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The term medieval music encompasses European music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire (476 AD) and ends in approximately the middle of the fifteenth century. Establishing the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the Renaissance is admittedly arbitrary; 1400 is used here.

Overview

Style and trends

The only medieval music which can be studied is that which was written down and survived. Since creating musical manuscripts was very expensive, due to the expense of parchment, and the huge amount of time necessary for a scribe to copy it all down, only very rich institutions were able to create manuscripts which survived to the current time. These institutions generally included the church and church institutions, such as monasteries, although some secular music was also preserved in these institutions. These manuscript traditions do not reflect much of the popular music of the time. At the start of the era, the notated music is presumed to be monophonic and homorhythmic with what appears to be a unison sung text and no notated instrumental support. In earlier medieval notation, rhythm cannot be specified, although neumatic notations can give clear phrasing ideas, and somewhat later notations indicate rhythmic modes.

The simplicity of chant, with unison voice and natural declamation, is most common. The notation of polyphony develops, and the assumption is that formalised polyphonic practices first arose in this period. Harmony, in consonant intervals of perfect fifths, unisons, octaves, (and later, perfect fourths) begins to be notated. Rhythmic notation allows for complex interactions between multiple vocal lines in a repeatable fashion. The use of multiple texts and the notation of instrumental accompaniment has developed by the end of the era.

Instruments

The instruments used to perform medieval music largely still exist, though in different forms. The medieval cornett differed immensely from its modern counterpart, the trumpet, not least in traditionally being made of ivory or wood rather than metal. Cornetts in medieval times were quite short. They were either straight or somewhat curved, and construction became standardised on a curved version by approximately the middle 15th century. In one side, there would be several holes. The flute was once made of wood rather than silver or other metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. The recorder, on the other hand, has more or less retained its past form. The gemshorn is similar to the recorder in having finger holes on its front, though it is really a member of the ocarina family. One of the flute's predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times, and is possibly of Hellenic origin. This instrument's pipes were made of wood, and were graduated in length to produce different pitches.

Many medieval plucked string instruments were similar to the modern guitar, such as the lute and mandolin. The hammered dulcimer, similar in structure to the psaltery and zither, was not plucked but struck. The hurdy-gurdy was (and still is) a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to "bow" its strings. Instruments without sound boxes such as the Jew's harp were also popular. Early versions of the organ, fiddle (or vielle), and trombone (called the sackbut) existed as well.

Genres

In this era, music was both sacred and secular, although almost no early secular music has survived, and since notation was a relatively late development, reconstruction of this music, especially before the 12th century, is currently subject to conjecture (see authentic performance).

Theory and notation

In music theory the period saw several advances over previous practice, mostly in the conception and notation of rhythm. Previously music was organised rhythmically into "longs" and "breves" (in other words, "shorts"), though often without any clear regular differentiation between which should be used. The most famous music theorist of the first half of the 13th century, Johannes de Garlandia, was the author of the De mensurabili musica (about 1240), the treatise which defined and most completely elucidated the rhythmic modes,a notational system for rhythm in which one of six possible patterns was denoted by a particular succession of note-shapes (organized in what is called "ligatures"). The melodic line, once it had its mode, would generally remain in it, although rhythmic adjustments could be indicated by changes in the expected pattern of ligatures, even to the extent of changing to another rhythmic mode. A German theorist of a slightly later period, Franco of Cologne, was the first to describe a system of notation in which differently shaped notes have entirely different rhythmic values (in the Ars Cantus Mensurabilis of approximately 1260), an innovation which had a massive impact on the subsequent history of European music. Most of the surviving notated music of the 13th century uses the rhythmic modes as defined by Garlandia.

Philippe de Vitry is most famous in music history for writing the Ars Nova (1322), a treatise on music which gave its name to the music of the entire era. His contributions to notation, in particular notation of rhythm, were particularly important, and made possible the free and quite complex music of the next hundred years. In some ways the modern system of rhythmic notation began with Vitry, who broke free from the older idea of the rhythmic modes, short rhythmic patterns that were repeated without being individually differentiated. The notational predecessors of modern time meters also originate in the Ars Nova; for Franco, a breve (for a brief explanation of the mensural notation in general, see the article Renaissance music) had equalled three semibreves (that is, half breves) (on occasion, two, locally and with certain context; almost always, however, these two semibreves were one of normal length and one of double length, thereby taking the same space of time), and the same ternary division held for all larger and smaller note values. By the time of Ars Nova, the breve could be pre-divided, for an entire composition or section of one, into groups of two or three smaller semibreves by use of a "mensuration sign," equivalent to our modern "time signature." This way, the "tempus" (denoting the division of the breve, which ultimately achieved the same primacy over rhythmic structure as our modern "measure") could be either "perfect," with ternary subdivision, or "imperfect," with binary subdivision. Tempus perfectus was indicated by a circle, while tempus imperfectus was denoted by a half-circle (our current "C" as a stand-in for the 4/4 time signature is actually a holdover from this practice, not an abbreviation for "common time", as popularly believed). In a similar fashion, the semibreve could in turn be divided into three "minima" or "minims" (prolatio perfectus or major prolation) or two (prolatio imperfectus or minor prolation) and, at the higher level, the longs into three or two breves (modus perfectus or perfect mode, or modus imperfectus or imperfect mode respectively).

For the duration of the medieval period, most music would be composed primarily in perfect tempus, with special effects created by sections of imperfect tempus; there is a great current controversy among musicologists as to whether such sections were performed with a breve of equal length or whether it changed, and if so, at what proportion. In the highly syncopated works of the Ars subtilior, different voices of the same composition would sometimes be written in different tempus signatures simultaneously.

Many scholars, citing a lack of positive attributory evidence, now consider "Vitry's" treatise to be anonymous, but this does not diminish its importance for the history of rhythmic notation. The first definitely identifiable scholar to accept and explain the mensural system was Johannes de Muris (Jehan des Mars), who can be said to have done for it what Garlandia did for the rhythmic modes.

Early medieval music ( -1150)

Early chant traditions

Chant (or plainsong) is a monophonic sacred form which represents the earliest known music of the Christian church. The Jewish Synagogue tradition of singing psalms was a strong influence on Christian chanting.

Chant developed separately in several European centres. The most important were Rome, Spain, Gaul, Milan, and Ireland. These chants were all developed to support the regional liturgies used when celebrating the Mass there. Each area developed its own chants and rules for celebration. In Spain, Mozarabic chant was used and shows the influence of North African music. The Mozarabic liturgy even survived through Muslim rule, though this was an isolated strand and this music was later suppressed in an attempt to enforce conformity on the entire liturgy. In Milan, Ambrosian chant, named after St. Ambrose, was the standard, while Beneventan chant developed around Benevento, another Italian liturgical center. Gallican chant was used in Gaul, and Celtic chant in Ireland and Great Britain.

Around 1011 AD, the Roman Catholic Church wanted to standardize the Mass and chant. At this time, Rome was the religious centre of western Europe, and Paris was the political centre. The standardization effort consisted mainly of combining these two (Roman and Gallican) regional liturgies. This body of chant became known as Gregorian Chant. By the 12th and 13th centuries, Gregorian chant had superseded all the other Western chant traditions, with the exception of the Ambrosian chant in Milan, and the Mozarabic chant in a few specially designated Spanish chapels.

Gregorian chant

A doctrinally unified version which came together from under the supervision of Rome in approximately the ninth century was called Gregorian chant, a type of plainsong that was central to the musical tradition of Europe in the Medieval era. The actual melodies that make up the repertory probably come from several sources, some as far back as the pontificate of Gregory the Great himself (c. 590–604). Many of them were probably written in the politically stable, relatively literate setting of western monasteries during the reign of Charlemagne.

The earliest surviving sources of chant showing musical notation are from the early ninth century, though the consistency of the music across a wide area implies that some form of chant notation, now lost, may have existed earlier than this. It should be noted that music notation existed in the ancient world–for example Greece–but the ability to read and write this notation was lost around the fifth century, as was all of the music that went with it.

To what extent the music of the Gregorian chant represents a survival of the music of the ancient world is much debated by scholars, but certainly there must have been some influence, if only from the music of the synagogue. Only the smallest of scraps of ancient music have survived (for instance, the Seikilos epitaph), but those that have show an unsurprising similarity of mode, shape and phrase conception to later Western music.

Chant survived and prospered in monasteries and religious centres throughout the chaotic years of the early middle ages, for these were the places of greatest stability and literacy. Most developments in western classical music are either related to, or directly descended from, procedures first seen in chant and its earliest elaborations.

Early polyphony: organum

Around the end of the ninth century, singers in monasteries such as St. Gall in Switzerland began experimenting with adding another part to the chant, generally a voice in parallel motion, singing in mostly perfect fourths or fifths with the original tune (see interval). This development is called organum, and represents the beginnings of harmony and, ultimately, counterpoint. Over the next several centuries organum developed in several ways.

The most significant was the creation of "florid organum" around 1100, sometimes known as the school of St. Martial (named after a monastery in south-central France, which contains the best-preserved manuscript of this repertory). In "florid organum" the original tune would be sung in long notes while an accompanying voice would sing many notes to each one of the original, often in a highly elaborate fashion, all the while emphasizing the perfect consonances (fourths, fifths and octaves) as in the earlier organa. Later developments of organum occurred in England, where the interval of the third was particularly favoured, and where organa were likely improvised against an existing chant melody, and at Notre Dame in Paris, which was to be the centre of musical creative activity throughout the thirteenth century.

Much of the music from the early medieval period is anonymous. Some of the names may have been poets and lyric writers, and the tunes for which they wrote words may have been composed by others. Attribution of monophonic music of the medieval period is not always reliable. Surviving manuscripts from this period include the Musica Enchiriadis, Codex Calixtinus of Santiago de Compostela, and the Winchester Troper.

Liturgical drama

Another musical tradition of Europe originated during the early Middle Ages was the liturgical drama. In its original form, it may represent a survival of Roman drama with Christian stories - mainly the Gospel, the Passion, and the lives of the saints - grafted on. Every part of Europe had some sort of tradition of musical or semi-musical drama in the middle ages, involving acting, speaking, singing and instrumental accompaniment in some combination. Probably these dramas were performed by travelling actors and musicians. Many have been preserved sufficiently to allow modern reconstruction and performance (for example the Play of Daniel, which has been recently recorded).

Goliards

The Goliards were itinerant poet-musicians of Europe from the tenth to the middle of the thirteenth century. Most were scholars or ecclesiastics, and they wrote and sang in Latin. Although many of the poems have survived, very little of the music has. They were possibly influential — even decisively so — on the troubadour-trouvère tradition which was to follow. Most of their poetry is secular and, while some of the songs celebrate religious ideals, others are frankly profane, dealing with drunkenness, debauchery and lechery.

High medieval music (1150-1300)

Ars antiqua

The flowering of the Notre Dame school of polyphony from around 1150 to 1250 corresponded to the equally impressive achievements in Gothic architecture: indeed the centre of activity was at the cathedral of Notre Dame itself. Sometimes the music of this period is called the Parisian school, or Parisian organum, and represents the beginning of what is conventionally known as Ars antiqua. This was the period in which rhythmic notation first appeared in western music, mainly a context-based method of rhythmic notation known as the rhythmic modes.

This was also the period in which concepts of formal structure developed which were attentive to proportion, texture, and architectural effect. Composers of the period alternated florid and discant organum (more note-against-note, as opposed to the succession of many-note melismas against long-held notes found in the florid type), and created several new musical forms: clausulae, which were melismatic sections of organa extracted and fitted with new words and further musical elaboration; conductus, which was a song for one or more voices to be sung rhythmically, most likely in a procession of some sort; and tropes, which were rearrangements of older chants with new words and sometimes new music. All of these genres save one were based upon chant; that is, one of the voices, (usually three, though sometimes four) nearly always the lowest (the tenor at this point) sung a chant melody, though with freely composed note-lengths, over which the other voices sang organum. The exception to this method was the conductus, a two-voice composition that was freely composed in its entirety.

