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Classical Period
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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Bach's most valuable contribution to the classical period (and the musical world as a whole) was his publication, An Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments. It instantly became the definitive for piano technique. To this day, it is still largely taught throughout the world. -
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Gluck revolutionized opera by softening the contrast between recitatives and arias by weaving underlying melodic themes and orchestral passages within the recitatives as they flowed into the arias. -
Franz Joseph Haydn
Haydn composed many pieces of music for the courtly orchestra to perform. Haydn was a great composer, though he wasn't as flashy as Mozart, his music always stayed true. -
Luigi Boccherini
Bocchernini's music never surpassed the popularity of Haydn's and, sadly, he died in poverty. Like Haydn, Boccherini has a prolific collection of compositions, but his most notable works are his cello sonatas and concertos, as well as his guitar quintets. -
Antonio Salieri
Salieri was a respected Kapellmeister who was mostly known for his contributions to opera. In 1804, Salieri abruptly stopped composing operas, and instead, wrote only music for the church. Salieri was friends with Haydn and gave music composition lessons to Ludwig van Beethoven. -
Muzio Clementi
Clementi was a master of many musical trades including a performer, composer, publisher, teacher, arranger, and even instrument maker. He traveled extensively throughout Europe, collecting and publishing music manuscripts, including those of Beethoven's, and selling pianos. -
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
His composition style is similar to that of Haydn's, often criticized for having "too many notes." Mozart was musical prodigy who began composing at the age of five. Shortly after his talent was discovered, his father was quick to take him on tours with his sister. -
Ludwig van Beethoven
Many view Beethoven as the bridge connecting the classical period to the romantic period. Beethoven only wrote nine symphonies. His compositions, especially the famous Symphony No. 9, opened the flood gates of composing with emotional abandon. -
Romantic Period
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Invention of the Battery
Count Alessandro Volta -
Felix Mendelssohn
Born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. -
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
Prussian Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. -
Percy Bysshe Shelley
One of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric poets in the English language, and one of the most influential. -
George Gordon Byron
Commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet, peer, politician, and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. -
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer and statesman. His works include epic and lyric poetry; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour; and four novels. -
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. -
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Russian composer of the late-Romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. -
Abraham Lincoln and General George McClellan.
On this day in 1862,a tortured relationship ends when President Abraham Lincoln removes General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. -
A Native American observers the completed Transcontinental railroad
Since at least 1832, both Eastern and frontier statesmen realized a need to connect the two coasts. It was not until 1853, though, that Congress appropriated funds to survey several routes for the transcontinental railroad. -
20th Century
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Norway's first ever shipment of bananas.
This is one of the first batches of banana that was sent to Norway. It had the weight of 3,000 kilos and came in crates/boxes. One of the people in this picture is Christian Mathiessen, the founder of Norway’s biggest fruit importer, Bama. Norway was the second country to import bananas in Europe, after the United Kingdom. -
Wilbur Wright flies around the Statue of Liberty
For a celebration honoring the maritime achievements of Henry Hudson and Robert Fulton, Wright had agreed that sometime between September 25 and October 9, he would make a flight that was either at least 10 miles or one hour in duration. -
The iceberg believed to have sunk the Titanic.
RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning of 15 April 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. -
The first World Series Game in New York
A season whose start included a Red Sox home game played amid great pageantry to celebrate Fenway Park’s centennial is concluding in historically circular fashion with a World Series involving the Giants, Boston’s opponent in the 1912 World Series. -
The last photo of the Titanic before it sunk.
RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning of 15 April 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. -
Young Adolf Hitler celebrating the announcement of World War One
On the day before the election of the Reich president, the Illustrierter Beobachter published the August 1914 picture with Hitler for the first time, with a magnifying-glass-like enlargement of his face. -
Spectators watch the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
On 28 June 1919, the peace treaty that ended World War I was signed by Germany and the Allies at the Palace of Versailles near Paris. Allied interests were represented by the ‘Big Three’: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Premier George Clemenceau and US President Woodrow Wilson. The Great War had devastated Europe. -
Aaron Copland
At first a modernist, he was the first American student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1920s; there he finished his Organ Symphony and Music for the Theater. By the 1930s, Copland turned to simple themes, especially the American West: El Salón Mexico was followed by the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring (1944), the last containing the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts." -
The Hollywood sign
The Hollywood Sign is a landmark and American cultural icon located in Los Angeles, California. It is situated on Mount Lee, in the Hollywood Hills area of the Santa Monica Mountains. The sign overlooks Hollywood, Los Angeles. -
Filming the MGM Lion
Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and one of its predecessors, Goldwyn Pictures, featured in the studio's production logo, which was created by the Paramount Studios art director Lionel S. Reiss. -
The models of the "American Gothic" painting
American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood's inspiration came from what is now known as the American Gothic House, and his decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." -
The other side of the Hoover Dam before it was flooded
Hoover Dam, originally known as Boulder Dam from 1933 to 1947, when it was officially renamed Hoover Dam by a joint resolution of Congress, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. -
Maurice Ravel
His Basque mother gave him an affinity for Spanish themes, as evident in Rapsodie espagnole and his most popular piece, Bolero (1928). Ravel produced Pavane for a Dead Princess while a student of Gabriel Fauré, but was frustrated when the French Conservatory overlooked him for the Prix de Rome four times. -
Aftermath of the Victory over Japan Day celebrations in New York City.
