Music Timeline

Timeline

  • 2000 BCE
    The first examples of the lyre in the Bronze Age Aegean occur in the Cyclades and on Minoan Crete.
  • c. 1700 BCE
    The earliest written hint to a hand-drum: the Jewish tof played by Moses’s sister, Miriam, in Exodus.
  • 1420 BCE - 1300 BCE
    Clay dancing figures including a rare female lyre player are made in Minoan Palaikastro.
  • c. 1400 BCE
    Lyres across the Aegean assume S-shaped arms and become more decoratively carved, most often with sculpted birds.
  • 1250 BCE - 1200 BCE
    A Linear B tablet from Greek Thebes mentions lyre players as members of the royal palace staff.
  • c. 750 BCE
    The earliest depiction of the tympanon on a bronze disc found in the Idaean Cave in Crete.
  • c. 575 BCE
    Scythian Philosopher Anacharsis plays the tympanon in his celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries, as accounted by Herodotus.
  • c. 525 BCE
    The tympanon first appears on Greek pottery.
  • c. 499 BCE - c. 456 BCE
    Aeschylus in The Edonians tells of the bull-roaring sound of the tympanon in the rites of the moon goddess, Kotys.
  • c. 405 BCE
    Euripides in The Bacchai has Dionysos tell us how the tympanon was invented by him and his Mother Goddess, Rhea.
  • 396 BCE
    Competitions for heralds and trumpeters were added to the schedule of the Olympic Games.
  • 328 BCE
    Herodoros of Megara wins the first of ten consecutive trumpet competitions at the Olympic Games.
  • c. 205 BCE
    The tympanon is adopted by the Romans together with the cult of Magna Mater.
  • 1685 CE - 1750 CE
    Life of the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
  • 1906 CE - 1975 CE
    Life of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
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