The motet, one of the most important musical forms of the high Middle Ages and Renaissance, developed initially during the Notre Dame period out of the clausula, especially the form using multiple voices as elaborated by Pérotin, who paved the way for this particularly by replacing many of his predecessor (as canon of the cathedral) Léonin's lengthy florid clausulae with substitutes in a discant style. Gradually, there came to be entire books of these substitutes, available to be fitted in and out of the various chants. Since, in fact, there were more than can possibly have been used in context, it is probable that the clausulae came to be performed independently, either in other parts of the mass, or in private devotions. The clausulae, thus practised, became the motet when troped with non-liturgical words, and was further developed into a form of great elaboration, sophistication and subtlety in the fourteenth century, the period of Ars nova.

Surviving manuscripts from this era include the Codex Montpellier, Codex Bamberg, and El Codex musical de Las Huelgas.

Composers of this time include Léonin, Pérotin, W. de Wycombe, Adam de St. Victor, and Petrus de Cruce (Pierre de la Croix). Petrus is credited with the innovation of writing more than three semibreves to fit the length of a breve. Coming before the innovation of imperfect tempus, this practice innagurated the era of what are now called "Petronian" motets. These late 13th-century works are in three, sometimes four, parts and have multiple texts sung simultaneously. These texts can be either sacred or secular in subject, and with Latin and French mixed. The Petronian motet is a highly complex genre, given its mixture of several semibreve breves with rhythmic modes and sometimes (with increasing frequency) substitution of secular songs for chant in the tenor. Indeed, ever-increasing rhythmic complexity would be a fundamental characteristic of the 14th century, though music in France, Italy, and England would take quite different paths during that time.

Troubadours and trouvères

The music of the troubadours and trouvères was a vernacular tradition of monophonic secular song, probably accompanied by instruments, sung by professional, occasionally itinerant, musicians who were as skilled as poets as they were singers and instrumentalists. The language of the troubadours was Occitan (also known as the langue d'oc, or Provençal); the language of the trouvères was Old French (also known as langue d'oil). The period of the troubadours corresponded to the flowering of cultural life in Provence which lasted through the twelfth century and into the first decade of the thirteenth. Typical subjects of troubadour song were war, chivalry and courtly love. The period of the troubadours ended abruptly with the Albigensian Crusade, the fierce campaign by Pope Innocent III to eliminate the Cathar heresy (and northern barons' desire to appropriate the wealth of the south). Surviving troubadours went either to Spain, northern Italy or northern France (where the trouvère tradition lived on), where their skills and techniques contributed to the later developments of secular musical culture in those places.

The music of the trouvères was similar to that of the troubadours, but was able to survive into the thirteenth century unaffected by the Albigensian Crusade. Most of the more than two thousand surviving trouvère songs include music, and show a sophistication as great as that of the poetry it accompanies.

The Minnesinger tradition was the Germanic counterpart to the activity of the troubadours and trouvères to the west. Unfortunately, few sources survive from the time; the sources of Minnesang are mostly from two or three centuries after the peak of the movement, leading to some controversy over their accuracy.

Late medieval music (1300-1400)

France: Ars nova

The beginning of the Ars nova is one of the few clean chronological divisions in medieval music, since it corresponds to the publication of the Roman de Fauvel, a huge compilation of poetry and music, in 1310 and 1314. The Roman de Fauvel is a satire on abuses in the medieval church, and is filled with medieval motets, lais, rondeaux and other new secular forms. While most of the music is anonymous, it contains several pieces by Philippe de Vitry, one of the first composers of the isorhythmic motet, a development which distinguishes the fourteenth century. The isorhythmic motet was perfected by Guillaume de Machaut, the finest composer of the time.

During the Ars nova era, secular music acquired a polyphonic sophistication formerly found only in sacred music, a development not surprising considering the secular character of the early Renaissance (and it should be noted that while this music is typically considered to be "medieval", the social forces that produced it were responsible for the beginning of the literary and artistic Renaissance in Italy—the distinction between Middle Ages and Renaissance is a blurry one, especially considering arts as different as music and painting). The term "Ars nova" (new art, or new technique) was coined by Philippe de Vitry in his treatise of that name (probably written in 1322), in order to distinguish the practice from the music of the immediately preceding age.

The dominant secular genre of the Ars Nova was the chanson, as it would continue to be in France for another two centuries. These chansons were composed in musical forms corresponding to the poetry they set, which were in the so-called formes fixes of rondeau, ballade, and virelai. These forms significantly affected the development of musical structure in ways that are felt even today; for example, the ouvert-clos rhyme-scheme shared by all three demanded a musical realization which contributed directly to the modern notion of antecedent and consequent phrases. It was in this period, too, in which began the long tradition of setting the mass ordinary. This tradition started around mid-century with isolated or paired settings of Kyries, Glorias, etc., but Machaut composed what is thought to be the first complete mass conceived as one composition. The sound world of Ars Nova music is very much one of linear primacy and rhythmic complexity. "Resting" intervals are the fifth and octave, with thirds and sixths considered dissonances. Leaps of more than a sixth in individual voices are not uncommon, leading to speculation of instrumental participation at least in secular performance.

Italy: Trecento

Most of the music of Ars nova was French in origin; however, the term is often loosely applied to all of the music of the fourteenth century, especially to include the secular music in Italy. There this period was often referred to as Trecento.

Italian music has always, it seems, been known for its lyrical or melodic character, and this goes back to the 14th century in many respects. Italian secular music of this time (what little surviving liturgical music there is, is similar to the French except for somewhat different notation) featured what has been called the cantalina style, with a florid top voice supported by two (or even one; a fair amount of Italian Trecento music is for only two voices) that are more regular and slower moving. This type of texture remained a feature of Italian music in the popular 15th and 16th century secular genres as well, and was an important influence on the eventual development of the trio texture that revolutionized music in the 17th.

There were three main forms for secular works in the Trecento. One was the madrigal, not the same as that of 150-250 years later, but with a verse/refrain-like form. Three-line stanzas, each with different words, alternated with a two-line ritornello, with the same text at each appearance. Perhaps we can see the seeds of the subsequent late-Renaissance and Baroque ritornello in this device; it too returns again and again, recognizable each time, in contrast with its surrounding disparate sections. Another form, the caccia ("chase,") was written for two voices in a canon at the unison. Sometimes, this form also featured a ritornello, which was occasionally also in a canonic style. Usually, the name of this genre provided a double meaning, since the texts of caccia were primarily about hunts and related outdoor activities, or at least action-filled scenes. The third main form was the ballata, which was roughly equivalent to the French ballade.

Surviving Italian manuscripts include the Squarcialupi Codex and the Rossi Codex. In all, however, significantly less Italian music survives from the 14th century than French.

Germany: Geisslerlieder

The Geisslerlieder were the songs of wandering bands of flagellants, who sought to appease the wrath of an angry God by penitential music accompanied by mortification of their bodies. There were two separate periods of activity of Geisslerlied: one around the middle of the thirteenth century, from which, unfortunately, no music survives (although numerous lyrics do); and another from 1349, for which both words and music survive intact due to the attention of a single priest who wrote about the movement and recorded its music. This second period corresponds to the spread of the Black Death in Europe, and documents one of the most terrible events in European history. Both periods of Geisslerlied activity were mainly in Germany.

There was also French-influenced polyphony written in German areas at this time, but it was somewhat less sophisticated than its models. In fairness to the mostly anonymous composers of this repertoire, however, most of the surviving manuscripts seem to have been copied with extreme incompetence, and are filled with errors that make a truly thorough evaluation of the music's quality impossible.

Mannerism and Ars subtilior

As often seen at the end of any musical era, the end of the medieval era is marked by a highly manneristic style known as Ars subtilior. In some ways, this was an attempt to meld the French and Italian styles. This music was highly stylized, with a rhythmic complexity that was not matched until the 20th century. In fact, not only was the rhythmic complexity of this repertoire largely unmatched for five and a half centuries, with extreme syncopations, mensural trickery, and even examples of augenmusik (such as a chanson by Baude Cordier written out in manuscript in the shape of a heart), but also its melodic material was quite complex as well, particularly in its interaction with the rhythmic structures. Already discussed under Ars Nova has been the practice of isorhythm, which continued to develop through late-century and in fact did not achieve its highest degree of sophistication until early in the 15th century. Instead of using isorhythmic techniques in one or two voices, or trading them among voices, some works came to feature a pervading isorhythmic texture which rivals the integral serialism of the 20th century in its systematic ordering of rhythmic and tonal elements. The term "mannerism" was applied by later scholars, as it often is, in response to an impression of sophistication being practised for its own sake, a malady which some authors have felt infected the Ars subtilior.

Transitioning to the Renaissance

Demarcating the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the Renaissance, with regards to the composition of music, is problematic. While the music of the fourteenth century is fairly obviously medieval in conception, the music of the early fifteenth century is often conceived as belonging to a transitional period, not only retaining some of the ideals of the end of the Middle Ages (such as a type of polyphonic writing in which the parts differ widely from each other in character, as each has its specific textural function), but also showing some of the characteristic traits of the Renaissance (such as the international style developing through the diffusion of Franco-Flemish musicians throughout Europe, and in terms of texture an increasing equality of parts). The Renaissance began early in Italy, but musical innovation there lagged far behind that of France and England; the Renaissance came late to England, but musical innovation there was ahead of continental Europe.

Music historians do not agree on when the Renaissance era began, but most historians agree that England was still a medieval society in the early fifteenth century (see a discussion of periodization issues of the Middle Ages). While there is no consensus, 1400 is a useful marker, because it was around that time that the Renaissance came into full swing in Italy.

The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is one of the most pronounced features of transition into the Renaissance. Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the 14th century. With John Dunstaple and other English composers, partly through the local technique of faburden (an improvisatory process in which a chant melody and a written part predominantly in parallel sixths above it are ornamented by one sung in perfect fourths below the latter, and which later took hold on the continent as "fauxbordon"), the interval of the third emerges as an important musical development; because of this Contenance Angloise ("English countenance"), English composers' music is often regarded as the first to sound less truly bizarre to modern, unschooled audiences. English stylistic tendencies in this regard had come to fruition and began to influence continental composers as early as the 1420s, as can be seen in works of the young Dufay, among others. While the Hundred Years' War continued, English nobles, armies, their chapels and retinues, and therefore some of their composers, travelled in France and performed their music there; it must also of course be remembered that the English controlled portions of northern France at this time.

Renaissance music is European classical music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 to 1600. Defining the beginning of the era is difficult, given the lack of abrupt shifts in musical thinking during the 15th century. Additionally, the process by which music acquired "Renaissance" characteristics was a gradual one, but 1400 is used here.

Overview

Style and trends

The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is one of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music (in the Middle Ages, thirds had been considered dissonances: see interval). Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the 14th century: the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the voices often striving for smoothness. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music—in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them.

The modal (as opposed to tonal) characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the increased use of root motions of fifths. This has since developed into one of the defining characteristics of tonality.

Genres

Principal liturgical forms which endured throughout the entire Renaissance period were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end, especially as composers of sacred music began to adopt secular forms (such as the madrigal) for their own designs.

Common sacred genres were the mass, the motet, the madrigale spirituale, and the laude.

During the period, secular music had an increasingly wide distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from the preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is irretrievably lost. Secular music included songs for one or many voices, forms such as the frottola, chanson and madrigal.

Secular vocal genres included the madrigal, the frottola, the caccia, the chanson in several forms (rondeau, virelai, bergerette, ballade, musique mesurée), the canzonetta, the villancico, the villanella, the villotta, and the lute song.

Purely instrumental music included consort music for recorder or viol and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles. Common genres were the toccata, the prelude, the ricercar, the canzona, and intabulation (intavolatura, intabulierung). Instrumental ensembles for dances might play a basse danse (or bassedanza), a pavane, a galliard, an allemande, or a courante.

Towards the end of the period, the early dramatic precursors of opera such as monody, the madrigal comedy, and the intermedio are seen.

Theory and notation

According to Margaret Bent (1998), "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness."

Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores were extremely rare, and barlines were not used. Note values were generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of beat was the semibreve, or whole note. As had been the case since the Ars Nova (see Medieval music), there could be either two or three of these for each breve (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent to the modern "measure," though it was itself a note-value and a measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the next-smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note") to each semi-breve. These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve-semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve-minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively} when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as quarter notes) occurred less often. This development of white mensural notation may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than vellum), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enfore the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes.

Accidentals were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering notations (tablatures) today. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." See musica ficta. A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together musicians would avoid parallel octaves and fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians (Bent, 1998).