The day on which the Empire of Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect ending the war. -
Arnold Schoenberg
Schoenberg's early influences were Wagner and R. Strauss, as evident in his Transfigured Night (1900) for strings. His students, especially Alban Berg and Anton Webern, further elaborated on his theories. Fleeing Nazi persecution in 1933, he moved from Berlin to Los Angeles, where he completed A Survivor from Warsaw. -
Charles Ives
He learned experimentation from his father George, a local Connecticut businessman and bandleader. Ives studied music at Yale but found insurance sales more lucrative; his firm of Ives and Myrick was the largest in New York during the 1910s. -
Elvis joins the army
When he was drafted at 23, Elvis's blatant sexual energy was still the cause of mass moral pandemonium. When he emerged from the army two years later, he sounded old-fashioned and emasculated. -
Jackie Kennedy watching her husband debate Richard Nixon.
The Kennedy-Nixon debate was a defining moment of the 1960 presidential campaign. -
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. -
JFK giving his famous "Ich bin ein berliner" speech in Berlin, Germany.
Kennedy aimed to underline the support of the United States for West Germany 22 months after Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall to prevent mass emigration to the West. The message was aimed as much at the Soviets as it was at Berliners and was a clear statement of U.S. policy in the wake of the construction of the Berlin Wall. -
JFK’s funeral in the Capitol Building
The state funeral of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, took place in Washington, D.C., during the three days that followed his assassination on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. -
The Beatles take America
Already the most popular pop group in Europe, the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan's television show in early 1964. -
The Redlands drug bust
The Rolling Stones enshrined their reputation as rock'n'roll outlaws when Mick and Keith were arrested in the latter's Surrey mansion for possession of hash and amphetamines. -
The Beatles' shoot for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Prior to a late night recording session at Abbey Road, The Beatles visited Michael Cooper's London photographic studio where the cover photographs for Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band were taken. -
Jimi Hendrix Plays 'The Star Spangled Banner' at the Woodstock Festival
Woodstock, which attracted half-a-million rock fans, was the most dramatic mass flowering of the hippy ideal and, as with all defining moments, the beginning of the end of that same ideal. -
Neil Armstrong right after he walked on the moon
At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. -
Crowds at the original Woodstock Music Festival
On this day in 1969, the grooviest event in music history–the Woodstock Music Festival–draws to a close after three days of peace, love and rock ‘n’ roll in upstate New York. -
Black Sabbath release their first album
Though rock critics pinpoint the Kinks' 'You Really Got Me' from 1964 as the first proto-heavy metal single, this is the moment the form was defined in all its loud, lumpen, pounding glory. -
Igor Stravinsky
He studied under Rimsky-Korsakov and completed two grand ballets for Diaghilev, The Firebird and Petrushka. His Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring (1913), however, is what inaugurated music's Modern era. -
David Bowie creates Ziggy Stardust
In January, Bowie told an interviewer: 'I'm gay, and always have been.' Whatever the truth of the statement, it announced the imminent arrival of his androgynous alter ego, unveiled the following June on Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars . The first of Bowie s many exotic personae, and the moment that launched glam rock. Perhaps the most influential album of the decade. -
Benjamin Britten
Reviver of the opera in the U.K., most notably with Peter Grimes (1945), the story of a fisherman who kills two of his apprentices. Britten broke through with Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), a tribute to his composition teacher, and wrote incidental music for works by his friend W.H. Auden. -
Saturday Night Fever goes on general release
Travolta and the Bee Gees bring disco overground. The film, though cack-handed and corny in its evocation of New York s downtown disco scene, propelled a struggling white actor and an unhip vocal group into the forefront of a global dance phenomenon. The biggest-selling soundtrack ever. -
The murder of John Lennon
Mark Chapman's shooting of John Lennon on the doorstep of the star's New York home shocked the world. That Chapman was a fan, and someone who craved celebrity himself, only added to the chilling unreality of the moment. -
The launch of MTV
The pivotal moment when the pop video became as important as the pop single. The first television channel devoted totally to music, MTV has grown into a global brand as all-pervasive as Coca-Cola or Nike, colonizing and dulling the collective pop consciousness with the tyranny of the rotation play. -
Michael Jackson: Thriller released
The biggest-selling pop record of all time, Thriller made Michael Jackson a global icon. Then only 25, he had made his debut at the age of four and had his first hit at 12 sharing the charts with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and the Doors, and was already the subject of much media speculation concerning his eternal childhood. -
Ronald Reagan co-opts Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA'
Generally regarded as the world's greatest living rock'n'roll star, Springsteen's most successful song was also his most bombastic. The lyrics are about a Vietnam veteran on the poverty line, but it was the rousing, anthemic chorus that attracted Ronald Reagan, who used it during his 1984 re-election campaign. -
Madonnna's 'Material Girl' is released
The single that propelled Madonna beyond the mainstream and made her the most successful pop brand of modern times. Tied to a video in which she mimicked Monroe, it was the first and most audacious of her various self-inventions, a song that caught the consumerist thrust of the Eighties, even as it supposedly parodied the same. -
The Tank Man in Tiananmen Square, China. He's to the left of the bulldozer.
