Chronology

c. 1000 B. C. Rule of King David, traditional author and compiler of the Book of Psalms.

c. 420 B. C. Synagogues established; divine service ordained by the Sanhedrin.

A. D. 70 Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans; instrumental music in Jewish worship is prohibited as a sign of mourning.

c. 400 Oktoēchos of Severus collection of Byzantine hymn texts. St. Romanos develops kontakion hymn form for Byzantine liturgy.

c. 500 System of accents for chanting the Hebrew Scriptures brought into use by the Masoretes. First wave of bhajan, popular Hindu songs, in India.

590-604 Pontificate of St. Gregory the Great.

c. 622 The Prophet Muhammed institutes the call to prayer, the ‘adhān.

c. 700 Role of the Jewish hazzan changes from caretaker to chanter of the Scriptures and leader of song.

711 Muslims invade the Iberian peninsula.

c. 760 Yehudai Gaon of Sura standardizes the synagogal chant.

c. 850 Byzantine chant brought to Slavic peoples by Sts. Cyril and Methodius.

c. 875 First Jewish siddur compiled by Rav Amram.

c. 900 Earliest sources of Gregorian chant, recorded in staffless neumes at St. Gall and Laon. Musica enchiriadis, earliest source of polyphonic mass propers and ordinaries. Earliest sources of Byzantine chant with decipherable melodies.

c. 950 Abū’l-Faradj al-Isfahāni compiles Kitāb al-Aghāni ("Book of Songs"). Aaron Ben Asher founds the Tiberian system of Biblical accents.

c. 996 First Winchester Troper preserves music and text of Quem {}quaeritis liturgical drama.

c. 1000 Precise pitch notation of Gregorian chant using staves; Hartker Antiphoner. Earliest written sources of sāmavedic chant.

c. 1025 Guido d’Arezzo introduces staff lines to express pitch height in chants more precisely and a system of sight-singing.

c. 1050 Second Winchester Troper preserves first practical book of polyphony.

1085 Fall of Toledo; Mozarabic rite suppressed in Spain.

c. 1100 Earliest Missinai melodies. Earliest notated piyyutim. Jayadeva composes the Gīta-Govinda in India.

c. 1160 Magnus Liber Organi collection of organum begins to be compiled. Earliest notated Chinese ya-yüeh.

c. 1350 Guillaume de Machaut composes La Messe de Nostre Dame, first mass cycle by a single composer.

c. 1425-35 Earliest cantus firmus masses by Leonel Power and John Dunstable.

1409 Süleyman Celibi composes the mawlīd called the "Way to Salvation."

c. 1425 Rabbi Jacob Molin standardizes the Ashkenazic synagogue liturgy.

c. 1450 Guillaume Dufay’s Missa Se La Face Ay Pale uses a secular tune as cantus firmus. Practices of chanting in Ashkenazic liturgy, standardized by Jacob Molin, are compiled.

1484 Puranda Dasa, composer of Hindu kirtana, born in India.

c. 1490 Earliest alphabetic pitch notation for Russian chant. Earliest extant polyphonic Requiem, composed by Johannes Ockeghem.

c. 1475-1500 Structural imitation becomes standard texture for polyphonic masses and motets, particularly notable in the works of Josquin Desprez.

1524 Earliest printed collections of Lutheran chorales.

1526 Martin Luther’s Deutsche Messe (German Mass).

1540 Constance Songbook published.

1545-1563 Council of Trent enacts reforms in Roman Catholic liturgical music.

1547 Heinrich Glarean publishes his Dodechachordon updating the theoretical recognition of church modes to 12.

1550 John Merbecke publishes Booke of Common Praier Noted (London).

1562 Third Genevan Psalter published.

1567 Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni da Palestrina published.

1586 Lucas Osiander’s Fünfftzig geistliche Lieder und Psalmen (Nuremburg), first printed collection of cantional chorales with melody in the soprano voice.

1587 Israel Najara brings out first printed collection of devotional poems (zemirotim) in Safed.

1594 The organ is used as part of a Sabbath ritual in Prague.

1614-1615 Publication in Rome of the so-called Medicean chantbooks containing revisions of traditional Latin chants.