Interestingly, it is through contemporary tablatures for various plucked instruments that we have gained much information about what accidentals were performed by the original practitioners.

Early Renaissance music (1400 - 1467)

The Burgundian School of composers, led by Guillaume Dufay, demonstrated characteristics of both the late Medieval era and the early Renaissance (see Medieval music). This group gradually dropped the late Medieval period's complex devices of isorhythm and extreme syncopation, resulting in a more limpid and flowing style. What their music "lost" in rhythmic complexity, however, it gained in rhythmic vitality, as a "drive to the cadence" became a prominent feature around mid-century.

Middle Renaissance music (1467 - 1534)

Towards the end of the 15th century, polyphonic sacred music (as exemplified in the masses of Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht) had once again become more complex, in a manner that can perhaps be seen as correlating to the stunning detail in the painting at the time. Ockeghem, particularly, was fond of canon, both contrapuntal and mensural. He even composed a mass in which all the parts are derived canonically from one musical line.

It was in the opening decades of the next century that music felt in a tactus (think of the modern time signature) of two semibreves-to-a-breve began to be as common as that with three semibreves-to-a-breve, as had prevailed prior to that time.

In the early 16th century, there is another trend towards simplification, as can be seen to some degree in the work of Josquin des Prez and his comtemporaries in the Franco-Flemish School, then later in that of G. P. Palestrina, who was partially reacting to the strictures of the Council of Trent, which discouraged excessively complex polyphony as inhibiting understanding the text. Early 16th-century Franco-Flemmings moved away from the complex systems of canonic and other mensural play of Ockeghem's generation, tending toward points of imitation and duet or trio sections within an overall texture that grew to five and six voices. They also began, even before the Tridentine reforms, to insert ever-lengthening passages of homophony, to underline important text or points of articulation. Palestrina, on the other hand, came to cultivate a freely flowing style of counterpoint in a thick, rich texture within which consonance followed dissonance on a nearly beat-by-beat basis, and suspensions ruled the day (see counterpoint). By now, tactus was generally two semibreves per breve with three per breve used for special effects and climactic sections; this was a nearly exact reversal of the prevailing technique a century before.

Late Renaissance music (1534 - 1600)

In Venice, from about 1534 until around 1600, an impressive polychoral style developed, which gave Europe some of the grandest, most sonorous music composed up until that time, with multiple choirs of singers, brass and strings in different spatial locations in the Basilica San Marco di Venezia (see Venetian School). These multiple revolutions spread over Europe in the next several decades, beginning in Germany and then moving to Spain, France and England somewhat later, demarcating the beginning of what we now know as the Baroque musical era.

The Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, spanning the late Renaissance into early Baroque eras. Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches; stylistically they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a concurrent movement which was much more progressive. By far the most famous composer of the Roman School is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose name has been associated for four hundred years with smooth, clear, polyphonic perfection.

The brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them, is known as the English Madrigal School. The English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of Italian models. Most were for three to six voices.

Musica reservata is a term referring to either a style or a performance practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text.

In addition, many composers observed a division in their own works between a prima pratica (music in the Renaissance polyphonic style) anda seconda pratica (music in the new style) during the first part of the 17th century.

Mannerism

In the late 16th century, as the Renaissance era closes, an extremely manneristic style develops. In secular music, especially in the madrigal, there was a trend towards complexity and even extreme chromaticism (as exemplified in madrigals of Luzzaschi, Marenzio, and Gesualdo). The term "mannerism" derives from art history.

Transition to the Baroque

Beginning in Florence, there was an attempt to revive the dramatic and musical forms of Ancient Greece, through the means of monody, a form of declaimed music over a simple accompaniment; a more extreme contrast with the preceding polyphonic style would be hard to find; this was also, at least at the outset, a secular trend. These musicians were known as the Florentine Camerata.

We have already noted some of the musical developments that helped to usher in the Baroque, but for further explanation of this transition, see polychoral, concertato, monody, madrigal, and opera, as well as the works given under "Sources and further reading."

Baroque Period, a time during the 17th century that portrayed exemplified drama and grandeur. During this era architectural structures consisted of irregular shapes and elaborate design. The musical genre of this time falls between the Renaissance and the Classical era. The music forms a major portion of the classical music canon. Baroque period is recognized as the time when more ornamental and elaborate music appeared and was associated with composers such as J.S. Bach, Antonio Vilvaldi and Claudio Monteverdi.

Overview

When we speak of music associated to the Baroque era we are generally speaking of music from a wide range of styles and geographical region. This music was composed during a period of 150 years. The term Baroque as applied to music is a more recent development, only acquiring currency in English in the 1940's. In the 1960's it was commonly disputed as to the result of lumping together such diverse music.

Baroque vs. Renaissance

To distinguish between these two eras we begin by taking a close look at what stylistic differences the music had. While both shared a heavy use of polyphony and counterpoint they differed in the use of these techniques. Renaissance achieved harmony through the consonances incidental to the smooth flow of polyphony where the Baroque used these consonances as chords in a hierarchical, functional tonal scheme. The chord root motion is also distinctly different in terms of how these two eras achieved harmony. Baroque music uses longer lines and stronger rhythms than does Renaissance. These differences show a definite transition from the fantasias of the Renaissance to the more defining Baroque form.

Baroque vs. Classical

The classical era followed Baroque diminishing the role of counterpoint all together. It was replaced with a homophonic texture. Classical works begin to reduce the need for ornamentation and became more articulated. Classical era used the use of modulation to portray a dramatic journey through a sequence of musical keys. In comparison the Baroque modulation has less structural importance than that of the classical era. Baroque is known to portray a single emotion where classical gave birth to the widely varying emotions in music ending in a more dramatic climax.

Brief history

Baroque music began to surface in Italy between 1567-1643. The first composer to begin this new era was Claudio Monteverdi. He created a recitative style and the rise of musical drama called opera. The adoption of this change demonstrated a change in musical thinking all together placing a higher emphasis on harmony rather than polyphony. While harmonic thinking occurred among particular composers it was not until after the Renaissance that it became part of the common vocabulary.

In Italy, the Roman Catholic Church sought a method to increase faith in their religion. They decided that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The demands of religion were also to make the test of sacred works clearer. This increased the pressure to move away from the Renaissance era which offered more densely layered polyphony. It demanded lines that put the words front and center or had a more limited range of imitation.

Middle Baroque music

The middle Baroque is separated by the coming of systematic thinking to a new style. This time brought a gradual institutionalization of the forms and norms particularly in opera. The printing press and trade created an expanded international audience of works for music much in the same fashion they had done for literature.

This time period is often identified by increasingly harmonic focus and the creation of formal systems of teaching. The teaching of music demanded to be taught in an orderly fashion to uphold the demands of this art.

There are many influential composers that stand out from the middle Baroque period including Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) who explored contrast between stately and fully orchestrated sections and simple recitatives and airs, Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) who is remembered for his achievements on the other side of musical technique as a violinist who organized violin technique and pedagouy, Henry Purcell (1659-1695) who is referred to as a commentary genius because he produced a profusion of music widely recognized in his lifetime, and Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) who, in contrast to the previous composers, was an organist and entrepreneurial presenter of music.

Late Baroque music

Between 1680 and 1720 the dividing between middle and late Baroque occurred. The exact date is widely debated due a lack in synchronized transition. The important dividing line seems to lay in the full absorption of tonality as a structuring principle of music. The theoretical work of Rameau made this particularly evident. The sense of two styles of composition was created from the combination of modal counterpoint with tonal logic of cadences. These two styles were referred to as the homophonic dominated by vertical considerations and the polyphonic dominated by imitation and contrapuntal considerations.

Some of the famous composers closely associated with this time period include Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) and probably the most famous composer George Frederic Handel (1685-1759). Other leading figures include J.S. Bach (1685-1750), George Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) and Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764).

The Baroque influence on later music

Baroque music was the basis for pedagogy and as a result retained a stylistic influence. It became an influence in the 19th century as a paragon of academic and formal purity. Many composers set a standard to aspire to from Bach's fugue style in music. In contemporary music there are many pieces being published as “rediscovered” Baroque such as a viola concerto written by Henri Casadesus but attributed to Handel. In addition many pieces have been termed as neo-Baroque for a focus on imitative polyphony.

There are many similarities between the Baroque style and that of jazz as well. Baroque is similar to a jazz quartet in that pieces used a variety of improvisation on the performers part with the most similar aspect being improvisation of the lead instrument.

The era of Romantic music is defined as the period of European classical music that runs roughly from the early 1800s to the first decade of the 20th century, as well as music written according to the norms and styles of that period. The Romantic period was preceded by the classical period, and was followed by the modern period.

Romantic music is related to Romantic movements in literature, art, and philosophy, though the conventional periods used in musicology are now very different from their counterparts in the other arts, which define "romantic" as running from the 1780s to the 1840s. The Romanticism movement held that not all truth could be deduced from axioms, that there were inescapable realities in the world which could only be reached through emotion, feeling and intuition. Romantic music struggled to increase emotional expression and power to describe these deeper truths, while preserving or even extending the formal structures from the classical period.

The vernacular use of the term romantic music applies to music which is thought to evoke a soft or dreamy atmosphere. This usage is rooted in the connotations of the word "romantic" that were established during the period, but not all "Romantic" pieces fit this description. Conversely, music that is "romantic" in the modern everyday usage of the word (that is, relating to the emotion of love) is not necessarily linked to the Romantic period.

Trends of the Romantic period

Musical language

Music theorists of the Romantic era established the concept of tonality to describe the harmonic vocabulary inherited from the Baroque and Classical periods. Romantic composers sought to fuse the large structural harmonic planning demonstrated by earlier masters such as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven with further chromatic innovations, in order to achieve greater fluidity and contrast, and to meet the needs of longer works. Chromaticism grew more varied, as did dissonances and their resolution. Composers modulated to increasingly remote keys, and their music often prepared the listener less for these modulations than the music of the classical era. Sometimes, instead ofa pivot chord, a pivot note was used. The properties of the diminished seventh and related chords, which facilitate modulation to many keys, were also extensively exploited. Composers such as Beethoven and, later, Richard Wagner expanded the harmonic language with previously-unused chords, or innovative chord progressions. Much has been written, for example, about Wagner's Tristan chord, found near the opening of Tristan und Isolde, and its precise harmonic function.

Some Romantic composers analogized music to poetry and its rhapsodic and narrative structures, while creating a more systematic basis for the composing and performing of concert music. Music theorists of the Romantic era codified previous practices, such as the sonata form, while composers extended them. There was an increasing focus on melodies and themes, as well as an explosion in the composition of songs. The emphasis on melody found expression in the increasingly extensive use of cyclic form, which was an important unifying device for some of the longer pieces that became common during the period.

The greater harmonic elusiveness and fluidity, the longer melodies, poesis as the basis of expression, and the use of literary inspirations were all present prior to the Romantic period. However, some composers of the Romantic period adopted them as the central pursuit of music itself. Romantic composers were also influenced by technological advances, including an increase in the range and power of the piano and the improved chromatic abilities and greater projection of the instruments of the symphony orchestra.

Non-musical influences

One of the controversies that raged through the Romantic period was the relationship of music to external texts or sources. While program music was common before the 19th century, the conflict between formal and external inspiration became an important aesthetic issue for some composers during the Romantic era.

During the 1830s Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, which was presented with an extensive program text, caused many critics and academics to pick up their pens. Prominent among the detractors was François-Joseph Fétis, the head of the newly-founded Brussels Conservatory, who declared that the work was "not music". Robert Schumann defended the work, but not the program, saying that bad titles would not hurt good music, but good titles could not save a bad work. Franz Liszt was one of the prominent defenders of extra-musical inspiration.

This rift grew, with polemics delivered from both sides. For the supporters of "absolute" music, formal perfection rested on musical expression that obeys the schematics laid down in previous works, most notably the sonata form then being codified. To the adherents of program music, the rhapsodic expression of poetry or some other external text was, itself, a form. They argued that for the artist to bring his life into a work, the form must follow the narrative. Both sides used Beethoven as inspiration and justification. The rift was exemplified by the conflict between followers of Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner: Brahms' disciples took him to be a pinnacle of absolute music, while Wagnerites put their faith in the poetic "substance" shaping the harmonic and melodic flow of his music.

