Music History For Kids

Discover the fascinating world of music history! Explore famous composers, musical eras, instruments, and the stories behind the music through engaging lessons, listening examples, activities, and resources designed for elementary and middle school students.

Explore Music Through History

Travel through time and discover how music has changed across different cultures, time periods, and generations. From medieval chants to modern rock, every era tells a story about the people, cultures, and ideas that shaped music.

Click the image below to explore composers, instruments, and music from this era.

How to Use This Music History Curriculum

Music History for Kids is a free online curriculum designed to help students and teachers explore the fascinating story of music. Students can discover musical eras, famous composers, instruments, listening examples, activities, and critical thinking questions that bring history to life.

Whether used in the classroom, homeschool setting, or for independent learning, these lessons make it easy for students to explore how music has changed throughout history.

Famous Composers for Kids

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Learn About Instruments Through History

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Why is Music History Divided Into Eras?

What is a Music Era? A music era is a period of history when composers and musicians share similar styles, instruments, and ways of creating music. These changes often happen because of events happening in the world around them, including new inventions, cultural changes, and ideas from other forms of art.

Music eras are organized by time periods based on their musical characteristics, instruments, and compositional techniques. These characteristics include melody, rhythm, texture, dynamics, and harmony. Throughout history, new inventions, changing tastes, and world events have influenced the music people create. Historians identify a new era when these elements begin to change significantly.

The musical eras discussed on this site focus primarily on Western music history, which developed through European traditions and later influenced music in America. However, music has been created by cultures all around the world, and every culture has its own rich musical history and traditions.”Western music” is any music from Europe and America that began with Ancient Greek and Roman culture.

What about composers who don’t fit nicely into an era?

Although historians use dates to organize musical eras, composers did not suddenly change their style when a new era began. Instead, musical styles gradually evolved over time. Some composers wrote music that connected two different eras. These composers are called transitional composers.

Transitional composers are composers who overlap two musical eras. Beethoven is an example of a transitional composer. Beethoven composed music during the Classical era and also helped usher in the Romantic era near the end of his life as he became deaf. An example of the opposite is Brahms, a Romantic-era composer. Brahms is considered a “traditional” composer because he drew on past musical tastes and forms in his compositions, even though he lived during the Romantic Era.

How Are the Music Eras Given Names?

Musical eras tend to coincide with similar trends in art, writing, and architecture. Consider the difference between Baroque and Classical architecture. You can see from the pictures below that there is a distinct difference between the two.

The music of these times reflects these architectural preferences. Just like the buildings below, Classical melodies are less embellished and have balanced phrases compared to the highly ornamented polyphonic Baroque era.

What is the difference between the two buildings above?

How Technological Advances Influence Music

Sometimes music era names have to do with technological advances. An example of an era named for its many innovations is the Renaissance Era. “Renaissance” is a term that describes a burst of new art, philosophy, and scientific ideas in society.

During the Industrial Revolution, technology changed the way people lived and worked. These changes also influenced music. Composers began experimenting with new ideas, larger ensembles, and different sounds. In the Modern Era, some composers explored unusual harmonies and new ways of organizing music. Music became very mathematical with the rise of Arnold Schoenberg and Serialism, and dissonant chromatic pitches were used more often.

Computers have recently changed music tastes again. Historians are beginning to label this the Postmodern era. Do you like this new name, or should we call it something else, like the Computer Era?

Critical Thinking

1. As a class, brainstorm new names for our current music era. Why did you pick these names? Vote for the name you like.
2. What is a transitional composer? Name an example of one.
3. Based on the photographs of the two buildings, what characteristics do you think Baroque and Classical music have?

Go on Another Adventure with the Music Animals