The oldest written music
The Hurrian hymns, carved on clay tablets around 1400 BCE, hold the oldest known musical notation. One of them can still be partly played today.
Verisoph story dossier
Music and the show
The history of music and entertainment: notation, opera, recorded sound, jazz, rock, hip-hop, cinema, television, and games.
The history of music and entertainment: notation, opera, recorded sound, jazz, rock, hip-hop, cinema, television, and games.
69 newly added in the last 14 days
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Greek drama and the City Dionysia
Athens held drama contests at the festival of Dionysus, where tragedy and comedy took form. Playwrights like Aeschylus and Sophocles laid the foundation of Western theatre.
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The Colosseum opens in Rome
The emperor Titus opened the Colosseum with a hundred days of games. Gladiator fights and staged spectacles drew tens of thousands as mass public entertainment.
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Ancient Greek melody survives in full
The Seikilos epitaph, cut into a stone column, is the oldest complete piece of music with notation that survives. It sets a short poem about enjoying life to a written tune.
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The Natya Shastra codifies Indian performing arts
The Sanskrit treatise Natya Shastra set out the rules of drama, dance, and music in ancient India. It has guided Indian performing arts for close to two thousand years.
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Gregorian chant takes shape
Church singers across Europe settled on a shared body of plainchant for the Latin Mass. It became the main sacred music of the medieval West.
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Guido d'Arezzo invents staff notation
The monk Guido d'Arezzo set out a system of lines and spaces to fix the pitch of each note. It let singers read music they had never heard and became the basis of Western notation.
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Polyphony flowers at Notre-Dame
Composers linked to Notre-Dame cathedral wrote music with several independent voice lines at once. This break from single-line chant opened the way for centuries of Western harmony.
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The first printed music
Ottaviano Petrucci printed a book of polyphonic songs using movable type. Printing made music cheap to copy and spread it far beyond monasteries and courts.
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Commedia dell'arte takes the stage
Traveling Italian troupes performed improvised comedy with stock masked characters. Commedia dell'arte shaped European comedy and the idea of the professional actor.
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Shakespeare's Globe Theatre opens
The Globe Theatre opened on the south bank of the Thames as home to Shakespeare's company. Its open-air stage hosted first performances of plays like Hamlet and Macbeth.
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Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, an early opera
Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo told a full story through song and orchestra at the Mantuan court. It is the earliest opera still regularly staged today.
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The first public opera house opens
Venice's Teatro San Cassiano opened as the first opera house that anyone could pay to enter. Opera moved from private courts to a paying public.
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Bach writes the Brandenburg Concertos
Johann Sebastian Bach gathered six concertos and sent them to the Margrave of Brandenburg. They stand among the high points of Baroque instrumental music.
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Handel's Messiah premieres
George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah was first performed for a charity concert in Dublin. Its Hallelujah chorus became one of the best-known pieces in Western music.
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Astley invents the modern circus
Philip Astley staged trick riding in a round ring and added acrobats and clowns between acts. His format became the modern circus.
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Haydn shapes the symphony
Joseph Haydn wrote over a hundred symphonies and dozens of string quartets in the service of the Esterházy court. His work set the form for the Classical era that Mozart and Beethoven built on.
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Mozart's The Magic Flute premieres
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute opened at a suburban Vienna theatre weeks before he died. It mixed fairy tale, comedy, and grand music into a lasting favorite.
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Beethoven's Ninth Symphony premieres
Ludwig van Beethoven, by then deaf, unveiled his Ninth Symphony with a full choir singing the Ode to Joy. It pushed the symphony to a new scale and remains a symbol of shared hope.
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Wagner opens the Bayreuth Festival
Richard Wagner staged the first complete Ring cycle in a theatre built for his own operas. His grand vision of music drama reshaped Romantic music and stagecraft.
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Edison invents the phonograph
Thomas Edison built a machine that could record sound onto a tinfoil cylinder and play it back. For the first time, music and speech could be captured and heard again.