Examples of music inspired by literary and artistic sources include Liszt's Faust Symphony, Dante Symphony, his symphonic poems and his Annees de Pelerinage, Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, Mahler's First Symphony (based on the novel Titan), and the tone poems of Richard Strauss. Schubert included material from his Lieder in some of his extended works, and others, such as Liszt, transcribed opera arias and songs for solo instrumental performance.

Romantic opera

In opera, the forms for individual numbers that had been established in classical and baroque opera were more loosely used. By the time Wagner's operas were performed, arias, choruses, recitatives and ensemble pieces often cannot easily be distinguished from each other in the continuous, through-composed music.

The decline of castrati led to the heroic leading role in many operas being ascribed to the tenor voice. The chorus was often given a more important role.

Towards the end of the Romantic period, verismo opera became popular, particularly in Italy. It depicted realistic, rather than historical or mythological, subjects. France followed with operas such as Bizet's Carmen.

Nationalism

A number of Romantic composers wrote nationalist music. Mikhail Glinka's operas, for example, are on specifically Russian subjects, while Bed���ich Smetana and Antonín Dvo���ák both used rhythms and themes from Czech folk dances and songs. Late in the 19th century, Jean Sibelius wrote music based on the Finnish epic, the Kalevala and his piece 'Finlandia' became a symbol of Finnish nationalism.

Instrumentation and scale

Instrumentation continued to undergo technological advances during the romantic era. Composers such as Hector Berlioz used the new capabilities of instruments in hitherto unimagined orchestrations. Some composers' works called for a much larger symphony orchestra, and instruments that were previously rarities began to be used more frequently. Mahler's Symphony No. 8 is known as the Symphony of a Thousand because of the massive choral and orchestral forces required to perform it.

Also much longer works became acceptable. A typical Haydn or Mozart symphony lasts between twenty and twenty-five minutes. Beethoven's Third Symphony lasts over forty-five minutes, and the longest symphonies of, among others, Anton Bruckner and Mahler last more than an hour.

The Romantic period also saw the continuing rise of the instrumental virtuoso. The violinist Niccolò Paganini was one of the musical stars of the early 19th century. Liszt, in addition to his skills as a composer, was also a very popular and influential virtuoso pianist. A leading virtuoso was an outstanding attraction for audiences. Chopin wrote in forms like the polonaise and mazurka, that were derived from Polish folk music. Many Russian composers like Balkirev, Cui, Borodin, Rimski-Korsakov, and Balkirev shared the commone dream to write music that was inspired by Russian folk music.

Chronology

Classical roots (1780-1815)

In literature, the Romantic period is often taken to start in 1770s or 1780s Germany with the movement known as Sturm und Drang ("storm and struggle") attended by a greater regard for Shakespeare and Homer, and for folk sagas, whether genuine or Ossian. It affected writers including Goethe and Schiller, while in Scotland Robert Burns began setting down folk music.[citation needed] This literary movement is reflected in the music of contemporary composers, including Mozart's German operas, Haydn's so-called Sturm und Drang symphonies, the lyrics that composers (particularly Schubert) chose for their Lieder, and a gradual increase in the violence of emotion that music expressed. As long as most composers relied on royal or court patronage, their opportunity to engage in "romanticism and revolt" was limited. Mozart's troubles in the banning of his The Marriage of Figaro as revolutionary are a case in point.

Romanticism drew its fundamental formal substance from the structures of classical practice. Performing standards improved during the classical era with the establishment of performing groups of professional musicians. The author E.T.A. Hoffmann called Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn the "three Romantic composers".

The role of chromaticism and harmonic ambiguity developed during the classical era. All of the major classical composers used harmonic ambiguity, and the technique of moving rapidly between different keys. One of the most famous examples is the "harmonic chaos" at the opening of Haydn's The Creation, in which the composer avoids establishing a "home" key at all.

By the 1810s, the use of chromaticism and the minor key, and the desire to move into remote keys to give music a deeper range, were combined with a greater operatic reach. While Beethoven would later be regarded as the central figure in this movement, it was composers such as Clementi and Spohr who represented the contemporary taste in incorporating more chromatic notes into their thematic material. There was a tension between the desire for more expressive "color" and the desire for classical structure. One response was in the field of opera, where texts could provide structure in the absence of formal models. ETA Hoffman is principally known as a critic nowadays, but his opera Undine of 1814 was a radical musical innovation. Another response to the tension between structure and emotional expression was in shorter musical forms, including novel ones such as the nocturne.

Early Romantic (1815-1850)

By the second decade of the 19th century, the shift towards new sources of musical inspiration, along with an increasing chromaticism in melody and more expressive harmony, became a palpable stylistic shift. The forces underlying this shift were not only musical, but economic, political and social.[citation needed] A new generation of composers emerged in post-Napoleonic Europe, among whom were Beethoven, Ludwig Spohr, ETA Hoffman, Carl Maria von Weber and Franz Schubert.

These composers grew up amidst the dramatic expansion of public concert life during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which partly shaped their subsequent styles and expectations. Beethoven was extremely influential as among the first composers to work freelance rather than being employed full-time by a royal or ecclesiastic patron. The chromatic melodies of Muzio Clementi and the stirring operatic works of Rossini, Cherubini and Méhul, also had an influence. The setting of folk poetry and songs for voice and piano, to serve a growing market of middle-class homes where private music-making was becoming an essential part of domestic life, was also becoming an important source of income for composers.

Works of this group of early Romantics include the song cycles and symphonies of Franz Schubert, and the operas of Weber, particularly Oberon, Der Freischütz and Euryanthe. Schubert's work found limited contemporary audiences, and only gradually had a wider impact. In contrast, the compositions of John Field quickly became well-known, partly because he had a gift for creating small "characteristic" piano forms and dances.

Early-Romantic composers of a slightly later generation included Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, and Hector Berlioz. All were born in the 19th century, and produced works of lasting value early in their careers. Mendelssohn was particularly precocious, and wrote two string quartets, a string octet and orchestral music before even leaving his teens. Chopin focussed on compositions for the piano. Berlioz broke new ground in his orchestration, and with his programatic symphonies Symphonie Fantastique and Harold in Italy, the latter based on Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

What is now labelled "Romantic Opera" became established at around this time, with a strong connection between Paris and northern Italy. The combination of French orchestral virtuosity, Italianate vocal lines and dramatic flare, along with texts drawn from increasingly popular literature, established a norm of emotional expression which continues to dominate the operatic stage. The work of Bellini and Donizetti was immensely popular at this time.

Virtuoso concerts (or "recitals", as they were called by Franz Liszt) became immensely popular. This phenomenon was pioneered by Niccolò Paganini, the famous violin virtuoso. The virtuoso piano recital became particularly popular, and often included improvisations on popular themes, and the performance of shorter compositions as well as longer works such as the sonatas of Beethoven and Mozart. One of the most prominent exponents of Beethoven was Clara Wieck, who later married Robert Schumann. The increase in travel, facilitated by rail and later by steamship, created international audiences for touring piano virtuosi such as Liszt, Chopin and Thalberg. Concerts and recitals were promoted as significant events.

During the late 1830s and 1840s, music of Romantic expression became generally accepted, even expected. The music of Robert Schumann, Giacomo Meyerbeer and the young Giuseppe Verdi continued the trends. "Romanticism" was not, however, the only, or even the dominant, style of music making at the time. A post-classical style exemplified by the Paris Conservatoire, as well as court music, still dominated concert programs. This began to change with the rise of performing institutions, along the lines of the Philharmonic Society of London founded in 1813. Such institutions often promoted regular concert seasons, a trend promoted by Felix Mendelssohn among others. Listening to music came to be accepted as a life-enhancing, almost religious, experience. The public's engagement in the music of the time contrasted with the less formal manners of concerts in the classical period, where music had often been promoted as a background diversion.

Also the 1830s and 1840s Richard Wagner produced his first successful operas. He argued for a radically expanded conception of "musical drama". A man who described himself as a revolutionary, and who was in constant trouble with creditors and the authorities, he began gathering around him a body of like-minded musicians, including Franz Liszt, who dedicated themselves to making the "Music of the Future".

Literary Romanticism ended in 1848, with the revolutions of that year marking a turning point in the mood of Europe. With the rise of realism, as well as the deaths of Paganini, Mendelssohn and Schumann, and Liszt's retirement from public performance, perceptions altered of where the cutting edge in music and art lay.

Late Romantic Era (1850-1910)

As the 19th century moved into its second half, many social, political and economic changes set in motion in the post-Napoleonic period became entrenched. Railways and the electric telegraph bound the European world ever closer together. The nationalism that had been an important strain of early 19th century Romantic music became formalized by political and linguistic means. Literature for the middle classes became the publishing norm, including the rise of the novel as the primary literary form.

In the previous 50 years numerous innovations in instrumentation, including the double escarpment piano action, the valved wind instrument, and the chin rest for violins and violas, were no longer novelties but requirements. The dramatic increase in musical education brought a still wider sophisticated audience, and many composers took advantage of the greater regularity of concert life, and the greater financial and technical resources available. These changes brought an expansion in the sheer number of symphonies, concerti and "tone poems" which were composed, and the number of performances in the opera seasons in Paris, London and Italy. The establishment of conservatories and universities also created centers where musicians could forge stable teaching careers, rather than relying on their own entrepreneurship.

During this late Romantic period, some composers created styles and forms associated with their national folk cultures. The notion that there were "German" and "Italian" styles had long been established in writing on music, but the late 19th century saw the rise of a nationalist Russian style (Glinka, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Borodin), and also Czech, Finnish and French nationalist styles of composition. Some composers were expressly nationalistic in their objectives, seeking to rediscover their country's national identity in the face of occupation or oppression, as did for example the Bohemian Bed���ich Smetana and the Finnish Jean Sibelius.

Romanticism in the 20th century

Many composers born in the nineteenth century continued to compose in a Romantic style well into the 20th century, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss. In addition, many composers who would later be identified as musical modernists composed works in Romantic styles early in their career, including Igor Stravinsky with his Firebird ballet, Arnold Schoenberg with Gurrelieder, and Béla Bartók with Bluebeard's Castle.

The vocabulary and structure of the music of the late 19th century was no mere relics; composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Erich Korngold, Berthold Goldschmidt and Sergei Prokofiev continued to compose works in recognizably Romantic styles after 1950. While new tendencies such as neo-classicism and atonal music challenged the preeminence of the Romantic style, the desire to use a tonally-centered chromatic vocabulary remained present in major works. Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Gustav Holst, Dmitri Shostakovich, Malcolm Arnold and Arnold Bax drew frequently from musical Romanticism in their works, and did not consider themselves old-fashioned.

Musical romanticism reached a rhetorical and artistic nadir around 1960: it seemed as if the future lay with avant garde styles of composition, or with neo-classicism of some kind. While Hindemith moved back to a style more recognizably rooted in romanticism, most composers moved in the other direction. Only in the conservative academic hierarchy of the USSR and China did it seem that musical romanticism had a place. However, by the late 1960s a revival of music using the surface of musical romanticism began. Composers such as George Rochberg switched from serialism to models drawn from Gustav Mahler, a project which found him the company of Nicholas Maw and David Del Tredici. This movement is described as Neo-Romanticism, and includes works such as John Corigliano's First Symphony.

Another area where the Romantic style has survived, and even flourished, is in film scoring. Many of the early émigres escaping from Nazi Germany were Jewish composers who had studied, or even studied under, Gustav Mahler's disciples in Vienna. Max Steiner's lush score for Gone with the Wind provides an example of the use of Wagnerian leitmotifs and Mahlerian orchestration. The "Golden Age of Hollywood" film music rested heavily on the work of composers such as Korngold and Steiner as well as Franz Waxman and Alfred Newman. The next generation of film composers, Alexander North, John Williams, and Elmer Bernstein drew on this tradition to write some of the most familiar orchestral music of the late 20th century.

20th century classical music, the classical music of the 20th century, was extremely diverse, beginning with the late Romantic style of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Impressionism of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, the Neoclassicism of middle-period Igor Stravinsky, and ranging to such distant sound-worlds as the complete serialism of Pierre Boulez, the simple triadic harmonies of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, the musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer, the microtonal music adopted by Harry Partch, Alois Hába and others, the aleatoric music of John Cage, the electronic music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the polystylism of Alfred Schnittke.

