PreviousDays✦THE WIKI
← All historyTHE ARCHIVE · 6 STORIES

1500–1799

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MOMENTS FROM THIS ERA

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6 illustrated stories · growing daily
Haydn directs an eighteenth-century orchestra from a fortepiano before a candlelit London audience.Music

Haydn’s Surprise Symphony Premieres in London

Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 received its first performance in London on 23 March 1792. A sudden loud chord in its otherwise gentle Andante became one of classical music’s most durable surprises.

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Mozart watches a starling beside a wicker cage and a closed account book in an eighteenth-century room.Music

Mozart buys a starling and records its song

On 27 May 1784, Mozart entered a starling in his household accounts and notated a tune resembling his recent G-major piano concerto. The entry connects an ordinary pet purchase with a remarkable example of musical mimicry.

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Benjamin Franklin examines nested glass bowls mounted on a horizontal spindle with a wooden foot treadle.Music

Franklin describes his glass armonica to Beccaria

In a letter dated 13 July 1762, Benjamin Franklin explained a musical invention built around rotating glass bowls. His armonica reorganized an existing way of making glass sing into a compact instrument that could sustain several notes.

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Handel directs a small orchestra and a choir of men and boys in an eighteenth-century concert hall.Music

Handel’s Messiah premieres at a Dublin charity concert

Messiah received its first public performance in Dublin on 13 April 1742. The premiere joined ambitious music with a practical civic purpose: raising funds for medical charities and the relief of imprisoned debtors.

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Musicians play period strings and wind instruments on a Thames barge beside a royal boat at dusk.Music

Handel's Water Music and the royal Thames concert of 1717

On 17 July 1717, Handel's music accompanied George I's evening journey on the Thames. Contemporary accounts describe about fifty musicians, crowds of boats and a king pleased enough to request repeated performances.

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A singer in pastoral costume performs with period string and keyboard accompaniment before a Florentine court audience.Music

Euridice’s Florentine Wedding Performance of 1600

The performance of Euridice on 6 October 1600 joined musical experiment to court celebration. Its treatment of the Orpheus myth shows how the demands of a wedding audience could shape an emerging art form.

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