- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (baptized Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His output of over 600 compositions includes works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of European composers and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire. - Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven, (baptized December 17, 1770 - March 26, 1827) was a German composer. He is regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of music, and was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music. His music and his reputation inspired — and in many cases intimidated — ensuing generations of composers, musicians, and audiences. - Claude Debussy
Achille-Claude Debussy (August 22, 1862 - March 25, 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel he is considered the most prominent figure working within the style commonly referred to as Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. Debussy was not only among the most important of all French composers but also a central figure in all European music at the turn of the twentieth century. - Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an Academy Award-nominated American composer. His music is frequently described as "minimalist", though he prefers the term "theater music". He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public (apart from precursors such as Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein), … - Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein (August 25 1918 – October 14 1990) was an American conductor, composer, and pianist. He was the first conductor born in the United States of America to receive world-wide acclaim, and is known for both his conducting of the New York Philharmonic, including the acclaimed "Young People's Concerts" series, and his multiple compositions, including "West Side Story", … - George Gershwin
George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 - July 11, 1937) was an American composer. He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin composed both for Broadway and for the classical concert hall. He also wrote popular songs with success. Many of his compositions have been used on television and in numerous films, and many became jazz standards. - Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney MBE, known as Paul McCartney, (born 18 June 1942) is an Academy Award- and Grammy Award-winning English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who first gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles. McCartney and John Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships and "wrote some of the most popular music in rock and roll history." On leaving The Beatles, … - John Williams
John Towner Williams (born February 8 1932) is an American composer, conductor and pianist. In a career that spans six decades, Williams has composed many of the most famous film scores in history, including those for "Jaws", "Star Wars", "Superman", "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Jurassic Park", "Schindler's List", "Hook", "Memoirs of a Geisha", and "Harry Potter". - Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (July 7, 1860 - May 18, 1911) was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and conductor. Mahler was best known during his own lifetime as one of the leading orchestral and operatic conductors of the day. He has since come to be acknowledged as among the most important post-romantic composers. With the exceptions of an early piano quartet and "Totenfeier", the original tone-poem version of the first movement of the second symphony, … - John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) was an American composer. He is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition "4'33", whose three movements are performed without a single note being played. He was a pioneer of chance music, non-standard use of musical instruments, and electronic music. Though he remains a controversial figure, he is generally regarded as one of the most important composers of his era. - Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the composer of three wonderful trios for flute, cello and piano, the first of which was composed in 1790 and ranks among the best of Haydn's chamber music. The trio is vivacious and bright, full of energy and joy. ... Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is the composer of three wonderful trios for flute, cello and piano, the second of which was written in 1790 and seems to be the most "classical" of the three trios. - Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (2 June 1857 - 23 February 1934) was an English Romantic composer. Several of his first major orchestral works, including the "Enigma Variations" and the "Pomp and Circumstance Marches", were greeted with acclaim. He also composed oratorios, chamber music, symphonies and instrumental concertos. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. - Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer of concert and film music, as well as an accomplished pianist. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as “the dean of American composers.” Copland's music achieved a difficult balance between modern music and American folk styles, and the open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape. - Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich (born October 3, 1936) is an American composer. He is a pioneer of minimalism, although his music has increasingly deviated from a purely minimalist style. Reich's innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns (examples are his early compositions, "It's Gonna Rain" and "Come Out"), and the use of processes to create and explore musical concepts (for instance, "Pendulum Music" and "Four Organs"). - Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss (June 11, 1864 - September 8, 1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic era and early modern era, particularly noted for his tone poems and operas. He was also a noted conductor. - Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, considered by many in both the West and his native land to be the most influential composer of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by "Time" magazine as one of the most influential people of the century. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works. - Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American composer of classical music. He is widely regarded as one of the first American classical composers of international significance. Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives would come to be regarded as one of the "American Originals," a composer working in a uniquely American style, with American tunes woven through his music, … - Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh, OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was a British composer, conductor, and pianist. - Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 - December 4, 1993) was an American composer, guitarist, singer, film director, and satirist. In his more than 30-year long career, Frank Zappa established himself as one of the most prolific and distinctive musician-composer-band leaders of his era. Zappa worked in almost every musical genre and wrote music for rock bands, jazz ensembles, synthesisers and symphony orchestra, as well as radiophonic works constructed from pre-recorded, … - Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 - December 28, 1937) was a French composer and pianist of the impressionistic period, known especially for the subtlety, richness and poignancy of his music. His piano, chamber music and orchestral works have become staples of the concert repertoire. Ravel's piano compositions, such as "Jeux d'eau", "Miroirs" and "Gaspard de la Nuit", demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, … - Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12 1940 in Chicago, Illinois) is an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist and composer. Hancock is one of jazz music's most important and influential pianists and composers. He embraced elements of rock, funk, and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet", Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, … - John Zorn