Perhaps the most salient common thread during this time period of classical music was the wider use of dissonance in composing music. Because of this, the 20th century is sometimes called the "Dissonant Period" of classical music, which followed the common practice period, which emphasized consonance until about 1900.

Among the most prominent composers of the 20th century were Béla Bartók, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Charles Ives, Edward Elgar, Arnold Schoenberg, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, Carl Nielsen, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux and Witold Lutoslawski. Classical music also had an intense cross fertilization with jazz, with several composers being able to work in both genres, including George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. An important feature of 20th century concert music is the existence of the splitting of the audience into traditional and avant-garde, with many figures prominent in one world considered minor or unacceptable in the other. Composers such as Anton Webern, Elliott Carter, Edgard Varèse, Milton Babbitt, and Luciano Berio have devoted followings within the avant-garde, but are often attacked outside of it. As time has passed, however, it is increasingly accepted, though by no means universally so, that the boundaries are more porous than the many polemics would lead one to believe: many of the techniques pioneered by the above composers show up in popular music by The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, Nirvana, Enigma, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre and in film scores that draw mass audiences.

It should be kept in mind that this article presents an overview of 20th century classical music and many of the composers listed under the following trends and movements may not identify exclusively as such and may be considered as participating in different movements. For instance, at different times during his career, Igor Stravinsky may be considered a romantic, modernist, neoclassicist, and a serialist.

The 20th century was also an age where recording and broadcast changed the economics and social relationships inherent in music. An individual in the 19th century made most music themselves, or attended performances. An individual in the industrialized world had access to radio, television, phonograph and later digital music such as the CD.

Romantic style

Particularly in the early part of the century, many composers wrote music which was an extension of 19th century Romantic music. Harmony, though sometimes complex, was tonal, and traditional instrumental groupings such as the orchestra and string quartet remained the most usual. Traditional forms such as the symphony and concerto remained in use. (See Romantic Music)

Many prominent composers — among them Dmitri Kabalevsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Maurice Ravel, and Benjamin Britten — made significant advances in style and technique while still employinga melodic, harmonic, structural and textural language which was related to that of the 19th century and quite accessible to the average listener.

Music along these lines was written throughout the 20th century, and continues to be written today. Some other twentieth-century composers of works in a more-or-less-traditional idiom include:

• Samuel Barber
• Leonard Bernstein
• Aaron Copland
• John Corigliano
• George Gershwin
• Henryk Górecki
• Percy Grainger
• Howard Hanson
• Roy Harris
• Alan Hovhaness
• Gustav Holst
• Aram Khachaturian
• Colin McPhee
• Carl Nielsen
• Giacomo Puccini
• Sergei Rachmaninoff
• Ned Rorem
• Jean Sibelius
• Ralph Vaughan Williams

Minimalist composers such as Philip Glass can also be said to evoke some sense of nineteenth-century melodic and harmonic language, but depart radically in structure and texture, harmony, ideas, development, counterpoint and rhythm.

Many other 20th century composers took more experimental routes.

Modernism

Modernism is the name given to a series of movements (See Modernism) arising out of the idea that the 20th century presented a new basis for society and activity, and therefore art should adopt this new basis, however construed, as the fundamental of aesthetics. Modernism took the progressive spirit of the late 19th century, its love of rigor and of technical advancement, and unhinged it from the norms and forms of late 19th century art. To take one example, architect Frank Lloyd Wright did his drafting work with tools, not because he could not draw freehand, but because "the machine was the coming thing, therefore I wanted to make beauty with the machine". Various movements in 20th century music, including neo-classicism, serialism, experimentalism, conceptualism can be traced to this idea.

The Second Viennese School, atonality and serialism

Arnold Schoenberg is one of the most significant figures in 20th century music. His early works are in a late Romantic style, influenced by Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler, but he later abandoned a tonal framework altogether, instead writing freely atonal music — he is often reckoned to have been the first composer to have done so. In time, he developed the twelve-tone technique of composition, intended to be a replacement for traditional tonal pitch organisation. His pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg also developed and furthered the use of the twelve-tone system and were notable for their use of the technique in their own right. They together are known, colloquially, as the Schoenberg "trinity" or the Second Viennese School. This name was created to imply that this "New Music" would have the same effect as the "First Viennese School" of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

Schoenberg's music and that of his followers was very controversial in its day, and remains so to some degree now. Many listeners found, and still find, his music hard to follow, lacking a sense of definite melody. Nonetheless, works such as Pierrot Lunaire continue to be performed, studied and listened to, while many of the contemporary works which were considered more acceptable have been forgotten. A larger measure of the reason for this is that the style he pioneered was very influential, even among composers who continued to compose tonal music. Many composers have since written music which does not rely on traditional tonality.

The twelve-tone technique itself was later adapted by other composers to control aspects of music other than the pitch of the notes, such as dynamics and methods of attack, creating completely serialised music. Milton Babbitt created his time point system, where the distance in time between attack points for the notes is serialized also, while some composers serialized aspects such as register or dynamics. The "pointillistic" style of Webern — in which individual sounds are carefully placed within the piece such that each has importance — was very influential in the years following World War II among composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. After years of unpopularity, the twelve tone technique became the norm in Europe during the 50's and 60's, but then experienced a backlash as generations of younger and older composers returned to writing tonal music, either in a neoclassical, romantic, or minimalist vein. Stravinsky, who studied as a young man with Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, became a modernist, then a neoclassicist, and ultimately became a serialist upon Schoenberg's death.

Free dissonance and experimentalism

In the early part of the 20th century modernist composers such as George Antheil and others produced music that was shocking to audiences of the time for its disregard or flaunting of musical conventions. Charles Ives quoted popular music, often had multiple or bitonal layers of music, extreme dissonance, and seemingly unplayable rhythmic complexity. Henry Cowell performed his solo piano pieces by strumming or plucking the inside of the piano, knocking on the outside, or depressing tone clusters with his arms or boards. Edgard Varèse wrote highly dissonant pieces that utilized unusual sonorities and futuristic, scientific sounding names; he also dreamed of producing music electronically. Charles Seeger enunciated the concept of dissonant counterpoint, a technique used by Carl Ruggles, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, and others. Igor Stravinsky and Serge Diaghilev fled the riot that greeted The Rite of Spring and Vaslav Nijinsky's choreography. Darius Milhaud and Paul Hindemith explored bitonality. Amadeo Roldán brought music written specifically for percussion ensemble into the classical tradition; he was soon followed by Varèse and then others. Kurt Weill wrote the popular Threepenny Opera entirely in the popular idiom of German cabarets. Modernist composers being the avant-garde, they often wrote atonally, sometimes explored twelve tone technique, used liberal amounts of dissonance, quoted or imitated popular music, or somehow provoked their audience.

Neoclassicism

Neo-classicism, in music, means the movement in the 20th century to return to a revived "common practice" harmony, mixed with greater dissonance and rhythm, as the basic point of departure for music. Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Vangelis Papathanasiou and Béla Bartók are usually listed as the most important composers in this mode, but also the prolific Darius Milhaud and his contemporary Francis Poulenc.

Neo-classicism was born at the same time as the general return to rational models in the arts in response to World War I. Smaller, more spare, more orderly was conceived of as the response to the overwrought emotionalism which many felt had herded people into the trenches. Since economics also favored smaller ensembles, the search for doing "more with less" took on a practical imperative as well. Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat is thought of as a seminal "neo-classical piece", as are his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto and his "Symphonies of Wind Instruments", as well as his Symphony in C. Stravinsky's neo-classicism culminated with his opera Rake's Progress, with the book done by the well known modernist poet, W. H. Auden.

Stravinsky's rival for a time in neo-classicism was the German Paul Hindemith, who mixed spiky dissonance, polyphony and free ranging chromaticism into a style which was "useful". He produced both chamber works and orchestral works in this style, perhaps most famously "Mathis der Maler". His chamber output includes his Sonata for French Horn, an expressionistic work filled with dark detail and internal connections.

Neo-classicism found a welcome audience in America, the school of Nadia Boulanger promulgated ideas about music based on their understanding of Stravinsky's music. Students of theirs include neo-classicists Elliott Carter (in his early years), Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Darius Milhaud, Ástor Piazzolla and Virgil Thomson.

Neo-classicism's most audible traits are melodies which use the tritone as a stable interval, and coloristically add dissonant notes to ostinato and block harmonies, along with the free mixture of polyrhythms. Neo-classicism won greater audience acceptance more quickly, and was taken to heart by those opposed to atonality as the true "modern" music. Neo-classicism also embraced the use of folk musics to give greater rhythmic and harmonic variety. Modernists such as the Hungarians Béla Bartók and Romantically inclined Zoltán Kodály and the Czech Leoš JanáÄÂek collected and studied their native folk musics which then influenced their compositions.

In 1990s the world was introduced to a new wonder of neo-classicism - Vangelis Papathanasiou. A former New Age composer wrote over 30 compositions, cilminating with such wonderful pieces as Foros Timis Ston Greco , 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Mythodea ( 2001 ). The symphonic opera of Mythodea was written in 1993. The 2001 version of Mythodea was recorded and played on-stage by: Vangelis on synthesizers and keyboards, the London Metropolitan Orchestra, sopranos Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman, two harpists, the chorus of the Greek National Opera, and the Seistron and Typana percussion ensembles (concert only). The concert was held in Athens, Greece on June 28, 2001, and the record was officially released on October 23, 2001, to coincide with the NASA 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft entering the orbit of planet Mars.

Post-modernist music

Post-modernism's birth

Post-modernism can be said to be a response to modernism which asserts that the products of human activity — particularly manufactured or created by artifice — are the central subject for art itself, and that the purpose of art is to focus people's attention on objects for contemplation, as composer-critic Steve Hicken explained it. This strain of modernism looks backward to the dada school of art exemplified by Duchamp, and to the collage of "concrete" music, as well as experiments with electronic music by Edgard Varèse and others. However, post-modernism asserted that this was the primary mode of human existence, an individual aswim in a sea of the products of people.

John Cage is a prominent figure in 20th century music whose influence steadily grew during his lifetime, and who is regarded by many as the founder of post-modernist music. Cage questioned the very definition of music in his pieces, and stressed a philosophy that all sounds are essentially music. Cage in the "silent" 4'33" presents the listener with his idea that the unintentional sounds are just as musically valid as the sounds originating from an instrument. Cage also notably used aleatoric music, and "found sounds" in order to create an interesting and different type of music. His music not only rested on his argument that there was no "music" or "noise" only "sound", and that combinations of found sound were musical events as well - but on the importance of focusing of attention and "framing" as essential to art. (See Post-Modernism)

Cage, though, has been seen by some to be too avant-garde in his approach; for this reason, many find his music unappealing. Interestingly, the seeming opposite of Cage's indeterminism is the overdetermined music of the serialists, which both schools have noted produce similar sounding pieces, yet many serialists, such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen have used aleatoric processes. Michael Nyman argues in Experimental Music that minimalism was a reaction to and made possible by both serialism and indeterminism. (See also experimental music)

Post-modernism reached music and painting at very similar moments, on one hand, the spareness, purity, love of mechanism, abstraction and the grid which are very modernist traits were preserved, as was the emphasis on personalizing style and experimentalism. However, post-modernism rejected the hermeneutic stance - the need to be "in" on the joke as it were - of modernism. Instead post-modernism took the popular and pared down as its aesthetic guide. One of the first movements to overtly break with the modernist took inspiration from Cage's work, and its emphasis on layering sounds: Minimalism.

Minimalism

Many composers in the later 20th century began to explore what is now called minimalism. The most specific definition of minimalism refers to the dominance of process in music — where fragments are layered on top of each other, often looped, to produce the entirety of the sonic canvas. Early examples include Terry Riley's In C and Steve Reich's Drumming. Riley is seen by some as the "father" of minimalist music with In C, a work comprised of melodic cells that each performer in an ensemble plays through at their own rate. The minimalist wave of composers — Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and La Monte Young to name the most prominent — wanted music to be "accessible" to ordinary listeners, and wanted to express concrete specific questions of dramatic and music form, not hidden in layers of technique, but very overtly. One key difference between minimalism and previous music is the use of different cells being "out of phase" or determined by the performers; contrast this with the opening of Das Rheingold by Richard Wagner which, despite its use of triadic cells, has each part controlled by the same impulse and moving at the same speed.

