Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco was an Italian maker of musical instruments, and is most remembered for inventing what would become the modern-day piano. He was born in Padua and became known as a harpsichord and spinet maker. In 1690 he...

Henry Purcell was an English composer. Although incorporating Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, Purcell's legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest E...

Alessandro Scarlatti was among the most important Italian composers of opera from the late Baroque period. He is credited with establishing the Neapolitan school of opera in the eighteenth century, rapidly improving the predominantly provin...

Daniel Defoe was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, which is second only to the Bible in its number of translations. Defoe is noted for being one of the earliest pro...

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish writer who is famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is also well known for his...

François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. François Couperin was known as "Couperin le Grand" (Couperin the Great) to distinguish him from the other members of the musically talented Couperin family. He wa...

Bernard Mandeville was a philosopher, political economist and satirist. Born in the Netherlands, he lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works. He became famous for The Fable of the Bees. Mandeville's...

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, Italian composer. Born to a wealthy Venetian family, he was not obliged to work for a living and became a highly prolific composer. He had more than 50 operas successfully produced between 1694 and 1741, though few...

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. Born in Venice, he was recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. H...

Ephraim Chambers was an English writer and encyclopaedist, who is primarily known for producing the Cyclopaedia, or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. The first edition of the Cyclopaedia appeared by subscription in 1728, in two v...

Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque music composer, born in Magdeburg. Self-taught in music, he studied law at the University of Leipzig. The most prolific composer in history (at least in terms of surviving oeuvre), he was a contem...

Jean-Philippe Rameau, French composer and theorist. For much of the reign of Louis XV (1715–1774), Rameau dominated the French musical scene: several of his contributions to the Opéra were the most successful of the time and continued to be...

Jean-Antoine Watteau commonly referred to as Antoine Watteau, was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, as seen in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens. He revitalized the waning Baroqu...

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ul...

Italian composer and keyboard player. Son of the composer Alessandro Scarlatti, he worked as his father's assistant in Naples. By 1705 he was living in Rome. His father subsequently sent him to Venice, where he stayed until about 1708. Ther...