Timeline of Composers

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These are not intended to represent every musical composer from each musical era. It is a listing of the most renowned and commonly accepted composers of musical innovation and discovery during these periods. Many well known musical composers lived very short lives as was common to the life of the time. Certainly some composers lives would intersect different eras of musical discovery and some of those wrote compositions pertinent to both periods. This is not to say that composers of any period did not compose with the innovations of another period. They most certainly did and still do today. The entire reason for innovation is implementation into future works.

The futher back in time we go, the fewer records of historical persons and achievements will be found. While other musical achievers in the distant past, such as early innovators or church studies are mentioned in some publications, information on these is scarce and evidence of their works, often extinct. I hope you find the listing useful.

Medieval

900 - 1600

Renaissance

1420 - 1610

Baroque

1610 - 1790

Composer

 

Hildegard of Bingen

Léonin

 

Pérotin

 

Guillaume de Machaut


Lifespan


1098 - 1179

1150 - 1201

 

1160 - 1220

 

1300 - 1377

 

Composer


Guillaume Dufay

Josquin des Prez

Thomas Tallis

Andrea Gabrieli

Giovanni P. da Palestrina

Orlande D. Nassus

William Byrd

Tomás Luis de Victoria

Giovanni Gabrieli

Carlos Gesuauldo

John Dowland

Claudio Monteverdi

Orlando Gibbons

Heinrich Schütz


Lifespan


1397 - 1474

1440 - 1521

1505 - 1585

1510 - 1586

1525 - 1594

1532 - 1594

1543 - 1623

1548 - 1611

1553 - 1612

1561 - 1613

1563 - 1626

1567 - 1643

1583 - 1625

1585 - 1672


Composer


Heinrich Schütz

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Deitrich Buxtehude

Johann Pachelbel

Arcangelo Corelli

Henri Purceli

Alessandro Scarlatti

Tomaso Albirnoni

Antonio Vivaldi

Georg Philipp Telemann

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Domenico Scarlatti

Johann Sebastian Bach

George Friderick Handel

Christoph W von Gluck


Lifespan


1585 - 1672

1632 - 1687

1637 - 1707

1653 - 1706

1653 - 1713

1659 - 1695

1660 - 1725

1671 - 1751

1678 - 1741

1671 - 1751

1683 - 1764

1685 - 1757

1685 - 1750

1685 - 1759

1714 - 1787


Classical

1740 - 1810

Romantic

1790 - 1910

Modern

1900 - 2000

Composer


Christoph W von Gluck


Joseph Haydn

Johann Christian Bach

Luigi Boccherini

Antonio Salieri

Wolfgang A Mozart

Ludwig von Beethoven

Carl Maria von Weber


Lifespan


1714 - 1787


1732 - 1809

1735 - 1782

1735 - 1782

1750 - 1825

1756 - 1791

1770 - 1827

1786 - 1826


Composer


Ludwig von Beethoven

Carl Maria von Weber

Gioachino Rossini

Franz Schubert

Gaetono Donizetti

Hector Berloiz

Feliz Mendelssohn

Frédéric Chopin

Robert Schumann

Franz Lizst

Richard Wagner

Guiseppe Verdi

Jacques Offenbach

Bedřich Smetana

Anton Bruckner

Johann Straus II

Alexander Borodin

Johannes Brahms

Camille Saint-Saëns

Georges Bizet

Modest Mussorgsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Antonín Dvořák

Edward Grieg

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Gabriel Fauvré

Sir Edward Elgar

Giacomo Puccini

Gustav Mahler

Claude Debussy

Frederick Delius

Richard Strauss

Jean Sebelius

Franz Lehár

Ralph Vaughan Williams


Lifespan


1770 - 1827

1786 - 1826

1792 - 1868

1797 - 1828

1797 - 1848

1803 - 1869

1809 - 1847

1810 - 1849

1810 - 1856

1811 - 1886

1813 - 1883

1813 - 1901

1819 - 1880

1824 - 1884

1824 - 1896

1825 - 1899

1833 - 1887

1833 - 1897

1835 - 1921

1838 - 1875

1839 - 1881

1840 - 1893

1841 - 1904

1843 - 1907

1844 - 1908

1845 - 1924

1857 - 1934

1858 - 1924

1860 - 1911

1862 - 1918

1862 - 1934

1864 - 1949

1865 - 1957

1870 - 1948

1872 - 1958


Composer


Ralph Vaughan Williams

Sergei Rachmaninov

Gustav Hoist

Arnold Schoenberg

Maurice Ravel

Béla Bartók

Alban Berg

Igor Stravinsky

Sergei Prokofiev

George Gershwin

Francis Poulenc

Kurt Weill

Aaron Copland

Michael Tippett

Dimitri Shostakovich

Oliver Messiaen

Benjamin Britten

Leonard Bernstein

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Steve Reich

Philip Glass


Lifespan


1872 - 1958

1873 - 1943

1874 - 1934

1874 - 1951

1875 - 1937

1881 - 1945

1885 - 1935

1882 - 1971

1891 - 1953

1898 - 1937

1899 - 1963

1900 - 1950

1900 - 1990

1905 - 1998

1906 - 1975

1908 - 1992

1913 - 1976

1918 - 1990

1928 - 2007

1936 - alive

1937 - alive