Minimalist music is often contentious amongst traditional listeners. Its critics find it to be overly repetitive and empty while proponents argue that the static elements that are often prevalent draw more interest to small changes. Minimalism has, however, inspired and influenced many composers not usually labeled "minimalist" such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti. Composers such as Arvo Pärt, John Tavener, and Henryk Górecki, whose Symphony No. 3 was the highest selling classical album of the 1990s, have found great success with what has been called "Holy Minimalism" in their deeply felt religious works.

The next wave of composers working in this tradition are not called "Minimalist" by some, but are by others. These include opera composer John Adams and his student Aaron Jay Kernis. The expansion of minimalism from process music, to music which relies on texture to hold together the movement of the music has created a wider diversity of compositions and composers.

Electronic music

Technological advances in the 20th century enabled composers to use electronic means of producing sound. The first electronic instrument was invented in Russia in 1919 by Leon Theremin, and was called the theremin. Some composers simply incorporated electronic instruments into relatively conventional pieces. Olivier Messiaen, for example, used the ondes martenot in a number of works.

Other composers abandoned conventional instruments and used magnetic tape to create music, recording sounds and then manipulating them in some way. Pierre Schaeffer was the pioneer of such music, termed Musique concrète. Some figures, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, used purely electronic means to create their work. In the United States of America, Milton Babbitt used the RCA Mark II Synthesizer to create music. Sometimes such electronic music was combined with more conventional instruments, Stockhausen's Hymnen, Edgard Varèse's Déserts, and Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms offer a few examples (although Déserts is sometimes performed today without the tape part).

Oskar Sala, created the non-musical soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, using the trautonium electronic instrument he helped develop. Morton Subotnick provided the electronic music for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Some well known electronic works generally regarded as in the classical tradition include "Film Music" by Vladimir Ussachevsky, A Rainbow in Curved Air and Shri Camel by Terry Riley, "Silver Apples", "The Wild Bull", and "Return" by Morton Subotnick, Sonic Seasonings and Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos, "Light Over Water" by John Adams, Aqua by Edgar Froese, and Poème électronique by Edgar Varèse.

Iannis Xenakis is another modern composer who used computers and electronic instruments, including one he invented, in many compositions. Some of his electronic works are gentle ambient pieces and some are savage sonic violence. Composers such as Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Tudor created and performed live electronic music, often designing their own electronics or using tape. A number of institutions sprung up in the 20th century specialising in electronic music, with IRCAM in Paris perhaps the best known.

The influences of minimalists such as Steve Reich (in particular 'Drumming') are clear in much of the work of DJ Spooky showing a perfect example of the crossover between 20th century classical, and electronic music such as trip-hop and even trance and drum n bass.

In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term has been applied to music written in the last quarter century or so, particularly works post-1975. There is debate over whether the term should be used to apply to music in any style, or only to composers writing avant-garde music, or only to "modernist" music. There is some use of "Contemporary" as a synonym for "Modern", particularly in academic settings. A more restrictive use applies the term only to living composers and their works (perhaps only their recent works). Since "contemporary" is a word that describes a time frame, rather thana style or a unifying idea, there are no universally agreed criteria for making these distinctions.

History

In the early part of the 20th century contemporary music included modernism, the twelve tone technique, atonality, futurism, primitivism, constructivism, New Objectivity, unresolved and greater amounts of dissonance, rhythmic complexity, nationalism, social and socialist realism, and neoclassicism. In the fifties, contemporary music generally meant serialism, in the sixties serialism, post-serialism, indeterminacy, electronic music including computer music, mixed media, performance art, and fluxus, and since then minimal music, post-minimalism, New Simplicity, New Complexity, and all of the above.

Since the 1970s there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools to name or label. However, in general, there are three broad trends. The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde traditions, including musical experimentalism. The second are schools which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common practice. The third focuses on non-functional triadic harmony, exemplified by composers working in the minimalist and related traditions.

Contemporary music composition has been altered with growing force by computers in composition, which allow for composers to listen to renderings of their scores before performance, compose by layering performed parts over each other and to disseminate scores over the internet. It is far too soon to tell what the final result of this wave of computerization will have as an effect on music.

All history is provisional, and contemporary history even more so, because of the well known problems of dissemination and social power. Who is "in" and who is "out" is often more important to who is known than the music itself. In an era with perhaps as many as 40,000 composers of concert music in the United States alone, first performances are difficult, and second performances even more so. The lesson of obscure composers in the past becoming important later applies doubly so to contemporary music, where it is likely that there are "firsts" before the officially listed first, and works which will be later admired as exemplars of style, which are as yet, unheralded in their own time.

Movements in contemporary music

Modernism

Many of the key figures of the high modern movement are alive, or only recently deceased and there is also still an extremely active core of composers, performers and listeners who continue to advance the ideas and forms of Modernism. Elliott Carter is still active, for example, as is Lukas Foss. While high modernist schools of composing, such as serialism are no longer as rhetorically central, the contemporary period is beginning the process of sorting through the modern corpus, looking for works which will have repertory value.

Modernism is also present as surface or trope in works of a large range of composers, as atonality has lost much of its ability to terrorize listeners, and even film scores use sections of music clearly rooted in modernist musical language. Active modernist composers include Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Judith Weir, Thomas Adès, Magnus Lindberg and Gunther Schuller.

Serialism

More specifically named "integral" or "compound" serialism, one of the most important post-war movements, led by composers such as Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Europe, and by Milton Babbitt, Donald Martino, and Charles Wuorinen in America.

Compositions use an ordered set or several such sets, which may be the basis for the whole composition. The term is also often used for dodecaphony, or twelve-tone technique, which is alternatively regarded as the model for integral serialism.

Post-modernism

Post-modernism is held to by many critics to be a strong influence in contemporary classical music. While explanations of what post-modernism is, and why it is influential vary widely, and responses to whether post-modernism is "good" for music, or even a good in and of itself - there is a wide agreement that instrumental concert music, and "art music" has absorbed ideas and influences from the wider culture, and that the results of these influences, for better and for worse, can be detected in musical results. Examples include polystylism, bricolage and collage, pop music references, the use of fragments, found sounds and incorporated voices, the shift from increasingly chromatic surfaces to more triadic ones, juxtaposition of genres, the use of new instrumental combinations which take instruments from several different cultures, and the combining of composition with video and other media images. Key composers include the Scottish composer, James MacMillan (who draws on sources as diverse as plainchant, South American Liberation Theology and Polish avant-garde techniques of the 1960s), the American Michael Torke (drawing on classical tradition, minimalism and popular music) and Mark-Anthony Turnage from the UK (drawing from jazz, English pastoralism and the avant-garde).

Polystylism

Polystylism is the use of multiple styles or techniques of music, and is seen as a postmodern characteristic. Polystylist composers include William Bolcom, Sofia Gubaidulina, George Rochberg, Frederic Rzewski, Alfred Schnittke, Ezequiel Viñao and John Zorn.

Conceptualism

When Duchamp displayed a urinal in an art museum, he struck the most visible blow for artistic conceptualism. Music conceptualism found a champion in John Cage and, a bit later, in the composers associated with the Fluxus movement. A conceptualist work is an act whose musical importance draws from the frame, rather than the content of the work. An example would be Alvin Singleton's 56 Blows, a work that has the distinction of being mentioned in debate on the floor of the Senate.

Minimalism and post-minimalism

The minimalist generation still has a prominent role in new composition. Philip Glass has been expanding his symphony cycle, while John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, a choral work commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks won a Pulitzer Prize. Steve Reich has explored electronic opera (most notably in Three Tales) and Terry Riley has been active in composing instrumental music and music theatre. But beyond the minimalists themselves, the tropes of non-functional triadic harmony are now commonplace, even among composers who are not regarded as minimalists per se.

Many composers are expanding the resources of minimalist music to include rock and world instrumentation and rhythms, serialism, and many other techniques. Kyle Gann considers William Duckworth's Time Curve Preludes as the first "post-minimalism" piece, and labels John Adams as a "post-minimalist" composer, rather than as a minimalist. Gann defines "post-minimalism" as the search for greater harmonic and rhythmic complexity by composers such as Mikel Rouse and Glenn Branca. Another notable characteristic is storytelling and emotional expression taking precedence over technique. Post-minimalism is also [1] a movement in painting and sculpture which began in the late 1960s. (See lumpers/splitters)

Other composers sometimes referred to as "post-minimalist" include Erkki-Sven Tüür, Peteris Vasks, Giya Kancheli, Arvo Pärt, Gavin Bryars, Lepo Sumera, Valentin Silvestrov, Veljo Tormis, Ingram Marshall, Kevin Volans, Daniel Lentz, Louis Andriessen, Frederic Rzewski, and many composers associated with the Bang on a Can collective.

Post-classic tonality

Other aspects of post-modernity can be seen in a "post-classic" tonality that has advocates such as Michael Daugherty, Elena Kats-Chernin and Tan Dun.

"World music" influence

An increasing number of composers mix western and non-western instruments, including gamelan from Indonesia, Chinese traditional instruments, ragas from Indian Classical music. There is also an exploration of eastern-European and non-Western tonalities, even in relatively traditionally structured works. This can be in the context of post-minimalist works, such as Janice Giteck's and Evan Ziporyn's Balinese-influenced works, bandura works by Julian Kytasty, or in the context of post-classic tonality, such as in the music of Bright Sheng, or in the context of thoroughly modernist styled works.

Rock influence

Similarly, many composers have emerged since the 1980s who are heavily influenced by rock. Many, such as Scott Johnson and Steven Mackey started out as rock musicians and only later moved into the realm of scored music. Other notable composers who draw on rock include Annie Gosfield, Evan Ziporyn, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, David Lang, John Zorn, Steve Martland, Ben Johnston, Anne LeBaron, Kitty Brazelton, Glenn Branca, and Nick Didkovsky. Many of these composers (Gordon, Lang, Wolfe, Ziporyn, Martland, Branca) are post-minimalist in orientation, but some (Didkovsky, Brazelton) are very much not.

Historicism

There are composers that have adopted historicist approach to composition, employing a variety of styles of previous eras. Some composers had occasional forays into this approach previously (Alfred Schnittke), while others embraced it to varying degrees of exclusion of other styles.

Some post-minimalist works, such as Gavin Bryars' "Oi me lasso" cycle employ medievalism. Other composers embrace renaissance, baroque and classical styles with varying degrees of purism (Fritz Kreisler, Robert Casadesus, Jordi Savall, Rene Clemencic, Thomas Binkley, Benjamin Bagby, Joseph Dillon Ford, Ladislav Kupkovič, Winfried Michel, the several composers of the Delian Society, and the Vox Saeculorum group). This movement is related to Early Music Revival and a number of historicist composers are influenced by their intimate familiarity with the instrumental practice of earlier eras (Alexandre Danilevsky, Paulo Galvão, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk).

Historicism may also be combined with minimalism, post-minimalism, and world-music.

Experimentalism

One important movement in contemporary music involves expanding the range of gestures available to instrumentalists, for example the work of George Crumb. The Kronos Quartet has been among the most active ensembles in promoting contemporary American works for string quartet, and they take delight in music which stretches the manner in which sound can be drawn out of instruments.

European composers who make heavy use of extended techniques include Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino and Heinz Holliger.

Electronic music

Electronics are now part of mainstream music creation. Performances of regular works often use midi synthesizers to back or replace regular musicians. Looping, sampling, and (rarely) drum machines may also be used. However the older idea of electronic music (musique concrète, electroacoustics...) - as a search for pure sound and an interaction with the hardware itself - continues to find a place in composition, from commercially successful pieces to works targeted at very narrow audiences. See, for example, the work of Michel Chion.

Neo-Romanticism

The resurgence of the vocabulary of extended tonality which flourished in the first years of the 20th century continues in the contemporary period, though it is no longer considered shocking or controversial as such. Composers working in the neoromantic vein include John Corigliano, George Rochberg (in some of his works after 1971), David Del Tredici and Krzysztof Penderecki (after about 1975).

New Simplicity

A movement in Germany in the late seventies and early eighties, reacting with a variety of strategies to restore the subjective to composing. New Simplicity's best-known composer is Wolfgang Rihm, who strives for the emotional volatility of late 19th-century Romanticism and early 20th-century Expressionism. Called Die neue Einfachheit in German, it has also been termed "New Romanticism," "New Subjectivity," "New Inwardness," "New Sensuality," "New Expressivity," and "New Tonality."

