The 2nd half of the 20th centruy

One of the biggest musical acts in history, The Beatles were John Lennon(guitar), George Harrison(guitar), Paul McCartney (bass) and Ringo Starr (drums). Lennon and McCartney began playing together in The Quarrymen in 1957; Harrison joined later that year. Before they became The Beatles, they were also Johnny and the Moondogs and The Silver Beatles, joined at times by bandmates including bassist Stuart Sutcliffe (23 June 1940 - 10 April 1962) and drummer Pete Best (b. 24 November 1941); Best was replaced by Ringo to form the final foursome. The early Beatles performed shows in Hamburg, Germany and Liverpool, England, playing covers of early American rock and roll plus original songs by Lennon and McCartney. Their 1962 release of "Love Me Do" charted in the U. K., and in 1963 their song "She Loves You" was the biggest hit in U. K. history.

The Who were one of the great rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. In its glory years the group consisted of guitarist and main songwriter Pete Townshend(b. 19 May 1945), singer Roger Daltrey (b. 1 March 1944), bassist John Entwistle (b. 9 October 1944, d. 27 June 2002) and drummer Keith Moon (b. 23 August 1946, d. 7 September 1978). Early on the group was part of the "Mod" movement, playing R&B music in stylized tailored suits, before morphing into an unruly proto-punk band famous for smashing its instruments at the end of live performances. This period is epitomized by the oft-mentioned lyric "Hope I die before I get old" in the band's 1965 tune "My Generation."

British musical group. Its original members were Mick Jagger (b. 1943), Keith Richards (b. 1943), Brian Jones (1944 – 69), Bill Wyman (b. 1936), and Charlie Watts (b. 1941). The band was formed in 1962 when Jagger, Richards, and Jones, who had been performing sporadically in a blues band, recruited Wyman and formed their own group. Watts joined the band in 1963. Jagger was the lead vocalist, while Jones and Richards played guitars, Wyman played bass, and Watts played drums. The band's name was adopted from a Muddy Waters song. By 1966 a series of outstanding songs had made the band second in popularity only to the Beatles. Jagger and Richards wrote most of its songs, which are marked by a driving backbeat, biting and satirical lyrics, and simple but expressive instrumental accompaniments. You can find the rest fo this infomation at http://www.answers.com/

Early 20th-century music

"The years spanning the end of the nineteenth century and the earliest part of the twentieth were a time of great expansion and development of, as well as a dramatic reaction to, the prevailing late Romanticism of previous years. In music, as in all the arts, expression became either overt (as in the early symphonic poems of Richard Strauss (1864-1949), the huge symphonies of Gustay Mahler, or the operas of Giacomo Puccini), or was merely suggested (as in the so-called "impressionist" music of Claude Debussy. The previous century’s tide of Nationalism found a twentieth century advocate in the Hungarian Bela Bartok. It was a time of deepening psychological awareness, with the works of both Nietzsche and Freud in circulation; and the horrors of the First World War brought death and destruction to the very doorsteps of many people living in Europe. Possibly in reaction to such influences, the expressionistic music of Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples germinated and flourished for a time. Experimentation and new systems of writing music were attempted by avant-garde composers like and although none gained a foothold with the public, these techniques had a profound influence Edgard Varese on many of the composers who were to follow." http://www.ipl.org/div/mushist/twen/index.html

Classical period

The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as being between 1750 to 1820. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or seventeenth to the nineteenth. This article is about the specific period from 1750 to 1825.The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods. The best known composers from this period are Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven; other notable names include Luigi Boccherini, Mauro Giuliani, Fernando Sor, Muzio Clementi, Jan Ladislav Dussek, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Christoph Willibald Gluck. Beethoven is also sometimes regarded either as a Romantic composer or a composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic; Franz Schubert is also something of a transitional figure, as are Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Luigi Cherubini and Carl Maria von Weber. The period is sometimes referred to as the era of Viennese Classic or Classicism (German: Wiener Klassik), since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van Beethoven all worked at some time in Vienna.If you want to get more info about the Classical period go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_period_(music)