Music History 600-1750

By snoozie626
  • 519

    Benedicts Writing of His Rule

    Saint Benedict writes a book of rules/guidelines for those who lived in his monastery. The set of rules was then interpreted and widely spread throughout the 530's.
  • 771

    Charlemagne and His Empire

    Charlemagne, also known as Charles the Great was crowned King of the Franks in 771. He's known for uniting most of western and central Europe, creating the Carolingian Empire.
  • 800

    Stages in the Development of Notation Up Until 1200

    Oral Transmission was the first way people passed music down. Neumes were then created, which were symbols that helped track the rise and fall of melodies in relation to the text syllables. In the 10th and 11th centuries, diastemic notation was created where scribes placed neumes at different heights to show the sizes of intervals. Then Guido of Arezzo added a system where there was a line that signified an actual note (either C or F).
  • 900

    The Earliest Sequences

    They came from a book of antiphons that had melismas. Notker Balbulus used this technique to make Dies Irae.
  • 1000

    Guido of Arezzo

    Italian music theorist known for his creation of "Guidonian Hand" which is the notation that led to the musical notation that we use today. It consisted of its own "sol feg syllables" ut queant laxis ut re mi fa sol la.
  • Period: 1070 to 1300

    Troubadours and Trouveres

    Medieval poet-musicians who were one of the first groups to record vernacular songs.
  • Period: 1098 to 1179

    Hildegard von Bingen

    A woman of many talents including being a composer, philosopher, writer and visionary. One of the first women that we know of to be recognized for these talents. Best known for her sacred monophony.
  • Period: 1135 to 1194

    Bernart de Ventadorn

    He was a professional trouvere that was very famous for his time. Many of his works still exist today.
  • Period: 1135 to 1201

    Leonin

    He was the first named composer who worked at Notre Dame as a poet and musician. He compiled the magnus liber organi.
  • Period: 1160 to 1230

    Perotin

    He was Leonin's student that edited the magnus liber organi to his own version of it. Well known for his Viderunt Omnes.
  • Period: 1170 to 1310

    The Ars Antiqua

    This refers to the Medieval music of Europe during the High Middle Ages.
  • 1200

    The Cantigas De Santa Maria of Alfonso the Wise

    The Cantigas are a collection of 420 poems. The most common types are the virelai and the rondeau. They were written in Galician-Portuguese.
  • Period: 1250 to 1280

    Ars Cantus Mensurabilis

    A music theory treatise from the mid 13th century written by Franco of Cologne.
  • Period: 1300 to 1377

    Guillame de Machaut

    A medieval French poet and composer. He was very important in his musical influence in the 14th century.
  • Period: 1300 to 1400

    The Trecento

    This refers to the 14th century history and culture of Italy.
  • 1310

    Roman de Fauvel

    This is a 14th-century French allegorical verse romance of satirical bent, generally attributed to Gervais du Bus, a clerk at the French royal chancery.
  • Period: 1310 to 1377

    The Ars Nova

    Refers to a musical style which flourished in France and the Burgundian Low Countries in the late Middle Ages.
  • 1322

    The Ars Nova Notandi

    A treatise on music attributed to him which lent its name to the music of the entire era written by Philippe de Vitry.
  • Period: 1335 to 1397

    Francesco Landini

    He was an Italian composer, organist, singer, poet and instrument maker. He was one of the most famous and revered composers of the second half of the 14th century, and by far the most famous composer in Italy.
  • Period: 1397 to 1474

    Guillame Dufay

    He was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. A central figure in the Burgundian School, he was regarded by his contemporaries as one of the leading composers in Europe in the mid-15th century.
  • Period: 1400 to 1460

    Gilles de Binchois

    He was a composer from the Low Countries, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian school and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century.
  • Period: 1410 to 1497

    Johannes Ockeghem

    He was the most famous composer of the Franco-Flemish School in the last half of the 15th century, and is often considered the most influential composer between Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez. In addition to being a renowned composer, he was also an honored singer, choirmaster, and teacher.
  • Period: 1415 to 1421

    Old Hall Manuscript

    This manuscript is made up mostly of settings of the Ordinary of the Mass and is arranged in sections so that different setting of the Gloria, Sanctus and so on, are grouped together.
  • Period: 1425 to 1496

    Missa L'homme Armé

    The L'homme Armé is a Burgundian School secular song from the time of the Late Middle Ages. Set in Dorian mode, it was the most popular tune used for musical settings of the Ordinary of the Mass: over 40 separate compositions entitled Missa L'homme armé survive from the period.
  • 1436

