Great People of the Centuries.

The Famous of History

 

This is an attempt to count the centuries and those artists and musicians who gave us the many treasures that enrich our lives. As pointers and to give some context there are also writers, scientists and occasionally other people and events of influence. Perhaps they cross-fertilised and moulded the individual creativity, thoughts and attitudes of each other. Nothing is done in isolation and the attitudes, beliefs and theories of a time are often what manipulate our thoughts or alternately cause us to react against accepted trends. I have decided to stick to the previous thousand years; Once again it is a subjective choice. All people mentioned were born in the century under which they are listed in the order of their birth.

Composers/Musicians     -    Writers/Poets     -    Artists    -    Rulers/Events/People of Influence     -    Scientists/Philosophers

Anno Domini or Year of the Common Era

1000

French poet and composer Pierre Abelard famous for his love for Heloise. Composer and playwright Abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Romanesque revolution in art and monumental architecture, for the purpose of propaganda, Art andscience flourished in China. The writings of Buddism were printed. Guido  of Arezzo invented four line musical notation and intervals.

1100

Saladin and Crusades, King Richard Coeur de Lion composed many plaintive melodies. Genghis Khan, Emperor Hui Zong artist and patron, A monk Nestor created the record of the foundations of the Russian Empire, European literary activity and Carmina Burana collection.  St Francis of Assisi,

1200

Magna Carta signed 1215, Nicola Pisano, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Philippe de Vitry's treatise 'Ars Nova' described music of the period.  Alighieri Dante,

1300

Francesco Landini blind musician and poet and achieved the highest quality of his time. Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Robert Campin, Donatello, Fra Angelico,

1400

Johannes Gutenberg, Bellini Family, Thommaso Guidi (Masaccio), Filippo Lippi, Andrea Mantagna, Donato Bramante, Sandro Botticelli, Josquin des Prey  Leonardo da Vinci,   Albrecht Durer, Nicholas Copernicus, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Martin Luther precipitated the Reformation and was also a composer of Hymns. Santi Raphael, Titian, King Henry VIII probably incorrectly is credited with writing 'Greensleves', Antonio Allegri da Correggio, Hans Holbein,

1500

Benvenuto Cellini, Thomas Tallis, John Calvin, Tintoretto, Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni da Palestrina, Pieter Bruegel, Veronese, Elizabeth I, El Greco, William Byrd, Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri ( the first opera? 'Euridice'), Francis Bacon, John Bull, John Milton Senior composer fathered John Milton the poet. William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow, Galileo Galilei, Claudio Monteverdi wrote the first true operas. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Gregorio Allegri wrote the famous Miserere which a hundred years later Mozart wrote from memory thus leaving it to the world. Nicolas Poussin, Rene Descartes. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Anthony van Dyck,  Diego Velazquez,

1600

Rembrandt van Rijn, Murillo,  Jean Baptiste Moliere, Robert Boyle, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jan Vermeer, Christopher Wren, Dietrich Buxtehude,  Sir Isaac Newton, Antonio Stradivari the violin-maker, Johann Pachelbel, Henry Purcell, Alessandro Scarlatti,  Francois Couperin, , Giovanni Bononcini, Tommaso Albinoni, Antonio Vivaldi, George Philipp Telemann,, Jean Philippe Rameau,  Antoine Watteau, George Frederic Handel,, Johann Sebastian Bach,  John Gay, Giuseppe Tartini, Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) , Giovanni Tiepolo, Canaletto.

1700

Farinelli the male soprano,  Thomas Arne, Marquis, de Sade, Giovanni Paisello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi,  CPE Bach, 4th Earl of Sandwich ( invented style of eating while playing cards),  Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, Thomas Gainsborough, Niccolo Piccinni,  Captain James Cook, Josiah Wedgwood,  Joseph Haydn,  JC Bach, , Luigi Boccherini, Francisco de Goya, Domenico Cimarosa, Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe,  Antonio Salieri,, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,   William Blake, Luigi Cherubini,  Ludwig van Beethoven,   Gasparo Spontini, JMW Turner, John Constable, Daniel Auber,   Niccolo Paganini violinist and composer,  Henry Bishop,  Carl Maria von Weber, Ludwig I of Bavaria, Giacomo Meyerbeer,  Gioacchino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Franz Schubert, Auguste Comte, Eugene Delacroix,  Fromental Halevy.

