Musical Style Periods

Musical Style Periods, Their Dates, and Some Important Composers

Western art music has lots of different exquisite styles and magnificent composers, so we musicians have attempted to offer some categories and approximate dates to show how music developed and changed over the many years.

Here is my summary of the common names of these periods and some of the most famous composers in each.

1450–1600 Renaissance Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, Morales, Palestrina, Lassus, Byrd, Victoria, Gabrieli

1600–1750 Baroque Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Schütz, Lully, Purcell, Allesandro Scarlatti, Rameau, J. S. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi

1750–1825 Classic Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven; Clementi, C. P. E. Bach, von Weber

1825–1900 Romantic Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt, Brahms, Verdi, Wagner

1900 –2000 Twentieth Century Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Ives, Schönberg, Webern, Berg, Babbitt, Varèse, Cage, Shostakovich, Britten, Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, Vaughn Williams, Bartók, Glass, Adams

If you’d like to hear and compare some of these styles, I suggest you paste a composer’s name into YouTube and see what comes up. Or you can just use the suggested links to get started.

Memorizing the dates and names of these five style periods is not that hard. The dates I chose for these periods were in increments of 75 years (or multiples thereof), beginning in 1450.

The composers I listed for each style period are all representative of the sounds of each period.

Enjoy!

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