Music written in Europe during the Renaissance. As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by the developments which define the Early Modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of ancient Greece and Rome; increased innovation and discovery; the growth of commercial enterprise; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_music

A style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750.[1] This era follows the Renaissance, and was followed in turn by the Classical era. The word "baroque" comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning misshapen pearl,[2] a negative description of the ornate and heavily ornamented music of this period. Later, the name came to apply also to the architecture of the same period. The Baroque period saw the creation of tonality. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes in musical notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera, cantata, oratorio, concerto, and sonata as musical genres.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music

The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods. In the middle of the 18th century, Europe began to move toward a new style in architecture, literature, and the arts, generally known as Classicism, which sought to emulate the ideals of Classical antiquity and especially those of Classical Greece. Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. It is mainly homophonic—melody above chordal accompaniment. Importance was given to instrumental music—the main kinds were sonata, trio, string quartet, symphony, concerto, serenade and divertimento.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_period_(music)

The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe and strengthened in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_music

Musical impressionism was based in France by the French composer Claude Debussy. Debussy created his style by denouncing the tonic and instead creating unusual chord sequences that do not suggest a clear key. The composer found inspiration in Javanese music "which makes our tonic and dominant seem like ghosts." Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere. Musical impressionism followed as a progression from the Romantic era, leading to 20th century and modern music styles.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionist_music

A period of diverse reactions in challenging and reinterpreting older categories of music, innovations that lead to new ways of organizing and approaching harmonic, melodic, sonic, and rhythmic aspects of music, and changes in aesthetic worldviews in close relation to the larger identifiable period of modernism in the arts of the time. The operative word most associated with it is "innovation". Its leading feature is a "linguistic plurality", which is to say that no one musical language ever assumed a dominant position.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism_(music)