John Zorn (born September 2 1953 in Queens, USA) is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Though not well-known to the general public, Zorn's recorded output is astonishingly prolific, with hundreds of album credits as a performer, composer or producer. His work has touched on dozens of musical genres, … - Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on September 25, 1906. Years after his death, he remains one of the most important figures in 20th-century classical music and one of the most controversial. Under pressure from Soviet authorities, he compromised his art. At least that was how it seemed. (09/25/2006) - Jean Sibelius
The core of Sibelius' oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies . Like Beethoven , Sibelius used each one to develop further his own personal compositional style. These works continue to be performed frequently in the concert hall and are often recorded. In addition to the symphonies, Sibelius' best-known compositions include Finlandia , Valse Triste , the violin concerto , the Karelia Suite and The Swan of Tuonela (one of the four movements of the Lemminkainen Suite ). - Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg (the anglicized form of Schönberg - Schoenberg changed the spelling officially when he left Germany and re-converted to Judaism in 1933), (September 13, 1874 - July 13, 1951) was an Austrian and later American composer. Many of Schoenberg's works are associated with the expressionist movements in early 20th-century German poetry and art, and he was among the first composers to embrace atonal motivic development. - Erik Satie
Satie and furniture music: not all of Satie's music is "furniture music". In the strict sense the term applies only to five of his compositions, which he wrote in 1917, 1920, and 1923. For the first public performance of "furniture music" see Entr'acte. Satie as precursor: the only "precursor" discussion Satie was involved in during his lifetime was whether or not he was a precursor of Claude Debussy, but many would follow. - Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams, OM (October 12, 1872 - August 26, 1958) was an influential English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also an important collector of English folk music and song. - Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone (born November 10, 1928; sometimes also credited as "Dan Savio" or "Leo Nichols") is an Italian composer especially noted for his film scores. He has composed and arranged scores for more than 400 film and television productions, more than any other composer living or deceased. He is best known for the characteristic sparse and memorable soundtracks of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), … - Terry Riley
Terry Riley (born 24 June 1935) is an American composer associated with the minimalist school. - Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 - November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, possibly the best-known classical composer born in South America. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his "Bachianas brasileiras" ("Brazilian Bach-pieces"). - Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including "La bohème", "Tosca", and "Madama Butterfly", are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire. Some of his melodies, such as "O mio babbino caro" from "Gianni Schicchi" and "Nessun dorma" from "Turandot", have become part of modern culture. - Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of classical music ranging from orchestral, to opera, choral, and piano music. His "Adagio for Strings" became his most famous composition and can be heard in films such as "Sicko", "Platoon", "The Elephant Man", "El Norte", "Amélie", "Lorenzo's Oil" and "Reconstruction". - Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev born in Sontsovka, Ukraine of the Russian Empire on April 27 (April 15<small><sup>1<;/sup></small> O.S.), 1891-March 5, 1953 was a Russian and Soviet composer who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. (Alternative transliterations of his name include Sergey or Serge, and Prokofief, Prokofieff, … - Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 - April 3, 1950), was a German, and in his later years German-American, composer active from the 1920s until his death. He was a leading composer for the stage, as well as writing a number of concert works. Over fifty years after his death, his music continues to be performed both in popular and classical contexts. In Weill's lifetime, his work was most associated with the voice of his wife, Lotte Lenya, … - James Horner
James Roy Horner (born August 14 1953) is an American composer of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements; he has also, deservedly or not, attained a reputation for "reusing" melodies and motifs from his previous scores. Horner has won two Academy Awards for his score and song compositions for the film "Titanic" in 1997. - Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was an American musician and composer of ragtime music. He remains the best-known ragtime figure and is regarded as one of the three most important composers of classic ragtime, along with James Scott and Joseph Lamb. - Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst was an English composer and was a music teacher for over 20 years. Holst is most famous for his orchestral suite "The Planets". Having studied at the Royal College of Music in London, his early work was influenced by Ravel, Grieg, Richard Strauss, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, but most of his music is highly original, with influences from Hindu spiritualism and English folk tunes. - Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11, and numbered Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré among his teachers. He was appointed organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris in 1931, a post he held until his death. On the fall of France in 1940 Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, … - Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez (b. March 26 1925) is a French composer and conductor of contemporary classical music. - Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud (September 4, 1892 - June 22, 1974) was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of "Les Six" - also known as the "Groupe des Six" - and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are particularly noted as being influenced by jazz and for their use of polytonality (music in more than one key at once).
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