1800

Vincenzo Bellini, Albert Lortzing, Hector Berlioz, Mikhail Glinka,  Michael William Balfe, Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Robert Darwin, Frederic Chopin, Otto Nicolai, Robert Schumann, Franz List, Ambroise Thomas, Frederich von Flotow,Henri Rousseau, Giuseppe Verdi,  David Livingstone, Richard Wagner,, Charles Gounod,  Jacques Offenbach,  Walt Whitman, Cesar Frank,  Edouard Lalo,  Bedrich Smetana, Anton Bruckner, Johanne Strauss, Anton Rubinstein,  Hans von Bulow, Carl Goldmark, Edouard Manet, Alexander Borodin, Johannes Brahms, James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, Amilcare Ponchielli, ,Camille Saint-Saens, Leo Delibes, Georges Bizet, Paul Cezanne, Modest Mussorgsky, Auguste Rodin, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Claude Monet,  Antonin Dvorak, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Arrigo Boito, Jules Massenet, Arthur Sullivan, Edvard Hagerup Grieg, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,  Henri Rousseau, Gabriel Faure, Paul Gauguin, Hubert Parry, CharlesVilliers Stanford, Vincent van Gogh, Engelbert Humperdinck, Oscar Wilde,  Leos Janacek, John Philip Sousa, Sigmund Freud, Edward Elgar, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Giacomo Puccini, Georges Seurat, Gustave Charpentier, Gustav Mahler, Ignacy Paderewski, Hugo Wolf, Nellie Melba, Claude Debussy, Gustav Klimt, Frederick Delius, Henry Ford, Constantine Cavafy, Edvard Munch, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec,  Pietro Mascagni, Richard Strauss, Jean Sebelius, Alexander Glazunov, Carl Nielsen, Kandinsky, Ferruccio Busoni, Francesco Cilea, Erik Satie, Enrique Granados, Arturo Toscanini, Scott Joplin, Henry Wood (the Proms), Henri Matisse, Franz Lehar, , Alexander Scriabin, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Enrico Caruso, Sergei Rachmaninov, Gustav Holst,  Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg,  Joseph Suk,  Thomas Mann, Maurice Ravel, Carl Jung,  Manuel de Falla, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,   Albert Einstein, Ottorino Respighi, Bela Bartok, Pablo Picasso, Percy Grainger,  Zoltan Kodaly,  Igor Stravinsky, Amedeo Modigliani, Alban Berg, Jerome Kern, Heitor Villa-Lobos,  Marc Chagall,  Marcel Duchamp, Irving Berlin,   Man Ray, Arthur Bliss,  Serge Prokofiev,  Max Ernst, Cole Porter, , Ivor Novello, Paul Hindemith,  Carl Orff, Bessie Smith,, Erich Korngold, George Gershwin, Rene Magritte, Henry Moore, Duke Ellington, Francis Poulenc

1900

Louis Armstrong, Aaron Copland, Kurt Weill, Richard Rodgers, Joaquin Rodrigo, William Walton, Aram Khachaturian,  Salvador Dali, Count Basie, , Vladimir Horowitz,  Willem de Kooning, Michael Tippett, , Dmitri Shostakovich, Herbert von Karajan, Olivier Messiaen, Benny Goodman,  Francis Bacon, Jean Genet, Gian Carlo Menotti, John Cage,  Jackson Pollock, Woodoe Guthrie, Benjamin Britten, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein Ravi Shankar, Roy Lichtenstein,  Mikis Theodorakis,   Joan Sutherland,  Bill Haley, Andy Warhol,   Peter Schulthorpe, Jasper Johns, Malcolm Williamson,   Robert Moog (Synthesiser), David Hockney, John Lennon,Stephen William Hawking