When a timeline is not essentially just a list of dates, it’s much more manageable to use. For the beginning music and art history student, the aim isn’t to remember every year, every king, every musical composer, and every artist. What the aim should be is to find a way to move through the history of culture without confusing the Renaissance with the Baroque, the Classical period with nothing but a term, and Modernism just as a thing that arrives.
First, start with names of periods and add to these small anchors. An anchor is a painting, a piece of music, a building, a musical composer, an artist, a historical situation, and so on. Under “Baroque” you don’t need to write a whole paragraph; write the title of a painting or room in a church that has motion, contrast, and drama. Listen to a bit of music where you hear rhythm, texture, or ornamentation. The goal is not to know all of the period, just have something in your head that can anchor this period.
This is where many students get stuck, trying to separate music and art history completely. Making a timeline for art, one for music, one for architecture, one for history. This can get quite complicated and heavy, and that’s the problem. A more helpful beginner timeline might be one that puts music and art together. For every period you can do, write the name of that period, a short one visual example, a one musical example and a short note of a few historical things happening. A timeline should be easy to review.
A helpful timeline note might be something like this: Renaissance, balanced composition, human form, sacred and secular subject, clearer spatial. You could add a music note of some choral music, the voices, in a church. This doesn’t have to be in academic language right away. Write things like “calming balance” or “strong dramatic contrast” rather than “harmonic progression,” “genre,” “motif,” and “historical context.” You can always add things later if you remember “harmonic,” “genre,” “motif,” and “historical context.”
The more you can make a timeline a thing where you can compare between periods, the better. Put down one period followed by another and ask, what is changing? Is the music changing in style or form? In music or art is it becoming a little less realistic, a little less idealized, a little less about human beings and their experience, a little less about the church, or the monarchy, and instead more about everyday life? What can you see or hear that tells you something has changed? This is a better way to think about learning music and art history than memorizing a bunch of terms.
As you learn about more periods, try not to make the timeline longer. Having too many examples means you have to learn more examples. The key is choosing one or two representative works of art or one or two musical pieces for each period and spending more time with those. Look at the artwork before reading the label. Listen to the music a few times to get the basic feeling. Try to listen to it a few times again to hear more about the instruments, the rhythm, the sound, and repeating musical elements. Then go back to your timeline and add only the things that help you understand the period better.
The more you can say why one period or artwork is different than another, and why you can see a different style in different ways, rather than just remember every date, means you’re moving in the right direction. You can look at two artworks of two periods and be able to say, one has a very calm, stable composition and one has a very energetic, diagonal composition. You can listen to two musical examples and say the one has a lighter texture and a more even tempo, while the other has a heavier texture and a more uneven tempo. These are observations you make from the things you have looked at and heard. These are what make a timeline useful.
Finally, every time you review the timeline, ask one last open question. Why does the architecture and music in sacred spaces have a certain style? Why does the court culture affect what you see in portraits and musical concerts? Why might modern urban life shape visual art and concert music? Remember, a timeline doesn’t need to be finished to be finished. It just needs to give you a path that makes you remember to look and to listen to what you are studying so that you can connect it to a wider world of culture, and a more open mind about how to think of it.