The Project
Back in college, I took one of the most impactful classes of my life: History of Western Music. Learning how the music I loved came to be, how composers and audiences changed over time, how advances in technology shaped it all… it was awesome.
One evening, listening to Tchaik or Wagner or Chopin or Liszt, I thought: could I create one big playlist which would show just how far Western art music had come?
It took longer than expected, but in January of 2020, I finally completed my goal, with a Spotify playlist featuring a track from each year, 1600-2000.
So, how was this list constructed? Using the best literature on the subject, I selected a piece from each year, narrowing down the list based on a few criteria:
- Is this piece historically significant?
- Is this piece widely known today?
- Do I just really like it?
Some decades were full of candidates- the 1880s being a prime example. It was painful having to pick between Faure’s Pavane, Satie’s Gymnopedies, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (I ultimately settled on the latter). Some decades were sparse and required extra digging. Some periods (Baroque and Contemporary in particular) were utterly foreign to a Late Romantic fanboy like me, and so involved a lot of research. In all, I tried to strike a balance, and hope you like the balance I’ve struck!
Listen
Four varieties of this timeline, from the granularity of a single year up to a whole millennium (yes, a millennium):
A full list of the works included may be found right here, all 401 of them.
Please enjoy, and thanks for visiting!
The Making Of / Reflections
What went well?
Hearing Musical Changes
While one can read about how Beethoven rocked Europe with his dynamic contrasts and stormy, emotional style, there’s something about listening to hours of lovely, witty, galant style compositions, and then… Boom! His “Pathetique” Sonata closes out the 18th century, followed by the “Moonlight” Sonata only two tracks (years) later. Playlist timelines make stylistic revolutions like his intuitive.
Understanding History
Listening to the monumental changes in Western music after the world wars, we get a sense of how cataclysmic those two conflicts really were. The 50 years between the triumph and confidence of Firebird and the confused horror of Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima were perhaps the most defining in Western history since the fall of Rome, and listening to the playlist one just feels it.
Discovery
Lastly, and most entertaining for myself, this whole process forced me to pay attention to other composers whose works are less known to the casual listener today- John Adams, Jean-Baptiste Lully, and Muzio Clementi becoming new favorites of mine. Any project which expands horizons is a project worth undertaking in my book!
What went… less well?
Limited Resources
With a project like this, the entire point is limiting one’s own resources. 401 slots between 1600 and 2000 meant that many composers could not make it on more than once- and many not at all. Even personal favorites like Sgambati and Heinichen faded into the familiar mélange of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms plus Mozart. It’s a shame, and something that I might address in future timelines, featuring only lesser-known composers, and perhaps emphasizing the many women whose musical contributions have been historically overlooked.
Time Problems
At many points in this project, I was forced to fib a little with dates. Sometimes, I took on the date of a revisions of a work; Verklärte Nacht made it on with its 1917 rearrangement, as I went with Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 for 1902. Sometimes I took the premiere date over the composition date, or vice-versa. Sometimes, if the dates were especially ambiguous (as was the case for much of the Baroque period) I picked the best year I could find, and went on my merry way. Playlist building is more an art than a science.
Conclusion
This project was a fun one, and I hope others enjoy it as much as I do. While I’m a little tired of all the research, curation, and clicking (come on, Spotify!) I certainly won’t write off doing another playlist timeline in the future. Heck- Jazz, Rock, Musicals… they’re all ripe for the timelining!