476 — Rome falls to the Ostrogoths, which is often used to mark the beginning of the Middle Ages.
c. 495 — Boethius writes the De institutione musica, which becomes the standard - if somewhat inaccurate - textbook on the Ancient Greek musical scales.
c. 500-c. 1400 Italian Medieval Music.
c. 530 — St. Benedict arranges the weekly order of monastic psalmody in his Rule.
530-609 — Venantius Fortunatus creates some of Christianity's most enduring hymns, including "Vexilla regis prodeunt," later the most popular hymn of the Crusades.
536 — Under Justinian's orders, Belisarius recaptures Rome from the Ostrogoths and reestablishes Byzantine rule in Italy. Northern Italy soon falls to the Lombards.
590-604 — Reign of Pope Gregory the Great, who reformed Church bureaucracy and unified the liturgy. Carolingian chant would later, somewhat misleadingly, be called Gregorian chant in his honor.
c. 650 — The Roman schola cantorum, the trained papal choir, is founded.
early 8th century — The Roman Stational Mass is recorded, in which the Pope presided over Masses in a series of cities.
785-6 — At Charlemagne's request, Pope Hadrian I sends a papal sacramentary with Roman chant, which only includes certain major holy days, to the Carolingian court in Francia. Charlemagne assigns Alcuin the task of completing an official compendium of Roman chants for the whole year. This led to the introduction of Gallican elements into the Roman chant cycle, creating Carolingian chant, later called Gregorian chant.
mid-9th century — Moslems invade Italy, taking Sicily and pressing as far north as Rome.
998 - Pope Gregory V requests a copy of the Reichenau sacramentary, typifying the collapse of the manuscript tradition in Italy and the power shift to the Ottonian Holy Roman Empire.
11th century — The first extant Ambrosian chants are written down. The Milanese chronicler Landulphus relates the tale that Charlemagne placed a Gregorian and an Ambrosian sacramentary side by side on an altar. When they both flew open together, it was a sign that both traditions were valid. Milanese chant is the only non-Gregorian chant tradition to survive in the West.
1014 — At his imperial coronation Mass, the German Holy Roman Emperor Henry II asks for the Credo to be sung, as was the custom in German Masses. This was the last of the ordinary chants to be added to the Roman Mass.
c. 1020 — Guido d'Arezzo describes the musical staff, solmization, and the Guidonian hand in his Micrologus. This early form of do-re-mi created a technical revolution in the speed at which chants could be learned, memorized, and transmitted.
1197-1250 — Frederick II, the last great Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, encourages music at the Sicilian court. Sicily becomes a refuge for troubadours displaced by the Albigensian Crusade and a melting pot of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim musical styles.
13th century — The local chant tradition of Rome, which scholars now call Old Roman chant, gives way to Gregorian chant.
1209-29 — The Albigensian Crusade. Supposedly to attack Cathar heretics, it brought southern France under northern French control and crushed Occitan culture and language. Most troubadours fled, especially to Spain and Italy.
c. 1250-1350 — Italian flagellants develop the Italian folk hymns known as spiritual laude.
1265-1321 — Dante Alighieri. Dante champions the poetic use of the vernacular tongue. Strongly influenced by troubadour culture, he analyzed the troubadour verse forms, included troubadours and trovatori in the Divine Comedy, and strongly considered writing in Occitan rather than Tuscan.
1304-74 — The Italian poet Petrarch, whose poems were frequently set to music.
c. 1335 — The Rossi Codex, the earliest extant collection of Italian secular polyphony, and a major source of early trecento music, including examples of early madrigals, cacce, and ballate.
c. 1360 — Death of Jacopo da Bologna, the first famous trecento composer.
c. 1360 — The Ivrea Codex, a major source of late trecento music.
c. 1397 — Death of Landini, the famous blind trecento composer, known for his characteristic "Landini cadence."
c. 1411 — Death of Johannes Ciconia, the first northern European of stature to compose music in the Italian style. He synthesized the French and Italian styles, presaging the "international" music typical of the Renaissance.
1410-1415 — Compilation of the Squarcialupi Codex, the largest source of trecento music.
c. 1400-c. 1600 Italian Renaissance Music.
c. 1420-c. 1490 — Composition of polyphonic music enters a slow period. More great Italian performers than composers are known from this time. Rise of the influential d'Este and Medici political dynasties.
1543 — Death of Francesco Canova da Milano, famous lutenist, and the first native Italian musician to achieve an international reputation.
mid-16th century — Italy is the premier center of harpsichord construction.
mid-16th century — The classic Italian madrigal thrives, though largely composed by non-Italians, frequently using Petrarchan sonnets and text painting. Lighter music is represented by the villanella, which originated in the popular song in Naples and spread throughout Italy.
1558 — Gioseffo Zarlino publishes the Istitutioni harmoniche, the leading source of practical musical theory of the Renaissance, and the first music theory to seriously address invertible counterpoint.
1559 — Antonio Gardano publishes Musica nova, whose politically pro-republican partisan songs please the northern Italian republics and rile the Church.
1562-3 — The Council of Trent bans most paralitugical music, including all but four Sequences. A ban on all liturgical polyphony is debated, and music is required to have clear words and a pure, uplifting style.
1590 — Monteverdi's first book of madrigals published, including "Ecco mormorar l'onde."
1597 — Jacopo Peri's La Dafne, the "first opera", is staged at Palazzo Corsi in Florence.
c. 1600-c. 1725 Italian Baroque Music.
1605 — Claudio Monteverdi's fifth book of madrigals opens with a defense of the seconda pratica of Cipriano de Rore, Luca Marenzio, Giaches de Wert, and his own music, in which the music evokes stronger emotion through increasing use of dissonance and a stronger harmonic progression based on a more independent bass line, presaging the musical developments of the Baroque.
1994 — The National Symphony Orchestra of the RAI (Italian Radio & Television) is formed, uniting the earlier orchestras of Torino, Milan, Rome and Naples. Based in Torino.
1996 — Founding of CEMAT (Federation of Italian Electroacoustic Music Centers), with the purpose of promoting the activity of Italian computer music research and production centers.
2002 — Parco della Musica, a vast multi-auditorium musical venue, one of the largest in the world, opens in Rome.