1623 Salamone Rossi publishes Ha-Shirim Asher Li’Shlomo, settings of traditional Jewish liturgical texts to modern musical style, in Venice.

1629 Rabbi Leone da Modena founds a Jewish music academy in Venice.

1652-1656 Patriarch Nikon promotes polyphony in Russian chant.

1700 Erdmann Neumeister publishes Geistliche Cantaten statt einer {}Kirchen-Music, poetic texts for liturgy modeled after Italian operatic conventions.

1707 First hymnal of Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, setting psalm paraphrases.

1707-1708 Johann Sebastian Bach’s earliest authenticated cantatas performed at Mühlhausen.

1712 B. H. Brocke publishes Der für die Sünden der Welt gemarterte {}und sterbende Jesus, a popular paraphrase of the passion story set by Telemann and Handel among others.

1717-1718 George Frederic Handel’s Chandos Anthems.

1723 December 25: First performance of J. S. Bach’s Magnificat, St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, Saxony (Germany).

1724 April 7: First performance of J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion.

1727 April 11: First performance of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.

October 27: First performance of Handel’s Coronation Anthems.

1734 December 25-27: First performance of J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Parts I–III.

1737 First Methodist hymnal compiled by John Wesley.

1739 Publication of Part III of J. S. Bach’s Clavier-Übung.

1741 14 September: Handel completes the orchestration to Messiah.

1749 Completion of J. S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

c. 1750 R. Israel Bal Shem Tov founds Hassidism and teaches a significant spirituality for congregational singing.

1791 Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

1801 A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns, first hymnal for African-American use published in Philadelphia.

1803 First printed collection of spirituals published in Philadelphia.

1815 Israel Jacobson introduces the organ to synagogue liturgy in Berlin.

1822 Israel Lovy introduces four-voiced choral singing to synagogue liturgy in Paris.

1823 Missa Solemnis by Ludwig van Beethoven.

1826 Salomon Sulzer begins modernizing the Jewish cantorate in Vienna.

1829 11 March: Revival of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Berlin, credited with igniting an explosion of interest in Bach’s music.

c. 1830 Chrysanthus of Madytus reforms the Byzantine chant notation.

1837 Prosper Guéranger founds the abbey of St. Pierre at Solesmes, France, a center for the revival of Gregorian chant. December 5: Premiere of Requiem by Hector Berlioz in Paris.

1838 Solomon Sulzer publishes Vol. 1 of Schir Zion.

1846 26 August: Premiere of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah in Birmingham.

1861 Hymns Ancient and Modern published in England.

1870 The Ceciliam movement publishes the so-called Ratisbon Edition of Latin chant.

1874 22 May: Premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem in Milan.

1882 The Congress of Arezzo introduces the Solesmes versions of traditional Latin chant.

1894 17 May: Premiere of Gabriel Faureé’s Requiem.

1896 First edition of the modern chant book Liber Usualis.

1903 22 November: Pope St. Pius X promulgates Tra le sollecitudini (Motu proprio) regulating music of the Roman Catholic Church.

1921 Mass in G minor by Ralph Vaughn Williams.

1926 Sancta Civitas, cantata by Edward Elgar.

1932 Oratorio-opera Moses und Aron composed by Arnold Schoenberg.

1945 Missa Cantuariensis by Edmund Rubbra.

1947 Messe Solennelle "Salve Regina" by Jean Langlais.

1948 Mass for chorus, soloists, and 10 winds by Igor Stravinksy.

1949 Taizé interdenominational community founded.

1956 20th-Century Folk Mass composed by Geoffrey Beaumont.

1960 Missa Super Modos Duodecimales, a mass composed with serial technique, by Anton Heiler.

1963 4 December: Second Vatican Council in Rome promulgates the {}Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

1964 Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramirez.

1965 Passio et mors Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Lucam by Krzyztof Penderecki. Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein.

1974 Magnificat by Penderecki.

1979 Publication of Graduale Triplex, comparing modern chant notation with earliest sources.

2000 Lamentations and Praises of John Tavener.