    Nuper Rosarum Flores

    This is a motet composed by Guillaume Dufay for the 25 March 1436 consecration of the Florence cathedral, on the occasion of the completion of the dome built under the instructions of Filippo Brunelleschi.
  • Period: 1450 to 1521

    Josquin des Prez

    He was a French composer of the Renaissance.
  • Period: 1474 to 1475

    Ave Maria...Virgo Serena

    This is a motet composed by Josquin des Prez. It is regarded as Josquin's most famous motet and one of the most famous pieces of the 15th century.
  • 1501

    The Odhecaton

    This was an anthology of polyphonic secular songs published by Ottaviano Petrucci in 1501 in Venice. It was the first book of polyphonic music ever to be printed using movable type.
  • Period: 1507 to 1568

    Il Bianco e Dolce Cigno

    Jacques Arcadelt's most single famous composition, and one of the most enduring of the entire 16th century, it was a four-voice madrigal that translates to "the white and gentle swan".
  • 1515

    Missa Pange Lingua

    This is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass by Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez, probably dating from around 1515, near the end of his life. Most likely his last mass, it is an extended fantasia on the Pange Lingua hymn, and is one of Josquin's most famous mass settings.
  • 1517

    Ninety-Five Theses

    This is a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany.
  • Period: 1525 to

    Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

    He was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a long-lasting influence on the development of church and secular music in Europe, especially on the development of counterpoint, and his work is considered as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.
  • 1540

    The Monteverdi-Artusi Debate

    This was when Aristophanes attacked the music licenses of his times and ever since the eighteenth century the clash between tradition and experimentation has been idolized as a token of progress. This debate marks the peak in a series of 'incessant musical polemics' generated by changes in late sixteenth-century music theory. These, in turn, were rooted in the profound influence of Platonism in Italian culture.
  • Period: 1545 to 1563

    The Council of Trent

    This was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation.
  • 1562

    Pope Marcellus Mass

    This is a mass sine nomine by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. It is his best-known mass,
  • Period: 1580 to

    The Concerto Delle Donne

    This was a group of professional female singers in the late Renaissance court of Ferrara, Italy, renowned for their technical and artistic virtuosity. The ensemble was founded by Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara.
  • Period: 1580 to

    The Concerto Delle Donne

    This was a group of professional female singers in the late Renaissance court of Ferrara, Italy, renowned for their technical and artistic virtuosity. The ensemble was founded by Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara.
  • Period: 1580 to

    Intermedio

    In the Italian Renaissance this was a theatrical performance or spectacle with music and often dance, which was performed between the acts of a play to celebrate special occasions in Italian courts.

  • Solo E Pensoso

    An Italian rennaisance 5 voice piece composed by Luca Marenzio in 1599.

  • Orfeo e Euridice

    This is an opera by Jacopo Peri. It is the earliest surviving opera and it recounts the story of the legendary musician Orpheus and his wife Euridice.

  • The Triumphs of Oriana

    This is a book of English madrigals, compiled and published in 1601 by Thomas Morley, which first edition has 25 pieces by 23 composers (Thomas Morley and Ellis Gibbons have two madrigals). It was said to have been made in the honor of Queen Elizabeth I.

  • Monterverdi's Orfeo

    It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua. While Jacopo Peri's Dafne is generally recognized as the first work in the opera genre

  • Monteverdi's Move to Venice

    He moved to Venice in 1613 having been appointed conductor at St. Mark's Basilica. Here he completed the last three of his nine volumes of madrigals.
  • Period: to

    Jean-Baptiste Lully

    He was an Italian-born French composer, instrumentalist, and dancer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered a master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period.

  • Teatro San Cassiano

    This was the first public opera house when it opened in 1637 in Venice.

  • L'Incoronazione di Poppea

    This is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nero, is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress.

  • Ballet Royal de la Nuit

    This is a ballet de cour with a libretto by Isaac de Benserade and music by Jean de Cambefort, Jean-Baptiste Boësset, Michel Lambert and possibly others, which premiered on February 23, 1653, at the Salle du Petit-Bourbon in Paris. It took 13 hours to perform and debuted fifteen year old Louis XIV as Apollo.
  • Period: to

    Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre

    She was born into a family of musicians and master instrument-makers in the parish of Saint-Louis-en-l'lle, Paris. A child prodigy, she received her initial musical education from her father and performed on the harpsichord at a young age before King Louis XIV.

  • Lully's Armide

    This is an opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully that was first performed on 15 February 1686 by the Paris Opera at the Theatre du Palais-Royal. The subject for the opera was chosen for Lully by King Louis XIV of France. However, the king would not attend the première or any of the following performances, possibly because Lully was involved in a homosexual scandal.