Tank Man is the nickname of an unidentified man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests. -
East German soldier passing a flower through the Berlin Wall before it was torn down
Berlin posed a problem for the Allies because it sat smack in the middle of the Soviet zone. Thus, West Berlin became a tiny island in the middle of Soviet-controlled East Germany. The problem grew as it became clear that the Allies were in a fight over two very different forms of government. -
Traffic jam in Berlin as the border between East and West Germany opens.
The night the Wall came down The 28-mile (45 km) barrier dividing Germany's capital was built in 1961 to prevent East Berliners fleeing to the West. -
Iranian soldiers looks at the burning Iraqi oil fields.
The Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by Iraqi military forces setting fire to a reported 605 to 732 oil wells along with an unspecified number of oil filled low-lying areas, such as oil lakes and fire trenches, as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 due to the advances of Coalition military forces in the Persian Gulf War. -
John Cage
An American student of Arnold Schoenberg, Cage took avant-garde to a new level, and may be considered a Dada composer because he believed in aleatory, or "chance" music. The following song, 4'33", required a pianist to sit at the piano for that length of time and then close it; audience noise and silence created the "music." -
The Spice Girls meet Simon Fuller
The Spice Girls were the most unlikely teen-pop phenomenon of the Nineties, not least because they were the first all-girl band in an era dominated by manufactured boy bands. They fused pop, rap and a strident, if inconsistent, 'girl power' message, and their meteoric rise was overseen by Simon Fuller, perhaps the most influential player in modern British pop. -
21st Century
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Pink
Alecia Beth Moore known professionally as P!NK, is an American singer, songwriter, dancer and actress. -
Billie Joe Armstrong
Billie Joe Armstrong is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actor who is best known as the lead vocalist, primary songwriter, and guitarist of the punk rock band Green Day, which he co-founded with Mike Dirnt. -
George Bush declares Eminem 'The biggest threat to American youth since Polio'
At the height of his notoriety Eminem, who had single-handedly made rap a medium for the kind of solipsistic whining usually expressed by pampered white guys with guitars, received the kind of endorsement even the biggest promo budget could not buy. Two years later, a poll of American parents found that 53 per cent agreed that 'America's youth find more truth in Eminem than George Bush'. -
Shakira
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll is a Colombian singer, songwriter, dancer, record producer, choreographer, and model. -
Lana del Rey
Lana Del Rey is a California based singer, songwriter, and model who currently resides in Malibu, California. She was born under the name Elizabeth Woolridge Grant to entrepreneur Robert England Jr. and Patricia Ann Hill in rural Lake Placid, New York on June 21, 1985. -
Katy Perry
Katy herself was once a Christian-genre singer and was only known at Santa Barbara. She signed at Columbia Records but been dropped but got hired at Capitol Records. -
Bruno Mars
Peter Gene Hernandez, professionally known by his stage name Bruno Mars, is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and choreographer. -
Adele
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins is an English singer and songwriter. Graduating from the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in 2006, Adele was given a recording contract by XL Recordings after a friend posted her demo on Myspace the same year. -
Jessie J
Jessica Ellen Cornish, better known by her stage name Jessie J, is an English singer and songwriter. Born and raised in London, she began her career on stage, aged 11, with a role in the West End musical Whistle Down the Wind.
