# A traversal of the musical ages



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Posted this elsewhere, where it wasn't at all appreciated. That means it's worth posting here!

It seems to me that the aesthetic arc of Western music over the centuries would be easier to understand if the various periods were given more descriptive titles. Here's a first draft.

1300-1500 - Lower hooter period
1500-1700 - Upper hooter period
1700-1760 - Cuckoo clock period
1760-1800 - Bow, scrape, and funny nickname period
1800-1830 - The Age of Rage plus Franz
1830-1870 - Hey, I'm Me! period
1870-1900 - End of the world as we know it period

After the 19th century, music developed in different directions:

The "Gosh, the way I feel is really important" school
The "Heck no, nobody cares how anybody feels" school
The "I think I just cut myself on my own music" school
The Wrist-slashing school (mostly Shostakovich and Schnittke)
The "Hey, this sounds nice and won't make your ears bleed even if it's kind of trivial" school.

Most of our favorite 20th-century composers can easily be assigned to one school or the other. Did I miss any?


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

1900-1910 The Guilt-ed Age
1910-1920 Life During Wartime as Written by Berg
1920-1930 The Russians Are Coming
1930-1940 Is It War Again?
1940-1950 Okay, the Jazz Era Influenced Classiques
1950-1960 Electronica Invasion... and the Fab 4
1960-1970 Rolling like a Stone on a Timpani
1970-1980 Pre-Reagan Classical Music Compositions
1980-1990 Hey Day of Reagan Era Composing
1990-2000 Internet Taking Over Technical Experiments
2000- Sorry we Are Living the Age of Post-Aquarius Classique Heroism


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