History of music
The study of how music has changed across time, including its styles, practices, institutions, instruments, and cultural contexts.
Prehistoric music: Music-making in human societies before written historical records. Archaeological finds and inferred practices offer the earliest evidence for music’s past.
Musical notation: A system of visual symbols for recording and communicating musical sounds. Notation lets historians compare written repertories and trace changes in musical practice.
Renaissance music: European music composed and performed during the Renaissance, roughly from the fifteenth through sixteenth centuries. Its polyphony and patronage show major changes in European musical life.
Hildegard of Bingen: A twelfth-century German abbess, writer, and composer whose surviving works include liturgical music. Her surviving compositions illuminate medieval women’s authorship and monastic musical life.
Patronage: Financial or institutional support given to artists by individuals or organizations. Churches, courts, and later public institutions determined which music could be sustained.
Music of ancient Greece: Musical practices and ideas in ancient Greek society, known through texts, instruments, and artifacts. Greek writings preserve early theories of musical scale, ethics, and education.
Musical instrument: A device or object used to produce musical sound. Instrument design and availability have altered what musicians could perform.
Baroque music: European art music of roughly 1600–1750, marked by practices including basso continuo and elaborate contrast. Opera, instrumental genres, and courtly institutions expanded rapidly in this period.
Johann Sebastian Bach: A German composer and organist of the Baroque era, known for works including the Brandenburg Concertos and the Mass in B minor. His music became central to later ideas of the European compositional canon.
Public concert: A musical performance presented to an audience, often for admission, outside private or liturgical settings. The rise of ticketed concerts changed who heard music and how musicians earned income.