Course Timeline

c.  1400  -  The Renaissance is growing in Italy will later spread north to England,
                    Holland, and Germany

c.  1500  -  The High Renaissance: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael,
                    Albrecht Dürer

                    Palestrina - Exsultate Deo (play, 2:16)


c.  1570s -  The Florentine Camarata revives interest in Greek Drama.  

c.   1600  -  Opera begins; Renaissance music styles fade as new Baroque styles develop. 


                    Monteverdi - L'Orfeo (1607) - "Vi ricorda, o boschi ombrosi"  (play, 2:51)


c.   1700  -  The late Baroque era begins 

                    J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi 

                    Antonio Stradivari perfects the violin,
                    Bartolomeo Christofori invents the piano 


                      Complexity of Baroque polyphonic counterpoint -
                      Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (play).


c. 1730    -  Baroque music begins fading in popularity although Bach and Handel
                   compose for two more decades.    

                -  A simpler style of music develops; galant featured a return to simplicity
                    and immediacy of appeal after the complexity of the late Baroque era.
                    This meant simpler, more song-like melodies, decreased use of polyphony,
                    short, periodic phrases, a reduced harmonic vocabulary emphasizing
                    tonic and dominant, and a clear distinction between soloist and
                    accompaniment. The German empfindsamer Stil, which seeks to express
                    personal emotions and sensitivity, can be seen either as a closely related
                    North-German dialect of the international galant style.

  1732      -   Joseph Haydn is born in March or April.

c. 1750    -   The Enlightenment grows more public and more fervent. 

  1756      -   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born on January 27.

  1759      -   Joseph Haydn writes his first symphony.

  1760s    -   Christoph Willibald Gluck transforms opera towards a classical simplicity. 

c. 1765 - 1785  -  Proto-romantic Sturm und Drang movement in Germany.

  1770      -   Ludwig van Beethoven is born on December 16.

  1781      -   Mozart moves to Vienna.

  1791      -   Mozart dies on December 5.

  1795      -   Beethoven publishes his first compositions (three piano trios).

  1797      -    Franz Schubert is born.

c. 1800    -    Early Romantic poets and painters like Samuel Taylor Coleridge
                     and William Blake emerge. 

  1803      -    Beethoven moves into his middle period becoming more romantic in style.

                -    Haydn's career ends because of illness, he dies in 1809. 

  1810      -     Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann are born

  1811      -      Franz Liszt is born.

  1827      -      Ludwig van Beethoven dies. 

  1828      -      Franz Schubert dies at age 31.

  1830      -      Hector Berlioz premiers Symphony fantastique 

                        Frédéric Chopin premiers Piano Concert No. 1 in E minor.