We can classify the Music History in distinct periods, every one represented by one style. Of course, one musical style aren't made quickly, it is a slow process, always with the styles juxtapose each other. But we use to divide the Ocidental Music History in six   important periods:

For many years, the music was transmited by voice, when  around the century IX, the stave was created . The italian monk Guido d’Arezzo ( 995 -1050) created a stave with fours lines. This system is used untill our days in the Gregorian Chant. Guido d’Arezzo called each note with one syllable, found in a hymn for Sanct John Baptist:

After many years, the Ut was changed  by the  Do.

The kind of  oldest music knew is made by one only melody without accompaniment. This style is called Gregorian Chant. After many years, the composers added   others voices on the chant. The Choral style was created..

There where in the Mediaeval Epoch many  dances and songs. In the centuries XII and XIII there were a intense producing of songs, composed by the "Troubadours", poets and musicians of   France.

This dances were very  populars in parties and  markets. The  instruments useds on this dances were: the viela (a ancient violin), the rebec, the lute, recorders, bagpipes, the mediaeval trumpet, percussion instruments .

The Renaissance Period  was  caracterized, in the Occidental Europe History, by the interest to Culture, particularly to many ideas of the old Greeks and Romans.

It was also a time of great discoveries and scannings, where Vasco of Gamma, Columbus, Cabral and other explorers were making voyages, while notables advances were processed in Science and Astronomy.

The composers had started to have a much more  interest for the profane music (not religious music), also writing parts for instruments, already not used to only follow voices. However, the biggest renascentistas musical treasures had been composered   for the church, in a described style as polyphonic chorale or polyphony and without accompaniment of instruments.

In the Saint Michael Basilica, in Venice, there are two big organs and two galleries for choir, situated in both the sides of the building. This gave to the composers the idea to compose parts for a  more than one choir, called polychorales.  So, a voice coming of the left is answered by the choir of the right and vice it turns. Some of the parts most impressive are of Giovani Gabrielli (1555 - 1612), what wrote chorales for two, three or until more groups.

The Motets were parts written for four voices or more voices, sung generally in the churches. The Madrigals writings for some voices were popular songs and   they are characterized for not having refrain. The great success in the England of century XVI, they had passed to be sung in the homes of all the families gotten passionate for music.

Until the start of century XVI, the composers only used the instruments to follow the songs. However, during century XVI, the composers had started to have  more interest in only writing music for instruments.

In many homes, beyond flutes, alaúdes and violas,  there was  a keyboard instrument:  a small organ, virginal or clavichord. The many English composers wrote parts for the virginal.

Many instruments, as charamelas, the flutes and some types of medieval cornetos and cromornes continued popular. Others, as the lute, had passed for perfectionings.

The Baroque word is probably of Portuguese origin, meaning pearl or jewel in the irregular format. In the beginning this word was used to assign the style of architecture and the art of century XVII, characterized for the excess of ornaments. More late, the term passed to be used by the musicians to indicate the period of the Music History  that goes of the appearance of the opera and the oratório until the death of J. S. Bach.

Baroque music is generally exuberante: energetic rhythms, melodies with many ornaments, strong contrasts of instrumental timbres.

Orfeu, of the composer Montiverdi (1567-1643) was written in the year of 1607 and it is the first great opera. Opera is a play where the role are sung instead of spoken. The Montiverdi's opera has one orchestra formed by 40 varied instruments, also with violins, that started to take place of the violas.

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) was the most popular Italian composer of operas. In France the main composers of operas had been Lully (1632-1687) and Rameau (1683-1764).   At the same time of the opera, the Oratorio is another important form of baroque vocal music. The oratorio is a kind of opera with histories of the Bible. . The most famous oratórios are of the German composer Haendel (1685-1759), of the beginning of century XVIII:   Israel in Egypt, Sansan and the celebrity Messias.   The Cantatas is oratorios in miniatures and was presented in the masses.

During the Baroque period, the instrumental music started to have equal importance as the vocal music. The orchestra started to take form. In the beginning the word  orchestra   was used to assign a formed set perhaps, with the available instruments at the moment. But in century XVII, the perfectioning of the string instruments, mainly the violins, made with that the string section became an independent unit. The violins had started to be the center of the orchestra, to which the composers added other instruments: flutes, bassoons, tubes, trompetes.  The harpisychord or organ as continuous is a constant presence in the baroque music making the harmony. New forms of composition had been created, as the fughes, the sonata, the suite and the concert.

The term "Classical", in Music, is employee two way different. The people use the expression  "Classical  music" considering all the music divided in two great parts: 'classic' and 'popular'. For the musicólogo, however, ' Classical   Music ' has special and necessary direction: it is composite music between 1750 and 1810, and this includes the music of Haydn and Mozart, as well  the initial compositions of Beethoven. In this time, the musician was a  man-servent of the nobleness. To please his masters, it was needed to follow the musical traditions. The creative imagination would not be welcome  if it represented a rupture of the traditional structure . Haydn accepted this treatment. Mozart did not accept these limits and paid a high price, the nobleness leave him to die like a beggar.  Beethoven was the first one who decided that  he did not have obligations to nobody  to be respected as  a artist. It was born, with Beethoven, the romantic thought.

