Guide Scheme

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy - Ludwig van Beethoven

The organizational scheme for the Great Books guide is based on musical periods. Authors, composers and artists are organized chronologially by date of birth. With the exception of Antiquity (6000 BC to 350 AD), dates for six of the seven periods [Medieval (350 - 1450), Renaissance (1450 - 1600), Baroque (1600 - 1750), Classical (1750 - 1820), Romantic (1820 - 1900) and Modern (1900 - present)] follow those used by Dave Lampson at Classical Net who inspired these pages. We have linked a representative selection of composers from Classical Net's alphabetical lists chronologically and assigned "Great Book" authors and artists (under construction) to these periods by aligning the artist/author's date of birth with the birth dates of the closest music composers. The chronological composer lists follow Classical Net's period assignments closely with a few exceptions. For instance, Classical Net assigns the guitar composers Ferdinando Carulli (1770 - 1841) [born in the same year as classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)], Fernando Sor (1778 - 1839), and Mauro Giuliani (1781 - 1829) to the Romantic period. In our chronological scheme all three fall within the Classical period.

Selection of points on any of the five category timelines below will bring up the first record from the appropriate musical period: [A]ntiquity, [M]edieval, [R]enaissance, [B]aroque, [C]lassical, [R]omantic or [M]odern.

The extended timeline below contains records from all five categories (science, art, books, theatre and music). Once a record is on screen you may fine tune your choice by moving through all records in the data base alphabetically, chronologically, or categorically using the arrow selection tools.

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