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After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Western Europe entered a time known as "The Dark Ages" — a period when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns, and Visigoths overran Europe. These years were marked by constant warfare, the absence of a Holy Roman Emperor, and the virtual disappearance of urban life. Over the next next nine centuries, the newly emerging Christian Church came to dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating "Holy" Crusades against the East, establishing Universities, and generally dictating the destiny of music, art, and literature.

It was during this time that Pope Gregory I is generally believed to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant, which was the approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the creation of a new kind of music called organum. Secular music was performed throughout Europe by the troubadours and trouvères of France.

And it was during these "Middle Ages" that Western culture saw the appearance of the first great name in musiCFrom roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architechts, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece. The newly established aristocracies were replacing monarchs and the church as patrons of the arts.

The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann ; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz ; and the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.