Music Through History
Get to know great composers and musicians and music from different times, places and traditions; describe what makes each style distinctive and how music has changed from early and classical eras to recorded and popular music
What a learner can do afterwards
- Name several composers or musicians from different eras and something distinctive about their music (e.g. Beethoven's stormy symphonies)
- Recognise broad styles by ear (e.g. telling a classical orchestra from jazz or gamelan)
- Describe one way music changed over time (e.g. how recording let people hear music without live players)
The lesson
Music has been made for thousands of years, but it has not always sounded the same. In each time and place, musicians used different instruments and wrote music in different ways.
Beethoven wrote symphonies for a full orchestra. His music could turn from loud, stormy parts to soft, gentle ones in the same piece. Far away in Indonesia, gamelan orchestras play a very different sound: sets of gongs and metal xylophones that chime and ring together.
In the 1920s, musicians like Louis Armstrong made jazz popular by improvising, making up new melodies as they played their trumpets. Around the same time, recording let people listen to music at home instead of only at a concert, and that helped songs spread fast.
You can guess a style by listening for clues. A swirling orchestra with violins and trumpets is often classical. A trumpet making up a new tune over a swinging beat is often jazz. Ringing metal gongs playing together usually mean gamelan.
Every era and place makes music sound different, and you can learn to spot the clues in what you hear.
Watch it
Where it sits
Learn first
This opens up
Nothing builds on it yet.
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.