Styles found in other countries sometimes associated with the German New Simplicity movement include the so-called "Holy Minimalism" of the Pole Henryk Górecki and the Estonian Arvo Pärt (in their works after 1970), as well as Englishman John Tavener, who unlike the New Simplicity composers have turned back to Medieval and Renaissance models, however, rather than to 19th-century romanticism for inspiration. Important representative works include Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (1976) by Górecki, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977) by Pärt, and The Veil of the Temple (2002) by Tavener.

New Complexity

"New Complexity" is a current within today's European contemporary avant-garde music scene, named in reaction to the New Simplicity. Among this diverse group are Richard Barrett, Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon and Michael Finnissy.

Spectral Music

Epitomized by the works of Hugues Dufourt, Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Horatiu Radulescu. Much of Kaija Saariaho's and the last few pieces of Claude Vivier's music are influenced by the spectralists.

Contemporary choral music

At the turn of the century, Eric Whitacre has achieved considerable attention by combining tonal music with tone clusters and similar experimental techniques. Although it is too soon to discern trends in the 21st century, the spirit of more practical music which dominated the last decades of the 20th century seems to be continuing via the works of Karl Jenkins, John Rutter, Kentaro Sato and Morten Lauridsen amongst others.

The term ‘baroque’ was first coined to describe the architectural style of 17th and 18th century religious buildings in many parts of Europe. It wasn’t until the 1900s that the word ‘baroque’ was applied to musical composition. Today, the term refers to a specific musical genre which originated in the 1600s and reached its peak in the early to mid 1700s.

So what exactly is baroque music? It is a style intended primarily to invoke a particular emotional mood in the listener. The intended mood can vary from piece to piece but is generally consistent within the piece – for example, Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, perhaps the most well-known example of baroque music, was written to create a mood of joy and celebration in the listener. The ideal Baroque style can be summed up in the words of composer Johann Joseph Fux.

“A composition meets the demands of good taste if it is well constructed, avoids trivialities as well as willful eccentricities, aims at the sublime, but moves in a natural ordered way, combining brilliant ideas with perfect workmanship.”

Baroque music often contains a feeling of continuity, achieved by repeating a musical “theme” throughout the piece. These compositions tend to be extremely intricate and are frequently not easy to play or sing. The dynamics of baroque music tend to shift abruptly within a piece, rarely using gradual changes such as crescendos. This is probably due to the limitations of the musical instruments at the time – keyboard instruments such as harpsichords were unable to create subtle changes in volume, so the composer had the choice of piano (soft) or forte (loud) but not gradual transitions between the two. The development of the orchestra also influenced this characteristic, since the composer could now induce abrupt changes in tone and volume by adding and removing instruments.

Baroque had a tremendous influence on musical evolution. Some of the world’s most cherished composers wrote during this era – Bach, Vivaldi, Gluck, Hendel and dozens more. Opera was invented during the Baroque era and still bears the fingerprints of the style, with its elaborate harmonies and emotional appeal. The baroque era also represents the beginning of a shift in emphasis from religious to secular music. Perhaps for this reason, during the Classical Era (from roughly 1730-1820) most religious music was written in the Baroque style, while secular music was developed using the new techniques. For example, Mozart’s oratorios and masses are distinctly Baroque in their harmonic style, while his secular compositions generally are not.

Baroque music was also the distant ancestor of jazz. Not only were most Baroque pieces written for small ensembles similar to a jazz quartet, they also required a level of improvisation by the performers. Many compositions employed a method known as ‘Figured Bass,’ which is a way for pianists to improvise a bass line to support the pre-written chords – and as a result, performances of the same piece of Baroque music could vary greatly from day to day. 

In many ways, the Baroque era was the “Great Enlightment” of music – the time of discovery and exploration when the musical world exploded with ideas and insights. An understanding of this time is critical to understanding music as a whole.

Imagine building up a collection of the great singers and groups of the "Swingin' Sixties", cheaply and economically - savings money in the process!

This process is simply about selecting the best collections in the market, and choosing the best sources - in the high street or on-line, so that you get the best possible product, at the best possible price!

Tips to ensure you get the best there is for the least outlay:

1. Don't get sucked in to the latest marketing programme. With Christmas coming up, this is doubly important, because this is the time when ridiculous sums of money are asked for, for compilations that have been on the market for years - at much lower sums. Ignore ALL such promotions, and use the tips in this article!
2. Consider buying second hand. I know there is a delight in unwrapping the cellophane of a new purchase. Actually, that is the one thing I DETEST about buying new, as I can never get the wretched wrapping off, without the aid of a sharp knife or scissors, when I often scratch the CD case in frustration. As soon as you play your DC or DVD, it is officially second hand, so what have you gained. I have only once found a second hand product to be even slightly faulty, and on e-bay you will almost certainly be able to get a refund.
3. Take care to look at the small print on the cover of a CD. IGNORE all CDs with the words "tracks by original artistes, although some may have been re-recorded featuring some or all of the original artistes. You may get some tracks as originals, or even a version that is superior in many ways to the original. But don't bank on it. If you can get it for $1.00 or a couple of dollars, you may want to take the chance. But better not!
4. Use ebay to search for the best compilation of tracks of your chosen artiste. For sixties artistes, it is relatively common to acquire a "best of" CD featuring 20, 30, 40, even 50 original tracks on a single CD or CD box set.
5. Even better, choose a CD compilation with a clear theme. This could be all the EP tracks, or all the "A" and "B" singles over a given period. This ensures that there is no fillers of dubious quality tracks to pad out the CD.
6. Compare prices on ebay with Amazon. It can be amazing how much prices can vary for the same product - either new or second hand, between the two sites. Sometimes Amazon is best option - especially as there is no bidding involved, and sometimes ebay wins hands down.
7. Use Amazon to check out the quality of the compilation. Reviewers will give hard hitting honest appraisal of the CD or DVD, identifying those dodgy re-recorded tracks mentioned above, or where the tracks are not representative of an artiste's best work.
8. If bidding on ebay, bid low and late. You can get an idea of the average price by going to "completed listings", but I prefer to wade right in. Once I have identified a great product, I assess my top total price (including postage and packing!), then make my bid about 24 hours before the end date at about half my target. I log in again about half an hour before the end of auction, and get ready to make a late (and final) bid. Don't exceed you top bid. There will be another one along tomorrow!
9. And for special individual tracks, why not use the Internet to download songs as MP3 tracks!

Aleatoric music (also known as aleatory, indeterministic, or chance music) is music where some element of the composition is left to chance, or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The composer's creative input to the outcome of a piece is either greatly reduced or even removed completely. 'Creative input' includes melody, harmony, instrumentation, or even logical arrangement.

In aleatory music the players are encouraged to choose the sequence of movements, sections or individual chords and notes, or to improvise on a pattern or idea suggested by the composer--for example, in Ligeti's Aventures, on letters of the alphabet, and in Lutoslawski's Preludes and Fugue, on a series of lines, squares and triangles. Thus, the result differs from player to player and from performer to performer. Aleatory music is, in conception, similar to both Far Eastern art music and to jazz and rock, all of which involve improvisation, on an agreed basis, as a feature of the performance.

The term became known to European composers through lectures by acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler at Darmstadt Summer School in the beginning of the 1950s. According to his definition, "aleatoric processes are such processes which have been fixed in their outline but the details of which are left to chance".

Among examples of aleatory music, Klavierstück XI (1956) by Karlheinz Stockhausen features 19 elements to be performed in changing sequences, certain orchestral works of Witold LutosÅ‚awski from after 1959 contain music where the orchestral ensemble is not precisely dictated, and in some works by Krzysztof Penderecki characteristic sequences are repeated quickly, producing a kind of oscillating sound.

The use of music in marketing has a peculiar psychological aspect to it. On one hand the music in an advertisement rarely contains the main marketing message, but on the other hand advertisements can seem empty or incomplete without it. Is there any advertising psychology in the music or jingles used to advertise products?

Memorability

One of the main reasons music is used when conveying marketing messages is that it makes the products name easier to remember. Most people at some stage have had a song in their head that they can not seem to forget. Every time their mind wanders, the familiar motif or chorus of the song returns.

The reason for this, it seems, is that the human mind in about half the population is more skilled at remembering a tune than a product name. This is what the advertisers would ultimately like; the song or jingle to stick in peoples memory to help them remember the product.

Have you ever remembered a product, just because you started humming it's jingle?

Feeling and impression

Music seems to be one of the best ways to communicate emotion, and feeling. Each type of song or jingle used in advertising has a particular feeling. The most common is an upbeat and lively feel, used to make your life seem like more of a continual party with the advertised product.

Another emotion that music and jingles can play on is sadness. When combined with emotive images or dialogue, it can provoke strong enough emotions to make a substantial number of viewers donate money to charities.

Particular music can also give an exotic, elegant or authentic feel to an advertisement.

• Cuisine from a foreign country can advertise with music from that country to give it an authentic feel.

• Jewellers and other luxury stores can use upmarket or classical music to make their advertised product seem old and sophisticated.

In some cases the music or jingle can make the advertised product seem older than it really is or make it feel like it has history and sophistication.

Audience

When targeting an advertisement, specific music can appeal to certain audience types. For example:

• Irish music can have more appeal to an Irish subculture

• Jingles with a salsa flavour can appeal to a Hispanic culture

• Modern songs and jingles can appeal to younger audiences.

Attention and intrusion

Historically, music was used in radio advertising and television marketing psychology to enrich a dull spoken sales pitch. The music would attract listener's attention and the advertisement would be less of an intrusion. The problem is that the audience soon became accustom to music in advertising and it lost its power to attract attention.

After playing your chosen instrument for a few years, things can get a bit boring. It would be much more fun if you had a sweeping melody or counter melody enhancing the music. Such an effect can only be achieved if you were in an ensemble or band.

Now that you have decided that you want to be in a band, you have to decide what type of band to play in.

• Are you looking to play in a rock, pop or jazz band?

• Are you looking to play in an ensemble like a string quartet?

Once you know the type of band or ensemble you would like to play in, you have 2 options:

1. Find an existing band

2. Form your own band

Both options have their advantages and disadvantages.

Finding an existing band

This is a very good way for enthusiastic musicians to have some exposure to the playing in a band. Joining an existing band helps teach about the expectations, etiquette and social elements that go along with it. Bands are always looking for new members as people move on, get bored or have other commitments.

Even if you would like to set up your own band, joining an existing band can help you make contacts. These contacts can help you spread the word about your band latter on.

You have to keep in mind the limits of your playing skills when looking for a band. Some bands might expect a player with more experience and skills. There is no point in trying to play music that is technically beyond you.

Advantages of joining an existing band

Joining an existing band can bring big advantages. Most established bands have all the back end business side of things taken care of. They already have:

• A manager

• Clients

• Regular gigs

• Music selected

This just means that you will not have much to worry about and can just enjoy playing.

Disadvantages of joining an existing band

One of the disadvantages of looking for an existing band is that there are may bands out there with little experience. This is good, if you are new to playing, as band practice would be a glorified jam session. Musicians with a lot more experience will have trouble finding a band of their calibre.

A second disadvantages of joining an existing band is that the music selection and personalities might not suit you. If you are not going to enjoy it, you will not do a good job and it might put you off playing.

When you start playing, be prepared to learn all their songs in a short period of time. An established band will have regular gigs and you will be expected to pick up the music quickly in time for the next gig.

Do not expected to be able to be creative and add your own style straight away. The band will have its own sound and style that you will be expected to play. Most bands will allow a gradual change in style as you start to express yourself more, but will avoid a radical change.

Forming your own band

This means that you are going to have to find musicians to join a new band. All the musicians need to be able to get along and play similar music in a similar style. You are also going to have to make many decisions so that you can find the right musicians:

• Do you want to play professionally or for fun?

• What style music do you intend to play?

• How hard will the music be?

• What are some examples of the music?

• How often will the band practice?

• How much will the band cost or expect to pay?

• How often will the band play at gigs?

• Who will look for all the gigs?

• What are the roles for the people in the band?

• How many musicians do you need?

• Where will the band be based?

