71 articles
John Luther Adams
John Luther Adams (born 1953, Meridian, Mississippi) is an American composer of Alaskan wilderness-inspired music, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Become Ocean and the 2015 Grammy; distinct from composer John Adams.
John Rutter
John Rutter (born 1945) is an English choral composer and conductor, knighted in 2024, known for the Requiem, Gloria, Magnificat, Mass of the Children, Christmas carols, the Cambridge Singers, and the Collegium label.
Kara Karayev
Kara Karayev, also written Qara Qarayev (1918–1982), was a Soviet Azerbaijani composer and Shostakovich student, known for the ballets Seven Beauties and The Path of Thunder.
Karl Jenkins
Sir Karl Jenkins (born 1944, Penclawdd, Wales) is a Welsh composer, formerly of Nucleus and Soft Machine, creator of Adiemus and The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, knighted in 2015.
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), German avant-garde and electronic music pioneer, WDR Cologne studio director 1963-77, composer of Gesang der Juenglinge, Gruppen, and the seven-opera Licht cycle.
Kostiantyn Dankevych
Kostiantyn Fedorovych Dankevych (Костянтин Данькевич; 1905, Odesa – 1984, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian and Soviet composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher, named People's Artist of the USSR in 1954.
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki (1933–2020), Polish composer and conductor, pioneer of sonorism with Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima and St Luke Passion, later neo-romantic symphonist, five-time Grammy winner.
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio was an Italian composer and conductor, known for his work in the musical avant-garde. He co-founded Italy's first electronic music studio and created the Sequenza series.
Ludovico Einaudi
Ludovico Einaudi (born Turin, 1955) is an Italian pianist and composer of minimalist neoclassical piano music; albums include Le Onde, I Giorni, Una Mattina, and The Summer Portraits, with film music in Nomadland and The Father.
Mark Applebaum
Mark Applebaum, born 1967 in Chicago, is an American composer and Stanford University composition professor known for graphic scores, invented instruments, and a concerto for florist.
Max Richter
Max Richter (born 1966, Hamelin, West Germany) is a German-British composer and pianist of post-minimalist contemporary classical music; known for Memoryhouse, The Blue Notebooks, Recomposed Vivaldi, the eight-hour Sleep, and his Oscar-nominated Hamnet score.
Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman, English minimalist composer born 1944 in London, coined 'minimal music' in 1968, led the Michael Nyman Band, scored Greenaway films and The Piano, and wrote Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond.
Mikis Theodorakis
Mikis Theodorakis (Μίκης Θεοδωράκης, 1925–2021), Greek composer of Zorba the Greek, Z, and Serpico scores, resistance fighter, MP and minister; founder of entechno art-song and "music for the masses."
Moondog
Moondog, born Louis Thomas Hardin, was an American composer and street musician who performed for about 25 years on New York street corners in a Viking helmet before settling in Germany.
Oleksandr Bilash
Oleksandr Bilash (Олександр Білаш, 1931–2003) was a Ukrainian composer and poet best known for lyrical songs such as "Dva kol'ory" and "Iaseny," honored as Hero of Ukraine.
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), French composer, organist of La Trinité, and Conservatoire teacher; known for modes of limited transposition, birdsong works like Catalogue d'oiseaux, the wartime Quartet for the End of Time, and the opera Saint-François d'Assise.
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), German composer, violist, and theorist of Neue Sachlichkeit and Gebrauchsmusik; wrote Mathis der Maler, Ludus Tonalis, and The Craft of Musical Composition; taught at Yale and Zurich after Nazi-era exile.
Paul Lansky
Paul Lansky (born 1944) is an American computer-music pioneer and Princeton emeritus professor; creator of mild und leise (sampled by Radiohead's Idioteque), Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion, the chatter series, and Cmix software. Not the mob figure Meyer Lansky or the Lansky play-performance scale.
Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger (1882–1961), Australian-born composer, virtuoso pianist, and folk-song collector; known for Country Gardens, Lincolnshire Posy, the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, and Free Music experiments.
Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born 1937, Baltimore) is an American composer of 'music with repetitive structures,' associated with minimalism. Known for Einstein on the Beach, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Koyaanisqatsi, and Oscar-nominated film scores.
Phillip Wilcher
Phillip Wilcher (born 1958, Sydney) is an Australian composer of piano music and art song, and the original fifth member of The Wiggles on their 1991 debut album; youngest published Australian composer at 14 with "Daybreak".
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez (1925–2016), French composer and conductor of total serialism (Structures, Le marteau sans maître); founder of IRCAM and the Ensemble Intercontemporain; led the New York Philharmonic and BBC Symphony.
Platon Maiboroda
Platon Maiboroda (1918–1989) was a Ukrainian composer of more than 200 popular songs, including the Kyiv Waltz and the Rushnychok song, and winner of the Shevchenko Prize.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was an English composer of nine symphonies, The Lark Ascending, and Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, central to reviving English music.
Rebekah Harkness
Rebekah Harkness (born Rebekah Semple West, also Betty Harkness; 1915-1982), American Standard Oil heiress, composer, sculptor, and dance patron who founded the Harkness Ballet (1964-1975), Harkness House, and the Harkness Foundation, and inspired Taylor Swift's "The Last Great American Dynasty."
Richard Rodney Bennett
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (1936–2012), English composer and pianist, worked in serialist concert music, Oscar-nominated film scores such as Murder on the Orient Express, and jazz cabaret; New York-based from 1979, knighted 1998.
Rodion Shchedrin (Родион Константинович Щедрин)
Rodion Shchedrin (Родион Константинович Щедрин, 1932–2025), Soviet and Russian composer and pianist, husband of Maya Plisetskaya; wrote Carmen Suite, Anna Karenina, seven operas, six piano concertos; led the Russian Composers' Union from 1973.
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber (1910–1981) was an American composer of tonal, lyrically expressive concert music, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, celebrated for the Adagio for Strings and two Pulitzer Prize-winning works.
Sergei Prokofiev (Сергей Сергеевич Прокофьев)
Sergei Prokofiev (Сергей Сергеевич Прокофьев, 1891–1953), Soviet composer, pianist, and conductor from Sontsovka; St Petersburg Conservatory graduate under Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov, creator of Romeo and Juliet, Peter and the Wolf, and the Fifth Symphony, censured in 1948.
Steve Reich
Steve Reich (born October 3, 1936, New York) is an American composer who pioneered minimal music with Young, Riley, and Glass, known for phasing, It's Gonna Rain, Music for 18 Musicians, Different Trains, a Pulitzer Prize, and Grammys.