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From Christ's birth to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Here we find Greek and Roman music. -
The Western Roman Empire fell to the attacks of the so called "barbarian people". -
From the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Discovery of America. The music in this period was either religious (usually sung), or secular, sung by bards with lutes and other instruments and transmitted orally. The first one usually consisted of parts of the Bible or praises to God, while the second one usually included love themes or tales of adventures.
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In the year 1492, Cristóbal Colón arrived at America, revealing its existence to the European people. This began a period of colonisation, slavery and violence against the indigenous people. -
From the Discovery of America to the French Revolution
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Also divided in secular and religious, in this period they used more than one voice in the same piece, and most pieces could be played or sung without problem. Important composers here include Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Josquin des Prez.
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Here, they took the polyphony to the extreme. Lots of voices repeating one another with delay, all of them made exactly to sound nice with eachother. That's called a canon or a fugue, depending on how strict the repetition was. They also used what's called counterpoint, one voice doing a high melody ("questioning") and another voice "answering" with a lower one. Composing music here was like solving a sudoku or a Rubik's cube. Famous composers here are Bach, Vivaldi and Pachelbel.
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"La Dafne", the first opera of the history, was written by Jacopo Peri -
If the Baroque period was complexity to create beauty, in this one composers chose simplicity. Here the music was simpler, but also beautiful. Beautiful, but simple and elegant. In this period, we find important musicians like Mozart and Haydn.
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In the year 1750, Johan Sebastian Bach died, with this event being the end of the Baroque period in the music. He left behind 1080 known pieces. -
In January, 1756, Wolgang Amadeus Mozart was born. He composed a lot of pieces, within which we can find operas, simphonies and others. He is the most famous classicist composer. -
From the French Revolution to the present (and beyond)
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In the year 1810 (more or less), Romanticism is considered to be born as a music style from the romanticist literature. -
Here, the elegant part of the classicism is dropped. They also want to create beautiful music, but here they go for emotions and expresivity. They didn't want to contain themselves. In this period appear movements like nationalism, where they took traditional folk music from their countries and reinvented it, or continued its style, for example, with Chopin's mazurcas. Important composers here are Beethoven (who also was classicist) and Chopin, famous for his improvisations and fantasies.
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In this century, people tried to innovate and defy the limits of music. What's music?, they asked. Is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence music? They broke all the classic "laws" of music. Simultaneously, pop, rock and other genres started appearing. In one side, vanguardism in academic and intelectual music, and in another side, simple and catchy music for the rest of the people.
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In the year 1960, the group The Beatles is created. Later, they revolutioned the pop with new music styles and recording techniques, partially inspired by John Lennon's travels to India.