Classic Music reveals refined and elegant and tends to be lighter, less complicated than the baroque music. The composers look for to enhance the beauty  of the melodies. The Orchestra is in development. The composers had left to use cravo and had added more winds instruments. During the Classical Period, the  instrumental music started to have greater importance that the vocal music. At this time  was created the Sonata.  It is a music with some movements for one or more instruments.

The Symphony is, in the reality, a sonata for orchestra. Its number of movements starts to be four: fast - slow - Minuet - very fast. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had been the biggest composers of symphonies of the Classicism. The Concert consists of a composition for a solista instrument against the orquestral mass. It has three movements: fast - slow - fast.

Many musics had been written for pianoforte. Bartolomeu Cristofori, a italian harpsichord maker  built the first piano about the 1700 year and called it  Gravicembalo col Piano e Forte ( hapsichord with sweet and strong sounds). While the harpsichord's strings are hit by nibs, the piano has its strings  hit by hammers (coated by leather in  the first  models) and the keyboard's dynamics can  be changed   according to the fingers' pressure. It gave to the piano a enormous expression's capacity and created a serial of  new possibilities. 

Initially, the piano wasn't popular because the first models was very precarious. In this time, the  keyboard's music was  printed with the indication for   pianoforte or harpsichord, but in the end of  18 century,  the harpsichord  already was obsolete and it was changed by the piano.

The classic composers had for objective to reach the balance between the formal structure and the expressividade. The romantic ones had come to unbalance everything. They searched greater form freedom, the vigorous expression most intense  of the emotions. Many romantic composers were eager readers and  had great interest for the other arts. Not rare a romantic composition had as inspiration a view of a  picture or a book read  by  the composer.

The  ideas that enchanted the romantic composers: exotic lands and the distant past, the dreams, the night and moonlight, the rivers, the lakes and the forests, the sadnesses of the love, legends and stories of fairies, mystery, the magic and the supernatural. The melodies become gotten passionate, similar the song. The harmonias become richer, with bigger job of dissonâncias.

During the Romantismo there was a rich bloom of the song, mainly of the Lied (' song ' in German) for piano and sing. First the great composer of  Lieder (plural of Lied) was Schubert. The operas most famous nowadays are the romantic ones. The great composers of operas of the Romantismo had been the Italians Verdi and Rossini and in Germany, Wagner. In Brazil, Antonio Carlos Gomes with his operas "The Guarani", "Fosca", "The Slave", etc.

The orchestra not only grew in size, but as in instruments. The metal section gained greater importance. In the wood section was  added the Piccolo, Bass Clarinet,   Horn Anglais and the Contrabassoon. The percussion instruments had been more varied. The romantic Concert used great orchestras and the composers, now under the challenge of the ability technique of virtuoses, became the part of the soloist  each time more difficult.

Until the half of century XIX, all music is dominated for the German influences. It   was when composers of other countries, mainly the Russians, had started to have the necessity to create its music. The composers used in theirs works the Music Folkloric and legends of theirs countries. It is the call Musical Nationalism. In century XIX the piano passed for diverse improvements. Almost all the romantic composers had written for the piano, but most important composers are: Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms.

There were  a great variety of short musics:  the dances as the waltzes, polonaises and mazurcas, brief parts as the romance, the song without words, the prelude, the nocturno, the ballad and the improptu. Another kind of composition was the Étude (Study), whose objective it was the improvement technician of the instrumentist. With effect, during this time it had a great advance in this direction, favoring the figure of the Virtuose: concert musiciant,  with an extraordinary technique. Virtuoses as the violinist Paganini and the pianist Liszt was admired very much.

The history of music in century XX consist off  attempts and experiences, new techniques and, in certain cases, also the creation of new sounds. While music in the previous periods could be identified by an only same e style, common to all the composers of the time, in century 20 it reveals as a complex mixture of many tendencies. The majority of those tendencies have a thing in common: a reaction against the romantic style.   Such fact made with certain critics described the music of century 20 like one " anti-romantic " music. The  more important techniques of composition of the music of century 20 are:

Melodies: Short and  broked, angular, in place of the long romantic melodies. In some times, the melody can be inexistent.

Rhythms: Vigorous and dynamic, with ample job of the sincope; metric unusual, as compasses of five and seven times; change of metric of a compass for another one, use of some different rhythms at the same time.

Timbres: Stranger, intriguing and exotic sounds; strong contrasts, to the times until explosives; more emphatical use of the percussion section; taken off unknown sounds of known instruments; sounds entirely new, proceeding from electronic equipments and magnetic tapes.