The timeline of centuries
Each bar is a life. Drag the timeline, zoom in, filter by era, and tap a name to open the page.
Tip: drag with the mouse or your finger; grey diamonds are historical landmarks (hover over them).
The eras in brief
These broad periods are signposts: styles overlap, travel and talk to each other.
Middle Ages
From Gregorian chant to the first polyphony of Notre-Dame: music grows in monasteries and cathedrals, then reaches the courts with the Ars nova.
Hildegard von Bingen, Léonin, Pérotin, Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut
Renaissance
Printing spreads scores, voices interweave in clear, balanced masses and madrigals, and secular music flourishes.
John Dunstaple, Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, Jacob Obrecht, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, William Byrd, Tomás Luis de Victoria
Baroque
The birth of opera, the triumph of the violin, basso continuo and the concerto: music of contrasts, ornament and strong emotion.
Claudio Monteverdi, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Heinrich Schütz, Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Johann Pachelbel, Marin Marais, Henry Purcell, François Couperin, Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Georg Friedrich Haendel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Jean-Baptiste Pergolèse
Classical
Balance, clarity and sonata form: the symphony, the string quartet and the fortepiano take centre stage in Vienna and across Europe.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Joseph Haydn, Luigi Boccherini, Muzio Clementi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Classical to Romantic
A pivotal generation: classical forms expand under the pressure of personal expression and powerful feelings.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Niccolò Paganini
Romantic
The composer becomes a hero: virtuosos, tone poems, Lieder and grand operas tell of nature, love and nations.
Franz Schubert, Hector Berlioz, Louise Farrenc, Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Charles Gounod, Clara Schumann, César Franck, Bedřich Smetana, Alexandre Borodine, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Modeste Moussorgski, Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovski, Antonín Dvořák, Edvard Grieg
Late Romantic
Gigantic orchestras, ever richer harmony and national schools: Romanticism pushes its means to their limits.
Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov, Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius, Amy Beach, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sergueï Rachmaninov
Impressionism and modernity
Colours, timbres and atmospheres: Paris invents new ways of listening, with scales from far away and a sense of humour.
Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Alexandre Scriabine, Maurice Ravel
Modernism
New rhythms, atonality, reinvented folk music and jazz: the twentieth century overturns every rule.
Arnold Schönberg, Charles Ives, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Florence Price, Serge Prokofiev, Lili Boulanger, Dmitri Chostakovitch
20th century and today
Electronic music, minimalism, spectralism, film scores: musical creation is as alive and diverse as ever.
Nadia Boulanger, Germaine Tailleferre, George Gershwin, Francis Poulenc, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, John Cage, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, György Ligeti, Sofia Goubaïdoulina, Arvo Pärt, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Kaija Saariaho, Unsuk Chin