1630 – 1640s

Events in the 1630s 9

• 1561 – 1633 Jacopo Peri Italian composer Jacopo Peri was a Florentine composer whose Euridice of 1600 is considered the earliest opera to have survived intact. He was a central figure in the invention of the new dramatic style.
• 1568 – 1634 Adriano Banchieri Italian Renaissance composer and theorist Adriano Banchieri was a Benedictine monk, composer and theorist whose comic madrigal comedies and theoretical writings were important contributions to late Renaissance music.
• 1574 – 1638 John Wilbye English madrigal composer John Wilbye was an English madrigalist whose two published collections contain some of the most refined and emotionally expressive English madrigals ever composed.
• 1632 – 1653 The Taj Mahal built The supreme masterpiece of Mughal architecture Commissioned by Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj Mahal at Agra took some two decades and tens of thousands of workers to complete. Its perfectly symmetrical white-marble dome and inlaid gardens are regarded as the jewel of Indo-Islamic architecture and one of the wonders of the world.
• 1632 – 1675 Johannes Vermeer Dutch Golden Age · Netherlands Johannes Vermeer (October 31, 1632 – December 15, 1675) was a Dutch painter who captured intimate domestic scenes with extraordinary luminosity. Girl with a Pearl Earring is among the most reproduced paintings in the world.
• 1632 – 1677 Baruch Spinoza Rationalist philosopher Baruch (Benedictus) de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, born and lived in the Dutch Republic. One of the three great Continental rationalists alongside Descartes and Leibniz, he developed a monist metaphysics identifying God with Nature, and earned his living grinding optical lenses.
• 1632 – 1687 Jean-Baptiste Lully French Baroque opera composer Italian-born French composer who dominated French music under Louis XIV, establishing the French opera tradition and the modern orchestra.
• 1637 – 1707 Dietrich Buxtehude North German Baroque organist Danish-German composer whose organ works greatly influenced J.S. Bach. The young Bach famously walked 400km to hear him perform.
• 1639 Sakoku — Japan closes to the world The Tokugawa seal the country off for two centuries By 1639 the shogunate had expelled Europeans, banned Christianity and forbidden Japanese from leaving the country, on pain of death. Only a tiny Dutch trading post at Dejima in Nagasaki remained as a window to the West. This self-imposed isolation lasted more than 200 years.