In the 1913 Paris Ballet season, the Russian artists Igor Stravinsky, a composer, and Vaslav Nijinsky, a choreographer, debuted the ballet The Rite of Spring. The extremely avant-garde nature of the piece nearly caused the audience to riot. Stravinsky's score played with every convention in music at the time, including rhythm, melody, and dissonance.

Frederic Chopin was a Polish-born composer of the Romantic Era, who was a child prodigy on the piano and began composing in his teens. As an adult, he moved to Paris, France, and became a well known composer of works for the piano, both solo and as a featured member of an ensemble.

The mandolin is the most famous member of the "mando" family that also includes the mandola and mandocello, among other instruments. The instruments in this family all have double courses of four strings, meaning that each string is paired with an exact twin, that is the same size and tuned to the same note. A mandolin is tuned just like a violin, while the mandola and mandocello are tuned like the viola and cello, respectively.

Tchaikovsky's 1880 masterpiece commemorates the Russian defense of the French invasion of 1812 during the Napoleonic Wars. Anachronistically, though, both anthems Tchaikovsky used to represent each army were not used during the 1812 invasion. Napoleon had banned "La Marseillaise" in 1805, and "God Save The Tsar" was not even written in 1812.

Stephen Foster (1826-1864) is considered the "Father of American Music" for his many famous and influential compositions, including "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," and "Oh, Susanna." Despite Foster's immense fame both at the time and in the years since, he was actually part of a broader popular music explosion thanks to sheet music's development. Among the other popular songs of the time was Daniel Decatur Emmet's "Dixie," from 1859.

Brass instruments, while deriving their name from the material they are usually made from, are not defined by the material from which they are composed. Instead, brass instruments are united by the the way air enters the instruments, and are each further controlled by a limited number of valves. A saxophone, despite its construction, is a woodwind due to its use of reeds and a series of tone holes the player can open and close.

John Cage became well known in the mid-twentieth century for his radical and odd compositions. In particular, Cage used odd instruments and strange tunings, and created a piano with objects placed on keys. His most famous work is the completely silent 4'33", which calls for the performer(s) to sit and do nothing for four minutes and thirty three seconds.

Developed in the ninth and tenth centuries in Western Europe, Gregorian chants are a simple, monophonic form of music used as sacred music by monks in the Catholic tradition. Gregorian chants helped spread the Latin Rite of Roman Christianity by having a common, uniform musical style for worship. Among certain monastic orders, the Gregorian chant is still a common form of worship.

"Allegro" is one of the many Italian words that can be placed above a staff on sheet music, to indicate at what tempo a piece should be played. "Allegro" indicates a brisk pace, and for the musician to play the piece brightly. Usually, a tempo marker is given for an entire piece, but sometimes multiple tempo markers can be given throughout a piece.

The "classical symphony" features four separate movements: a sonata, or up-tempo section; an adagio, or slow movement; a minuet, or 3/4 dance section; and another up-tempo piece. This format was developed in the late eighteenth century by composers such as Mozart and Haydn. Nonetheless, despite its typical form, a symphony does not always have to adhere to such a strict format.