Kinds of music

The Middle Ages
The medieval era (476 AD to 1400 AD) started with the introduction of chanting into Roman Catholic Church services. Western Music then started becoming more of an art form with the advances in music notation. The only European Medieval repertory that survives from before about 800 is the monophonic liturgical plainsong of the Roman Catholic Church, the central tradition of which was called Gregorian chant. Alongside these traditions of sacred and church music there existed a vibrant tradition of secular song. Examples of composers from this period are Léonin, Pérotin and Guillaume de Machaut. From the Renaissance music era, much of the surviving music of 14th-century Europe is secular. By the middle of the 15th century, composers and singers used a smooth polyphony for sacred musical compositions. Prominent composers from this era are Guillaume Dufay, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Thomas Morley, and Orlande de Lassus.

The Renaissance

Renaissance music (c. 1400 A.D. to 1600 A.D.) was more focused on secular themes. Around 1450, the printing press was invented, and that helped to disseminate musical styles more quickly and across a larger area. Thus, music could play an increasingly important role in daily life. Musicians worked for the church, courts and towns. Church choirs grew in size, and the church remained an important patron of music. However, musical activity shifted to the courts. Kings and princes competed for the finest composers.
Many leading important composers came from Holland, Belgium, and northern France, called the Franco-Flemish composers. They held important positions throughout Europe, especially in Italy. Other countries with vibrant musical lives include Germany, England, and Spain.

The Baroque
The Baroque era of music took place from 1600 to 1750, as the Baroque artistic style flourished across Europe; and during this time, music expanded in its range and complexity. Baroque music began when the first operas were written and when contrapuntal music became prevalent. German Baroque composers wrote for small ensembles including strings, brass, and woodwinds, as well as choirs, pipe organ, harpsichord, and clavichord. During this period several major music forms were defined that lasted into later periods when they were expanded and evolved further, including the fugue, the invention, the sonata, and the concerto. The late Baroque style was polyphonically complex and ornamental and rich in its melodies. Composers from the Baroque era include Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Georg Philipp Telemann.

Classicism
The music of the Classical Period (1750 A.D. to 1830 A.D.) looked to the art and philosophy of Ancient Greece and Rome, to the ideals of balance, proportion and disciplined expression. It has a lighter, clearer and considerably simpler texture, and tended to be almost voicelike and singable. New genres were discovered. The main style was the homophony,^[16] where prominent melody and accompaniment are clearly distinct.
Importance was given to instrumental music. It was dominated by further evolution of musical forms initially defined in the Baroque period: the sonata, the concerto, and the symphony. Others main kinds were trio, string quartet, serenade and divertimento. The sonata was the most important and developed form. Although Baroque composers also wrote sonatas, the Classical style of sonata is completely distinct. All of the main instrumental forms of the Classical era were based on the dramatic structure of the sonata.
One of the most important evolutionary steps made in the Classical period was the development of public concerts. The aristocracy would still play a significant role in the sponsorship of musical life, but it was now possible for composers to survive without being its permanent employees. The increasing popularity led to a growth in both the number and range of the orchestras. The expansion of orchestral concerts necessitated large public spaces. As a result of all these processes, symphonic music (including opera, ballet and oratorio) became more extroverted.
The best known composers of Classicism are Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Johann Christian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. Beethoven and Schubert are also considered to be composers in evolution towards Romanticism.

Romanticism
Romantic Music (c. 1810 A.D. to 1900 A.D.) turned the rigid styles and forms of the Classical era into more passionate and expressive pieces. It attempted to increase emotional expression and power to describe deeper truths or human feelings. The emotional and expressive qualities of music came to take precedence over technique and tradition. Romantic composers grew in idiosyncrasy, and went further in the syncretism of different art-forms (such as literature), history (historical figures), or nature itself with music. Romantic love was a prevalent theme in many works composed during this period. In some cases the formal structures from the classical period were preserved, but in many others existing genres, forms, and functions were improved. Also, new forms were created that were deemed better suited to the new subject matter. Opera and ballet continued to evolve.^[13]
In 1800, the music developed by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert introduced a more dramatic, expressive style. In Beethoven's case, motifs, developed organically, came to replace melody as the most significant compositional unit. Later Romantic composers such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák, and Gustav Mahler used more elaborated chords and more dissonance to create dramatic tension. They generated complex and often much longer musical works. During Romantic period tonality was at its peak. The late 19th century saw a dramatic expansion in the size of the orchestra, and in the role of concerts as part of urban society. It also saw a new diversity in theatre music, including operetta, and musical comedy and other forms of musical theatre.

Asian cultures

Indian classical music is one of the oldest musical traditions in the world.^[17] The Indus Valley civilization has sculptures that show dance^[18] and old musical instruments, like the seven holed flute. Various types of stringed instruments and drums have been recovered from Harrappa and Mohenjo Daro by excavations carried out by Sir Mortimer Wheeler.^[19] The Rigveda has elements of present Indian music, with a musical notation to denote the metre and the mode of chanting.^[20] Indian classical music (marga) is monophonic, and based on a single melody line or raga rhythmically organized through talas. Hindustani music was influenced by the Persian performance practices of the Afghan Mughals. Carnatic music popular in the southern states, is largely devotional; the majority of the songs are addressed to the Hindu deities. There are a lot of songs emphasising love and other social issues.
Asian music covers the music cultures of Arabia, Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Chinese classical music, the traditional art or court music of China, has a history stretching over around three thousand years. It has its own unique systems of musical notation, as well as musical tuning and pitch, musical instruments and styles or musical genres. Chinese music is pentatonic-diatonic, having a scale of twelve notes to an octave (5 + 7 = 12) as does European-influenced music. Persian music is the music of Persia and Persian language countries: musiqi, the science and art of music, and muzik, the sound and performance of music (Sakata 1983). See also: Music of Iran, Music of Afghanistan, Music of Tajikistan, Music of Uzbekistan.

20th- and 21st-century music

With 20th-century music, there was a vast increase in music listening as the radio gained popularity and phonographs were used to replay and distribute music. The focus of art music was characterized by exploration of new rhythms, styles, and sounds. Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and John Cage were all influential composers in 20th-century art music. The invention of sound recording and the ability to edit music gave rise to new sub-genre of classical music, including the acousmatic ^[21] and Musique concrète schools of electronic composition.
Jazz evolved and became an important genre of music over the course of the 20th century, and during the second half of that century, rock music did the same. Jazz is an American musical artform that originated in the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. The style's West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note.^[22] From its early development until the present, jazz has also incorporated music from 19th- and 20th-century American popular music.^[23] Jazz has, from its early-20th-century inception, spawned a variety of subgenres, ranging from New Orleans Dixieland (1910s) to 1970s and 1980s-era jazz-rock fusion.
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed in the 1960s from 1950s rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, and country music. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar or acoustic guitar, and it uses a strong back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or, since the 1970s, analog synthesizers and digital ones and computers since the 1990s. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form," it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody."^[24] In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it branched out into different subgenres, ranging from blues rock and jazz-rock fusion to heavy metal and punk rock, as well as the more classical influenced genre of progressive rock and several types of experimental rock genres.