Renaissance
As all forms of art, including music, the renaissance marked the rebirth of humanism, and a revival in cultural achievements for their own sake. Musical innovations were quickly disseminated, primarily facilitated by the advent of music printing, and thus the development of music theory and practice was likewise propelled forward. This period covers the last half of the 15th century, and 16th century, inclusive. With the Renaissance, more complicated and broader harmonic and contrapuntal structures emerge. Though the musical forms employed are still largely liturgical, the late Renaissance does see a great increase in sophistication for instrumental composition, as well as the emergence of secular madrigals, dramatic works and the first operas.
Many of these changes were pioneered with the music of Franco-Flemish composers including Johannes Ockeghem, Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez. The period culminated in the music of Giovanni Palestrina, Claudio Monteverdi, William Byrd, Roland de Lassus, and many others, as the musical styles spread throughout Europe.
Music of the Baroque Era (1600-1750) was characterized by vastness of proportion, rich counterpoint, great splendor and a highly ornamented melodic line. There is a breaking away from the severity of Medieval and early Renaissance music with emphasis on the use of great vocal and instrumental color. Secular music is now as much in evidence as liturgical music.
The harpsichord music of Johann Sebastian Bach, François Couperin, and Jean-Philippe Rameau, as well as the instrumental music of George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli and Johann Sebastian Bach epitomize the precepts of the Baroque.
In the music of this period there was again what amounts to a revolution against the musical trends of the preceding (or Baroque) era. To be sure, there is not a set date on which one might remark that here the revolution began. But one can see its beginnings in the music of the great transitional composer Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the emergence of the Galant style, as well as in the products of the musicians who came to be known as the Mannheim School (Johann Stamitz, etc.).
Briefly, the characteristics of classicism are a concern for musical form with a greater emphasis on clarity with more concise melodic expression and clarity of instrumental color. The compositions of Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in particular, exemplify the concepts of Classicism. This era culminated in the early music of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Extending the bounds of music beyond the restrictive formality of Classicism was the prime function of the musical period known as Romanticism. Formal concern, intellectuality and concise expression have now been augmented by sentiment, imagination and effect.
The period of Romanticism, heralded in the late works (ex., string quartets, symphonies, piano sonatas) of Ludwig van Beethoven culminates in "Impressionism" (Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, etc.), a transitional trend which, with the innovations of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, forms the beginnings of music in the 20th century.
In this category, little attempt has been made to differentiate among the various sub-groupings under which music of our century has been placed. There is left no compact definition of the contents of this list except to state that it is music written since the turn of the century which does not fit into the category of Romanticism purely for chronological reasons, but which, via either orchestral technique or mode of expression, is attempting to further broaden the horizons of music, though not to such an extent that it belongs to the modern era.
The operative principle for assigning composers to this list (instead of "Modern") was essentially one of style. Composers in the current category are closer in style and outlook to composers of the preceding lists than those in the Modern list are, though there are of course some who could have gone in either list. This category still includes a wide range of styles such as Neo-Classic, Neo-Romantic, Expressionist and Atonal. There is substantial chronological overlap between this list and the Modern one, but on average the compositions in this list fall into the first half of the twentieth century.