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Edison invents the phonograph
have been vinyl, but in this case it was copper, plated with gold. This analog means of capturing, preserving, and reproducing sound was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, who called it phonography.
have been vinyl, but in this case it was copper, plated with gold. This analog means of capturing, preserving, and reproducing sound was invented in 1
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
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Vaudeville dominates the American stage
Vaudeville bills strung together singers, comics, dancers, and acrobats for a broad family audience. It was the most popular live entertainment in America until film and radio took over.
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Berliner patents the gramophone
Emile Berliner replaced Edison's cylinders with flat discs that were easy to copy. The disc record became the standard format for selling recorded music for a century.
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The Lumière brothers hold the first film screening
The Lumière brothers charged an audience to watch short films projected on a screen in a Paris cafe. This public screening is often marked as the birth of cinema.
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Melies releases A Trip to the Moon
Georges Melies made A Trip to the Moon, an early film that told a fantastical story with special effects. It showed that film could be a tool for imagination, not just record real life.
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The first feature-length film
The Australian film The Story of the Kelly Gang ran over an hour, far longer than the shorts of its day. It is widely regarded as the first feature-length narrative film.
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Jazz is born in New Orleans
In the bars and streets of New Orleans, musicians blended blues, ragtime, and brass band music into jazz. Its swing and improvisation would spread across the world.
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W.C. Handy publishes the blues
W.C. Handy published Memphis Blues, one of the first blues songs to reach print. The blues carried the feeling of Black Southern life into the heart of American music.
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India's first feature film
Raja Harishchandra, directed by Dadasaheb Phalke, was India's first full-length feature. It launched what would become the world's largest film industry.
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Hollywood becomes the film capital
Film companies gathered in Hollywood for its sun, space, and cheap land, and built the studio system. Los Angeles became the center of the world film business.
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The first jazz recording
The Original Dixieland Jass Band cut the first commercially released jazz record. It sold widely and pushed the new sound into homes across the country.
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Louis Armstrong and the Jazz Age
Louis Armstrong's Hot Five recordings put the solo improviser at the center of jazz. The 1920s came to be called the Jazz Age as the music defined a decade.
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The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting
A Nashville radio show first aired the country music program that became the Grand Ole Opry. It is the longest-running radio broadcast in U.S. history and made Nashville a country music capital.
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The Jazz Singer brings sound to film
The Jazz Singer was the first feature to sync spoken dialogue and singing with the picture. It ended the silent era and forced the whole industry to adopt sound.
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Disney's Snow White, the first animated feature
Walt Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature in color. Its success proved animation could carry a major film.
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Television enters the home
After the war, television sets spread quickly into ordinary homes. TV became the dominant form of home entertainment and reshaped daily life.
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Elvis Presley and the birth of rock and roll
Elvis Presley recorded That's All Right at Sun Studio, mixing country and blues into an early rock and roll sound. The new music and its young star soon reshaped popular culture.
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Chuck Berry releases Maybellene
Chuck Berry's Maybellene fused country storytelling with a driving guitar beat. His songwriting and guitar style became a template for rock and roll.
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Disneyland opens
Walt Disney opened Disneyland, a themed park built around his films and characters. It created the model for the modern theme park.
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Motown Records is founded
Berry Gordy started Motown Records in Detroit and built a hit factory of Black pop and soul. Its polished sound crossed over to a wide audience and shaped 1960s music.
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Astro Boy launches TV anime
Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy became the first popular weekly animated TV series in Japan. It set the style and pace for anime, which would later win fans worldwide.
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The Beatles spark the British Invasion
The Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show to a huge U.S. television audience. Their arrival set off the British Invasion and years of Beatlemania.
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Ravi Shankar brings Indian classical music west
Sitar master Ravi Shankar performed for Western rock crowds, including at the Monterey Pop Festival. He drew a global audience to the raga tradition of Indian classical music.
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Woodstock
Around half a million people gathered for three days of music on a dairy farm in upstate New York. Woodstock became the defining symbol of the 1960s counterculture.
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Fela Kuti pioneers Afrobeat
Nigerian musician Fela Kuti fused Yoruba rhythms, jazz, and funk into Afrobeat. He paired long, hypnotic grooves with sharp criticism of those in power.
