Explore a subject through time
Music timeline
Composers, recordings, bands and landmark releases.
41 moments in QuoAnno
Reading the timeline
A wider chronology
Music history survives through scores, instruments, recordings, performances and the memories of listeners. A date may identify a composition, premiere, recording session or commercial release, each of which tells a different part of a work's story.
The modern period also shows how technology changed musical reach. Mechanical and electrical recording, radio, portable formats and streaming altered who could hear music, where they heard it and how quickly local styles could become international culture.
What this category covers
Themes to follow
Composition and performance
Works, premieres and traditions shaped by musicians, venues and audiences.
Recording
Technologies that turned performances into repeatable and distributable objects.
Popular movements
Genres, scenes and artists whose influence travelled through mass media.
Listening formats
Records, broadcasts, digital files and services that changed access and discovery.
Across the category
Timeline highlights
Jacopo Peri’s Dafne pioneers opera
Dafne is the earliest known work that, by modern standards, could be considered an opera.
Mozart’s Don Giovanni premieres in Prague
Don Giovanni premiered in Prague on 29 October 1787, with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony premieres
The finale sets Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.”
Wagner’s complete Ring cycle premieres
Der Ring des Nibelungen, WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner.
Crazy Blues becomes a landmark blues recording
"Crazy Blues" is a song written by Perry Bradford in 1918 under its original title, "Harlem Blues".
Woodstock festival takes place
The event became a symbol of 1960s counterculture.
DJ Kool Herc plays a foundational Bronx party
Clive Campbell, better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican-American DJ who is a pioneer of hip-hop music, where he along with others popularized it in the Bronx, New York City, in 1973.
Michael Jackson releases Thriller
Thriller is widely recognized as the best-selling album of all time.
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Further reading
These independent reference works and institutions provide broader context. QuoAnno links to them for further reading; the summaries on this page are original and are not copied from those sources.
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