Musician

For the popular-music magazine, see Musician (magazine).

"Instrumentalist" redirects here. For followers of the philosophy, see instrumentalism.

A musician usually plays a musical instrument, especially as a profession. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music. It's also a person who makes music a profession, anyone (professional or not) who's skilled in making music or performing music creatively, or one who composes, conducts, or performs music (especially instrumental music).

Musicians can be of any music style not limited to classical, orchestral or choral, and musicians can have skills in many different styles outside of their professional experience. Examples of musicians' skills are the orchestration of music, improvisation, conducting, singing, composing, arranging, and/or being an instrumentalist.

Medieval Musicians (400-1450)

For further information, see Medieval Music

During this time period, instrumental musicians mostly improvised and with soft ensembles with soft (bas) or loud (haut) instruments, categorized by their use (indoor or outdoor). Most musicians during this time period catered to the influences of the Roman Catholic Church, providing arrangements structured around Gregorian chant structure and Masses from church texts.

Notable Musicians:

• Phillipe de Vitry
• Guillaume Dufay
• Guillaume de Machaut
• Hildegard of Bingen

Renaissance Musicians (1450-1600)

For further information, see Renaissance Music

Musicians in the Renaissance produced pieces of music that needed to be able to be played during masses for any church and important chapel. Vocal pieces were in Latin, as it was the basis for church texts of the time, and they typically were known as Church-polyphonic or "made up of several simultaneous melodies". By the end of the sixteenth century, however, patronage was split among many areas: the Catholic Church, Protestant churches and courts, wealthy amateurs, and music printing—all were sources of income for composers.

Notable Musicians:

• Giovanni Gabrieli
• Thomas Tallis
• Claudio Monteverdi

Baroque Musicians (1600-1750)

For further information, see Baroque Music

From about 1600 to 1750, the Baroque period was an era of music encompassed by counterpoint and basso continuo characteristics. Vocal and instrumental “color” became more important compared to the Renaissance style of music, and emphasized much of the volume, texture and pace of each piece.

Notable Musicians:

• George Frideric Handel
• Johann Sebastian Bach
• Antonio Vivaldi

Classical Musicians (1750-1820)

For further information, see Classical Music

Classical music was created by musicians that lived during a time of a rising middle class called the bourgeoisie. Many middle class inhabitants of France during this time were living under the absolute power of their absolute monarchy that had been in power for some time. This caused much of the music to be made an performed in more constraint environments compared to the flourishing times of the Renaissance and the Baroque Era's.

Notable Musicians:

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Franz Joseph Haydn
• Franz Schubert

Romantic Musicians (1820-1910)

" The early Romantic period thus coincides with what is often called the "age of revolutions"--including, of course, the American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions--an age of upheavals in political, economic, and social traditions, the age which witnessed the initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution. A revolutionary energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the theory and practice of poetry (and all art), but the very way we perceive the world. Some of its major precepts have survived into the twentieth century and still affect our contemporary period".

Notable Musicians

• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Frédéric Chopin
• Ludwig van Beethoven

Twentieth-Century (1920-2000)

The world made the transition from 19th-century Romanticism to 20th century Modernism and its inhabitants witnessed a drastic musical change. Twentieth-Century music started from composers and musicians rejecting the emotion-dominated Romantic period and represented the world as "it was actually perceived". Artists wrote to be "objective, while objects existed on their own terms. While past eras concentrated on spirituality, this new period placed emphasis on physicality and things that were concrete."

Notable Musicians

• Igor Stravinsky
• Claude Debussy
• Arnold Schoenberg
• Philip Glass
• John Cage

See also

• Renaissance music
• Baroque music
• Classical music
• Romantic music
• Twentieth-Century music
• Singer
• Composer
• Recording Artist
• Music Artist (Occupation)
• American Federation of Musicians
• Eastern Fare Music Foundation

External links

Media related to Musicians at Wikimedia Commons