.

Romantic music

Period: 1820 to 1910

Romantic music is a stylistic movement in Western Classical music associated with the period of the 19th century commonly referred to as the Romantic era (or Romantic period). It is closely related to the broader concept of Romanticism—the intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that became prominent in Western culture from about 1798 until 1837.

Maria Theresia von Paradis dies

Feb 1, 1824

Bedřich Smetana

Mar 2, 1824

Smetana was a composer born in Bohemia, a region that during the musician's lifetime was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was a pioneer in the development of a musical style that became closely linked to Czech nationalism. For this reason, he is recognized as the father of Czech music. He is known internationally for his opera The Sold Bride and for the cycle of symphonic poems Má vlast (My Homeland) that represent the history, legends and landscapes of the composer's native homeland.

Beethoven dies

Mar 26, 1827

Ludwig van Beethoven passes away

Schubert dies

Nov 19, 1828

Nannerl Mozart dies

Oct 29, 1829

She dies at the age of 68

Brahms

May 7, 1833

Johannes Brahms was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born to a musical family in Hamburg, Brahms began composing and concertizing locally in his youth. He toured Central Europe as a pianist in his adulthood, premiering many of his own works. His compositions were largely successful, attracting a growing circle of supporters, friends, and musicians.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky

Mar 21, 1839

Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five." He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period and strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of his works were inspired by Russian history,folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

May 7, 1840

Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin.

Antonín Leopold Dvořák

Sep 8, 1841

Dvořák was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them," and Dvořák has been described as "arguably the most versatile... composer of his time".

Edvard Hagerup Grieg

Jun 15, 1843

Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the leading Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions brought the music of Norway to fame, as well as helping to develop a national identity, much as Jean Sibelius did in Finland and Bedřich Smetana in Bohemia.

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov

Mar 18, 1844

was a Russian composer, a member of the group of composers known as The Five. He was a master of orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions(Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade) are staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his fifteen operas. Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy-tale and folk subjects.

Mendelssohn dies

Nov 4, 1847

Frédéric Chopin dies

Oct 17, 1849

Schumman dies

Jul 29, 1856

Puccini

Dec 22, 1858

Giacomo Puccini was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi he was descended from a long line of composers, stemming from the late Baroque era.
His most renowned works are La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and the Turandot, all of which are among the most frequently performed and recorded in the entirety of the operatic repertoire.

Hugo Wolf

Mar 13, 1860

Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf was an Austrian composer, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music.
Though he had several bursts of extraordinary productivity, particularly in 1888 and 1889, depression frequently interrupted his creative periods, and his last composition was written in 1898, before he suffered a mental collapse caused by syphilis.

Gustav Mahler

Jul 7, 1860

Gustav Mahler was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, like a ban in most of Europe during the Nazi era, after which his compositions were rediscovered.

Claude Debussy

Aug 22, 1862

Debussy was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Johan Julius Christian Sibelius

Dec 8, 1865

Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often credited with having helped Finland develop a stronger national identity when the country was struggling from several attempts at Russification in the late 19th century.

Berlioz dies

Mar 8, 1869

Berlioz dies

Mar 8, 1869

Arnold Schönberg

Sep 13, 1874

Schönberg was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-century classical music, and a central element of his music was its use of motives as a means of coherence. He propounded concepts like developing variation, the emancipation of the dissonance, and the "unity of musical space".

Joseph Maurice Ravel

Mar 7, 1875

Ravel was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.

Manuel de Falla y Matheu

Nov 23, 1876

Manuel de Falla was a Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. He has a claim to being Spain's greatest composer of the 20th century, although the number of pieces he composed was relatively modest.

Béla Viktor János Bartók

Mar 25, 1881

Barók was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hungary's greatest composers. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became known as ethnomusicology.

Mussorgsky dies

Mar 28, 1881

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky

Jun 17, 1882

Stravinsky was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.

Joaquín Turina Pérez

Dec 9, 1882

Joaquín Turina He was a Spanish composer and musicologist representative of nationalism in the first half of the 20th century. Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albéniz and he composed the most important works of Impressionism in Spain. His most important works are Danzas Fantásticas and La Procesión del Rocío.

Zoltán Kodály

Dec 16, 1882

Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, music pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály method of music education.

Wagner dies

Feb 13, 1883

Smetana dies

May 12, 1884

Franz Liszt dies

Jul 31, 1886

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Mar 5, 1887

Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and classical guitarist described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of all time. A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2,000 works by his death in 1959.

Tchaikovsky dies

Nov 6, 1893

Clara Schumann dies

Apr 20, 1896

Bramhs dies

Apr 3, 1897

George Gershwin

Sep 26, 1898

Gershwin was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the songs "Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the hit "Summertime".

Verdi dies

Jan 27, 1901

Hugo Wolf dies

Feb 22, 1901

Antonín Dvořák dies

May 1, 1904

Edvard Grieg dies

Sep 4, 1907

Korsakov dies

Jun 21, 1908

Olivier Messiaen

Dec 10, 1908

Messiaen was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. One of the major composers of the 20th century, he was also an outstanding teacher of composition and musical analysis.

Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer

Aug 14, 1910

Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innovative work in both the sciences—particularly communications and acoustics—and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime.

Gustav Mahler dies

May 18, 1911

John Milton Cage Jr.

Sep 5, 1912

John Cage was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance,mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.

Debussy dies

Mar 25, 1918

Puccini dies

Nov 29, 1923

Pierre Henry

Dec 9, 1927

Pierre Henry was a French musician, considered the creator, along with Pierre Schaeffer, of the so-called concrete music and one of the godfathers of electroacoustic music.

Philip Glass

Jan 31, 1937

Philip Glass is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures" which he has helped to evolve stylistically.

Gershwin dies

Jul 11, 1937

Ravel dies

Dec 28, 1937

Bartók dies

Sep 26, 1945

Manuel de Falla dies

Nov 14, 1946

Joaquín Turina dies

Jan 14, 1949

Schönberg dies

Jul 13, 1951

Sibelius dies

Sep 20, 1957

Heitor Villa-Lobos dies

Nov 17, 1959

Kodály dies

Mar 6, 1967

Stravinsky dies

Apr 6, 1971

Messiaen dies

Apr 27, 1992

John Cage dies

Aug 12, 1992

Pierre Shaeffer dies

Aug 19, 1995

Minecraft is released

May 17, 2009

The best selling game ever is released

Spain wins the world cup

Jul 11, 2010

"Cesc para Iniesta. Iniesta. No hay fuera de juego. Vamos Iniesta. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. Iniesta de mi vida...".

Pierre Henry dies

Jul 5, 2017