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Pong launches the video game industry
Atari released Pong, a simple table tennis arcade game that became a hit. It turned video games into a real business and started the arcade boom.
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Bob Marley takes reggae worldwide
Bob Marley and the Wailers released Catch a Fire, their first album for an international label. Reggae's Jamaican sound and message of resistance reached a global audience.
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Hip-hop is born in the Bronx
At a back-to-school party in the Bronx, DJ Kool Herc stretched out the drum breaks of records for dancers. That trick grew into hip-hop, one of the most influential cultures in modern music.
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Jaws launches the summer blockbuster
Steven Spielberg's Jaws opened in a wide summer release backed by heavy television advertising. Its huge earnings created the model of the summer blockbuster.
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Punk breaks out
Bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols stripped rock down to fast, raw, do-it-yourself songs. Punk rejected polish and gave a loud voice to disaffected youth.
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Star Wars changes Hollywood
George Lucas's Star Wars became a runaway hit and a merchandising powerhouse. It pushed Hollywood toward effects-driven franchises and tie-in products.
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Saturday Night Fever ignites disco
The film Saturday Night Fever and its Bee Gees soundtrack pushed disco to the top of the charts. Dance floors and mirror balls defined a stretch of the late 1970s.
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Space Invaders and the arcade golden age
Taito's Space Invaders became a worldwide craze and swallowed coins by the millions. It opened the golden age of the arcade.
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Sony launches the Walkman
Sony's Walkman let people carry their own music and listen through headphones anywhere. It made music personal and portable for the first time.
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MTV launches
also in Media, education, and information, Media, propaganda, and influence
MTV began broadcasting music videos on 1 August 1981, fusing television with pop music and advertising. It reshaped youth culture and the marketing of entertainment.
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The compact disc reaches the market
The compact disc brought digital sound to home listeners with no surface hiss. It soon replaced vinyl and cassettes as the main way people bought music.
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Michael Jackson's Thriller and the MTV era
Michael Jackson released Thriller, which became the best-selling album ever. Its ambitious videos in heavy MTV rotation showed how central the music video had become.
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Nintendo revives home gaming
Nintendo launched the Famicom console, sold abroad as the NES, after a crash had gutted the game market. Quality controls and hits like Super Mario Bros. brought gaming back into the home.
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Live Aid
also in World's fairs, festivals, and the age of spectacle
Two linked concerts raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia and were beamed to a global television audience. Live Aid showed the reach of pop music as a worldwide event.
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Napster launches file sharing
Shawn Fanning released Napster, which let people swap MP3 files directly with each other. It threw the record industry into crisis and changed how people expected to get music.
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Apple releases the iPod
Apple's iPod held a thousand songs in a pocket-sized player. It made carrying a whole music library normal and pointed music toward the digital age.
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Apple opens the iTunes Store
Apple's iTunes Store sold single tracks for 99 cents with the backing of the major labels. It offered a legal answer to file sharing and reshaped the music business.
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YouTube and the creator economy
YouTube let anyone upload and share video with the world for free. It grew into a platform where independent creators could build audiences and earn a living outside traditional media.
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Netflix launches streaming video
Netflix added instant streaming to its DVD-by-mail service, letting members watch over the internet. Streaming went on to upend television and film distribution.
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Spotify launches streaming
Spotify opened in Europe offering instant access to a huge music catalog for free or a monthly fee. Streaming soon became the main way the world listens to music.
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Twitch and live game streaming
Twitch launched as a platform for people to broadcast themselves playing games live. It turned watching others play into a mass pastime and a career path.
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Esports go mainstream
Competitive gaming grew into a spectator sport with big prize pools and packed arenas for events like the League of Legends World Championship. Millions began watching others play online.
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Gangnam Style and the rise of K-pop
Psy's Gangnam Style became the first video to reach a billion views on YouTube. Its success signaled the global rise of K-pop from South Korea.
Further reading
- The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood James Gleick 2011 cited in 1