Timeline of the Baroque Era
Change in musical style is gradual. Composers and performers introduce creative ideas to the world, but in an era before recording and mass media, these ideas would have to travel with the creative people themselves, on foot or by horse. A composer hears a traveling performer and is inspired, incorporating the new elements into his or her own music and in turn inspiring others. To make sense of this evolutionary process, scholars cluster these individual creative acts into eras, where big musical ideas emerge and hold sway. Many scholars arbitrarily choose the turn of the 17th century (1600) as the beginning of the Baroque ear and the death of J. S. Bach (1750) as its end.
To help make sense of this long period of change in Western history and music, the timeline below shows the lifetimes of some important composers of the Baroque era (and subsequent Classical era) on the right, with other important historical events on the left, for context.
