Famous composers of medieval period

The history of music in the world
Top 10 medieval composers
Classical composers timeline pdf

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History of music

Although definitions of music vary wildly throughout the world, every known culture partakes in it, and it is thus considered a cultural universal. The origins of music remain highly contentious; commentators often relate it to the origin of language, with much disagreement surrounding whether music arose before, after or simultaneously with language. Many theories have been proposed by scholars from a wide range of disciplines, though none has achieved broad approval. Most cultures have their own mythical origins concerning the invention of music, generally rooted in their respective mythological, religious or philosophical beliefs.

The music of prehistoric cultures is first firmly dated to c. 40,000 BP of the Upper Paleolithic by evidence of bone flutes, though it remains unclear whether or not the actual origins lie in the earlier Middle Paleolithic period (300,000 to 50,000 BP). There is little known about prehistoric music, with traces mainly limited to some simple flutes and percussion instruments. However, such evidence indicates that m

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A brief history of classical music

Johann Sebastian Bach

Fixing a date for ‘the beginning of classical music’ is as elusive as pin-pointing the millennium in which dinosaurs became extinct. 1000 AD merely provides a convenient starting point for the birth of modern Western music. It was around that date when the idea first occurred of combining several voices to sing a melody; it was the time, too, when the Church, for so long the most important influence and inspiration on the development of music, recognised a need to standardise the single-line unaccompanied chants that had been used for centuries in sacred ceremonies.

Gregorian chant

This early Christian music, derived from Greek songs and from the chanting used in synagogues, had evolved into what we now call plainsong, plainchant or Gregorian chant, the traditional music of the Western Church – a single melodic line, usually sung without accompaniment. (The Gregorian chant melodies sung today date from after the death of Pope Gregory in 604 AD.) Without any accepted written system to denote the pitch or length of a

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Written sheet music, and hence any accurate record of music, dates to around 1000 AD, so it is almost impossible to say much about what music actually sounded like prior to that. Obviously, this does not preclude the likelihood of intelligent thought about music before this point, and it certainly doesn’t imply that music wasn’t being made. Today I’ll give a brief overview of some key developments in musical thought which preceded written representations of music and I hope to illustrate something of the mystery of music to point towards its importance as an art form.

Prehistoric man

Music is very old. Stone age flutes have been found in disparate parts of the world dating as far back as 43,000 years ago. This implies that the impulse to make music could be even older, that singing and clapping predated even the earliest instruments. It seems that we humans have had music since we have had culture. It’s also a universal truth that humans enjoy music, that it is part of our nature. I don’t mean enjoy like you enjoy an ice cream on the beach ̵