The History of Music Told in Seven Rapidly Illustrated Minutes

Your sens­es do deceive you, my friends. This is not the lat­est, great­est video from RSA Ani­mate. No, this video comes to us via Pablo Morales de los Rios, a Span­ish artist, who has artis­ti­cal­ly nar­rat­ed the his­to­ry of music — or the His­to­ria de la Músi­ca – in a shade less than sev­en min­utes. 6:59, to be pre­cise. You don’t need much Span­ish under your belt to real­ize that the sto­ry starts 50,000 years ago, then moves quick­ly from the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyp­tians, to the trou­ba­dours of the Mid­dle Ages. The video gives dis­pro­por­tion­ate atten­tion to clas­si­cal music dur­ing the fol­low­ing peri­ods — Renacimien­to, Bar­ro­co, Clas­si­cis­mo and Roman­ti­cis­mo. But before wrap­ping up, we tack over to Amer­i­ca and wit­ness the birth of jazz and the blues, before head­ing back across the pond for the Invasión británi­ca. Artis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, it all cul­mi­nates in a pret­ty inter­est­ing way. But we’ll let you see how things play out.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

All the Great Operas in 10 Min­utes

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores Online

A Big Bach Down­load – All Bach Organ Works for Free

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant


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Comments (21)
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  • chandra says:

    ‘the his­to­ry of west­ern music’ would be a more fit­ting title.

  • Some guy says:

    Cute, but cliched. I did­n’t learn any­thing, but the draw­ings were kind of cool.

  • JL says:

    I refuse to believe The Prodi­gy is the end point of mod­ern music …

  • Vicky Paige says:

    I agree — “The His­to­ry of West­ern Music” is a more appro­pri­ate title, but even then, when I show this to my Cuban ex-hus­band (who is a musi­cian), I know he will men­tion at least one or two Latin Amer­i­cans he thinks should be includ­ed.

  • Jim Lacey says:

    God fun! This much Span­ish any­one who knows some­thing about music can read.

  • Erik says:

    Now, one can appre­ci­ate the endeav­or and the draw­ings, but seri­ous­ly, nam­ing this piece “The his­to­ry of music”?

    If any­thing, “The frag­ment­ed his­to­ry of main­stream west­ern music”

  • SS says:

    Awe­some, but incom­plete. African and Afro-Caribbean styles are all miss­ing — they had a huge influ­ence on the “Nuevas For­mas”. Rap/Hip-Hop is miss­ing alto­geth­er. Also, the gui­tar and oth­er stringed instru­ments came from Asia.

  • CBrianM says:

    Foi o mel­hor vídeo que vi em toda min­ha vida.
    A coisa cria­ti­va e artís­ti­ca que mais me chama atenção, ilus­tração e MÚSICA.
    Foi até ago­ra um esti­lo de arte SUPREMA.

  • rose says:

    wow,that’s bril­liant!

  • Alex says:

    Inter­est­ing but incom­plete ; Wag­n­er was and will be for­ev­er the TITAN of music like MOZART and oth­ers !

  • Fatih says:

    Title fails, appre­ci­ate the effort, though.

  • joseph says:

    pret­ty cool, but left our hip hop and many east­ern styles

  • Dave says:

    Yeah, among oth­er things, where does Africa come into play with this? The birth of jazz was pre­sent­ed flat out wrong, and there’s not even a men­tion of hip hop. Great artist, though.

  • Max Gurnemanz says:

    Noth­ing less than genius.

  • Christopher Potter says:

    Where’s Stravin­sky? Where’s Bar­tok? Where’s Shostakovich? Aside from a few impres­sion­ists and atonal­ists, where’s the 20th Cen­tu­ry? Was pop and rock all that mat­tered?

  • Julian says:

    Great video, excel­lent draw­ings and neat over­all con­cept. But the under­ly­ing ‘his­to­ry’ — is this per­son seri­ous?? This is the under­grad­u­ate music course ver­sion of West­ern musi­cal his­to­ry. Hope­less­ly Euro­cen­tric (where’s Chi­na? Aus­tralian Indige­nous music? hip hop?), the peri­od is way too brief (music start­ed only 50000 years ago?) and hon­est­ly — trac­ing a line between Bach and The Prodi­gy??

  • Carlos Ravina says:

    Arro­gance is the prop­er word, pre­tend­ing that the occi­den­tal cul­ture accounts for the Whole His­to­ry of Music… Which one? Schol­ars should­n’t sup­port this kind of colo­nial epis­te­mol­o­gy. Very sad.
    Car­los Rav­ina

  • Beverly Howard says:

    Pret­ty cool and very inter­est­ing!!

  • magicman says:

    No> Fail. On so many lev­els. No African, Indi­an, Chi­nese, South Amer­i­can music, no hip hop, no Coun­try music, blue­grass, no sal­sa, son, sam­ba, mam­bo. No Ray Charles ???
    Go back to school.

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