And Monteverdi practically invented modern music singlehandedly. Without Monteverdi, there would have been no Beatles.
I was about to say, surely L'Orfeo should be on there?
Or at least one of the books of madrigals!
I think another thing: he includes "peoples' music", in other words, the kind of music that millions of ordinary people have listened to for centuries. What used to be called "folk music". Classical music is important to people for whom classical music is important, but it is not what common people heard for most of history. They heard music in church, or in their homes. That was it.
In fact, Monteverdi, Gesualdo et all wrote madrigals that wold often hae simply been sung by groups of 3-8 people whenever they felt like it. They were printed in individual part books so that singers could sit around a table at home or wherever and sing for themselves. The common people, if you like.
Similarly, in England, Locke and Purcell etc. wrote books of catches, very short musical ideas that were intended to be sung at parties or at home, by anyone who could get their hands on them. The view of so-called "classical" music as music that was only for city people and the aristocracy is very recent.
For those who could read, yes, but I'm talking about the vast majority of people in those days: rural agricultural workers who had generally little music beyond the church and the old folk songs. Non-literate people had to be
taught those songs written by Locke and Purcell by people who could read. I doubt that anyone nowadays can really imagine how isolated and beauty-lacking rural lives were.
My remark was "generalized". But my point is, that the music people listened to over the centuries was what became "folk music" later on. The song Barbara Allen, to use the most common example, is still sung and how old is it? The Eriskay Love Song is believed to be one of the very oldest songs in Europe. Those songs came over the ocean to North America, and so did the folk music of other nations. Slaves brought their music.
Music people often sneer at folk music, I find. Music people sneer at popular music in general. I think that if something is beautiful and moving it is beautiful and moving. Literary people sneer at A. E. Housman's lyric poetry, but I don't. Simple and incredibly beautiful and moving, but some people think all rhyming poetry is, um, childish crap. If you can understand it? It's crap.
When I said above that Elvis Presley's recording of
That's All Right, Mama is the greatest recording ever made, I'm not joking. I daresay other people will choose a different song and almost certainly it won't be a "rock and roll" song. But that recording was important for all the reasons the radio presenter gave. I agree with the presenter. But I loved that song since I first heard it. It is sublime, in fact. The reasons I say so are manifold and too long to go into here, but one of the reasons is Elvis himself. I wasn't an Elvis fan when I was a child, and I was a child in 1954. I didn't hear that song until I was in my 20's, believe it or not. And by then, Elvis was ruined. That lovely boy, that brilliant boy, that bridge between how many worlds?