Western art music extends from the great repertory of Gregorian chant, first assembled around the year 600 C.E., to compositions circulating electronically on the Internet today. The scope and variety of all this music is almost bewildering; there’s too much of it by far to cover in a single semester or quarter course — too much, that is, if one is going to do more than skim the music, picking up a few stray facts and figures about it without really listening carefully.

But listening carefully is the crucial thing; so we needed to make choices, limiting the range of music covered in Listen. The most attentive coverage begins in the eighteenth century, with Unit III and the music of Bach and Handel, who are the earliest composers with a long-standing place in the standard repertory of concert music. By standard repertory we mean a large body of music from which concert artists and conductors usually draw their programs.

As a concise introduction to all this, Unit II presents an overview of the rich traditions of Western art music before the eighteenth century. This so-called early music, from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the early Baroque period, was forgotten for centuries and revived mainly in the second half of the twentieth century. The revival itself shows that musical life keeps changing, and these days many concert series and even opera companies include early music on their schedules. Through these performances and through recordings, what was once forgotten has found its way back into today’s classical music mainstream.

Chronology