Advantages of forming your own band

The biggest advantage of forming your own band is that you get to make all the decisions and you should be in control. You will get to:

• Pick the musicians you get along with

• Select the music

• Run things your way

Disadvantages of forming your own band

Setting up your own band is no easy task. It will be hard to find musicians, there will never be enough money, and you will need to do a lot of running around getting things sorted.

When you find some musicians that would like to join, you need to audition them. This will allow you to get an idea of their technical skill and see if they suit the band.

After all the setting up of your band, you have to remember that it is the others band as well. You still need to consult them on decisions and let them have input.

Where to find a band or band members

Ether way, you are still going to have to do some looking. The following is a list of places you can use to help find musicians or to find an existing band.

• Classifieds

• Post notices in the local music stores

• Spread the word with the musicians you know

• Internet

Baroque and Early Jazz are two styles of music that one would not normally compare. With nearly 200 years separating them, the two styles' numerous similarities have been concealed due to a secular-sacred distinction. Dixieland or Early Jazz, originated from New Orleans in the early 20th Century. Born from mix of the preceding military, ragtime and blues styles, Jazz's purpose was primarily to provide entertainment in bars. Conversely, the Baroque Period spanned from 1600 to 1750. Composers worked chiefly to serve the regal and ecclesiastical authorities, producing music for dances and church services.

From the 1920's, with the help of Louis Armstrong, Jazz began to incorporate many baroque characteristics into its diverse and rhythmic compositions. This Baroque Revival can be clearly observed in a detailed examination of Mack the Knife and the Brandenberg Concertos. Despite such differences as contrasting instruments, addition of voice and contrasting level of formality; these two landmark compositions highlight the many parallels in melody, harmonic language, accompaniment and form.      

Differences between the two styles are easily distinguished. Where Baroque had its basis firmly in strings, Jazz drew upon mainly brass and woodwind instruments. In fact many of these Jazz instruments such as saxophone, clarinet and trombone were not even developed until many years after the Baroque era. Also, the ornamental and formal nature of Baroque music is vastly different from the laid back and more simplistic Jazz style. This contrast is partially due to the large difference is ensemble size: a Baroque orchestra being significantly larger than a Dixieland band.

Despite the difference in the number of musicians, the arrangement of instruments within both periods has many commonalities. Both styles employ the use of two distinct musical groups, one which features and another which acts as harmonic and rhythmic accompaniment. In the case of the Baroque period the two sections were the concertino, the small group of virtuosic soloists and the ripieno (the tutti orchestra). In Jazz, the soloist group was called the Front Line. This usually included the clarinet, trumpet and trombone. Jazz's ripieno equivalent was the aptly named Rhythm Section. This group included the drum kit, banjo, upright bass and piano. Both Baroque and Jazz styles frequently relied on a strict form for their compositions. In Mack the Knife there are five 32 bar choruses; each with the same melodic movement and in the first movement of the second Brandenberg Concerto, ritornello form is used. This structured form uses contrasting sections of virtuosic solos and chorus-like snippets played by the full orchestra.

Another similarity is the use of improvisation. Although not obvious, the concertino uses improvisation in the episodes of movements in ritornello form.  In the Brandenberg Concertos grace notes and ornaments were often used by the concertino and the harpsichord to perpetuate the sound and generate interest. A Dixieland band also uses improvisation, however instead of individual improvisation, Collective Improvisation was applied. This form was achievable due to their smaller size of 5 to 8 musicians. Often a whole chorus was dedicated to this form and was known as Dixieland Break. In both instances, this improvisation was able to occur in a cohesive manner due to the use of an outlined chord symbols. The chords indicated by the symbols are improvised on by the harpsichord in a baroque orchestra and the piano in a jazz band. The chord progression (notated in the Baroque period as Figured Bass) is repeated many times and directs the melody. Both Mack the Knife and the Brandenberg Concertos show evidence of this similarity.

Despite their many and vast disparities, the Baroque and Jazz styles (and in particular Mack the Knife and Bach's Brandenberg Concerto) share various and significant similarities. In particular it is the commonalities of melody, harmonic language, accompaniment and form which created what we now know as the Baroque Revival.

Rhythm is defined by Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary as the variety in the movement as to quickness or slowness, or length and shortness of the notes; or rather the proportion which the parts of the motion have to each other.

We use rhythm continually in our daily lives through speech, writing, music and other forms of entertainment. Most commonly rhythm is associated with music. In western music rhythm is maintained in a time signature that is usually universally accepted. When learning a new instrument students can set an electronic or manual metronome to the rhythm of the time signature to keep time as they play. In respect to music, rhythm shows up in multiple ways within a song including:

• Syncopated rhythms

• Polyrhythm

• Divisive rhythm

• Additive rhythm

• Interlocking

In addition to time signature, rhythm is also measured using a term called tempo in Western music. Tempo is usually measured in 'beats per minute where 60bpm means a speed of one beat per second. A rhythmic unit is a durational pattern which occupies a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying metric level, as opposed to a rhythmic gesture, which does not. Together time signature, tempo and rhythmic unit help us to measure rhythm in various types of music.

Some genres of music make different use of rhythm than others, for example most Western music is based on divisive rhythm while non-Western music uses more additive rhythm. African music makes heavy use of polyrhythm. Indian music uses complex cycles and Balinese often uses complex interlocking rhythms. A lot of Western classical music is fairly rhythmically simple staying in a simple meter. On the contrary, the widespread use of irrational rhythms in New Complexity began to surface in the 20th century. Composers like Igor Stravinsky, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and modernists like Olivier Messiaen used increased complexity. They used odd meters and techniques such as phasing and additive rhythm.

The vast understanding of rhythm comes from a diligent study known as prosody. This process consists of a focused study of rhythm, stress and pitch in speech. There are three categories of prosodic rules which create rhythmic successions. These categories are additive; open-ended and repetitive (same repeated duration), cumulative; closure or relaxation (short-long), or counter cumulative; openness or tension (long-short).

The first, published blues music was 'Dallas Blues' in 1912, but the blues predates that by at least 20 years and possibly a great deal more. The first recordings of blues music were made for research purposes and have since been lost along with any record of the precise where when and why. Blues seem to have arisen in the period after the emancipation of slaves in the USA and some aspects of the music, such as blue notes, seem to originate (not surprisingly) with the music of Africa. In other ways there was originally little difference between 'blues' and 'country' as they grew up together in the early part of the 20th century, yet 'blues' was identified with black musicians, while 'country' was predominately white. It seems strange then that while the blues is steeped in the culture of the American deep South, one of the most famous blue guitarists is a white guy from the UK, Eric Clapton.

American blues made the transition to the UK largely because of black American soldiers who were stationed in the UK during the second World War.  In 1958 Muddy Waters played electric blues for the first time in Britain to shocked audiences, unaccustomed to the amplified electric sound and heavy beat. Many were captivated and while the cultural differences could not have been greater, British Blues was born. The Rolling Stones even took their name from a Muddy Waters song, 'Rollin Stone'.

Co-incidentally 1958 was the year Eric Clapton got his first guitar. Born in Ripley in Surrey and brought up my his grandmother, Clapton found the guitar difficult and nearly gave up, but he enjoyed listening to blues music on his tape recorder and spent a lot of time practicing to get the chords right. He left school in 1961 and went to art college, but only lasted a year. In 1962 he asked his grandparents help to buy an electric guitar, (a Gibson ES-335 clone) Already it was clear that music, not art was his major interest. He began busking and performing in pubs with a  friend, then when he was 17 he joined a band called 'The Roosters' while supporting himself by working as a bricklayer.

In 1963 he joined another group called the Yardbirds and began to create an original sound and style, heavily influenced by blues music. Although the Yardbirds were successful their first major hit was not a blues song and in protest Clapton left to join John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and then in 1966 he formed Cream. Cream disbanded in 1968.

Throughout this time, he was searching for a distinctive, 'bluesie' sound. In the early 60's Eric Clapton played a Fender telecaster but he changed this for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul and a Marshall amplifier. When he left the Bluesbreakers to form Cream, his Les Paul was stolen, but he continued to play guitars of that type until 1967 when he obtained a 1964 Gibson SG which he later had painted in psychedelic colors for a tour. The Gibson SG was one of the major components of the distinctive sound Clapton created during those mid to late 60's.  The 'woman tone' as other musicians have called it, is a distorted sound partially created by turning the guitars amplifier up full and the tone down to one or zero. 

By 1970 Eric Clapton was a superstar. He formed Derek and the Dominos and went on to record the album 'Layla and other assorted rock songs'.  The inspiration was Clapton's attraction to George Harrison's wife, Patti Boyd, who was also the inspiration for Harrison's beautiful song 'Something'.  To say this relationship was complicated is something of an understatement. Patti Boyd was a model and had married George Harrison in 1966. Eric worked on several projects with George and apparently fell in love not only with Patti but with Paula her sister. So much so that in 1970 Paula moved in to his home, but she wasn't alone. Eric had another girlfriend, Alice Ormsby Gore, daughter of Lord Harlech, the former British Ambassador to Washington.  She and Eric had announced their engagement in 1969.

When Eric wrote Layla,  Paula immediately knew who it was about and  walked out, but Patti would still not leave her husband. This together with the albums lack of success sent Clapton into a depressive spiral fuelled mainly by heroin. He sank and became a recluse, rarely leaving his house and took Alice, who was 17, with him.  Alice and Eric stayed together for five years, but when, with the help of Alices family, Eric managed to break his heroin habit, he ended their relationship. Alice died in poverty from a heroin overdose in 1995. 

With the help of Pete Townshend (of 'The Who') he picked himself up and made a come back. Heroin was replaced by alchohol. Patti left George and by 1974 Eric had a new sound and was a composer as well as a guitarist.  In 1979 he married Patti Boyd and in the 1980's he began another career, music for film and TV, such as 'The Hit' (1984) and the score for BBC's mini-series Edge of Darkness. In 1982 he ws admitted to Hazelden Treatment Enter in Center City Minnesota for treatment for alcoholism. 

After this he produced two albums with Phil Collins, but perhaps because Patti Boyd was unable to have children, Clapton had a number of affairs and at least two children, Ruth (in 1985) and Connor in 1986. Eric and Patti Boyd were divorced in 1988. In 1991 Connor fell from a 53rd floor window and was killed. Eric poured his grief into a song called 'Tears in Heaven' and that year received six Grammy awards for the song and his album 'unplugged' where he played acoustic guitar.

Clapton made more albums throughout the 90's and in 1999 worked on an Album with the legendary BB King. In 2000 he was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the third time. To date he is the only person to have been inducted three times. In 2002 he married Melia McEnery with whom he already had a daughter, Julie. Ella followed in 2003 and Sophie in 2005. This was the inspiration for the song 'Three Little Girls' on his 2006 album The Road to Escondido.

In 2004 Clapton returned to the blues with a vengeance with two albums of music by Robert Johnson. In 2005 a reunited Cream played concerts in the Royal Albert Hall and in 2007 the rights to his official memoirs were sold at the Frankfurt Book Fair for four million dollars.
 
These days Eric Clapton plays a custom made 000-ECHF Martin from CF Martin and Company and is regarded as one of the most influential guitarists of all time. His song 'Layla' is viewed as one of rock music's great love songs and his solo on 'Crossroad Blues' one of the greatest live rock solos ever. Yet in 1958 when he got that first, steel stringed guitar, he found it hard to play. He had to persevere, to practice, and he did. How about you? 

John Blackwood Rock Guitar Lesson Blues Lesson

The Baroque period of music is an era that existed from 1600 to 1750. A Baroque style is a set of styles from European classical music. The music of the Baroque period ranges from a style similar to that of the previous Romantic period, to the style found in the following Classical musical period.

“Misshapen pearl” is the phrase that the original meaning of “baroque” was derived from. This fits into the characterisations on the architecture of this period.

Many famous composers have risen to fame during the Baroque period of music. Well known composers such as the likes of Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, and Johann Sebastian Bach can attribute some or all of their musical style to the Baroque period.

During the Baroque period, the style of music changed. Composers and performers started to used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes to the way music was written and created new ways to play the existing musical instruments. All these changes allowed for the rise of opera as a musical genre, and many of the concepts from this period are still in use today.

The term “Baroque” was not conceived until after the Baroque period was over. There is still some disagreement to this day about what the Baroque period encompasses. A few rogue musicologists have argued that the Baroque period should be split into a Baroque period and a Mannerist period so that the periods come in to align with those assigned to the visual arts.