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Richard Wagner
Created extremely popular operas such as the Ring Cycle. Revolutionized opera with his leitmotifs and sought to synthesize poetic, dramatic, visual, and musical arts. Hitler's favorite. -
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Leoš Janáček
Collected Czech, Moravian, and Slovakian folk songs. Believed melody should fit the pitches and rhythms of ordinary life and listened to the chords of nature. Wrote the opera Jenufa. -
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Gustav Mahler
Best known for his symphonies, which contain "an epic multiplicity of voices and styles". Codified modern concert etiquette. -
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Claude Debussy
French impressionist composer, known for pieces such as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and La Mer. Used whole tone scales, pentatonic scales, and the overtone series. "A palette at once luminous and unreal, bright and hazy". -
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Richard Strauss
Best known for Salome and Also sprach Zarathustra. Wrote vibrant symphonic tone poems and explored themes of the individual against the collective. -
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Jean Sibelius
Seen as "Finland's hero" and was massively popular internationally. Well known for his tone-poem Finlandia. -
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Erik Satie
Known for his Trois Gymnopédies, Vexations, and Parade, which defined a new art of musical collage. His music often features simple melodies and unresolved chords. Greatly influenced Les Six. -
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Arnold Schoenberg
The father of atonal music and twelve-tone technique. Presented himself as the heir to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven and sought to free music from tonality. "Emancipation of dissonance". Part of the "Second Viennese School". -
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Charles Ives
Launched an American musical revolution while making a living in life insurance. Combined different American sounds (hymns, marches, folk music). -
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Maurice Ravel
Drew on folk material from various parts of the world. Wrote Daphnis et Chloe, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and Rapsodie espagnole. -
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Béla Bartók
Hungarian composer focused on folk-based musical realism. Attributed his use of polytonality to folk players and listened especially closely to those who lived on the margins of society. -
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Igor Stravinsky
Best known for Rite of Spring, a dissonant and rhythmically complex ballet that caused a riot at its premiere. His work is typically divided into his Russian period, neoclassical period, and serial period. -
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Anton Webern
Wrote orchestral cycle the Six Pieces. Economic, wanted to make a lot out of few notes and would go to the brink of nothingness in his music. "In a limbo between the noise of life and the stillness of death". Part of the "Second Viennese School". -
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Alban Berg
Best known for his opera Wozzeck, which looks into the mind of a soldier who goes mad and murders his wife. It was a lament and tribute to the Great War. Berg was labeled the more approachable romantic of the Second Viennese School. -
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Sergei Prokofiev
Lived in America and Paris for a few years before coming back to Russia in 1927, where he faced the same humiliation from Soviet officials that all Soviet composers did. Wrote the ballet Romeo and Juliet. -
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Darius Milhaud
Wrote jazz-based music and sought out genuine jazz, blues, and Afro-Brazilian music in the Americas. Part of Les Six. -
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Paul Hindemith
Pioneered "utility music", or music for everyday occasions. Sought to revitalize tonality. Wrote Symphonic Metamorphosis. -
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Virgil Thomson
American composer and critic. Showed his "knack for exploiting musical Americana" in Four Saints in Three Acts. He scored two federally funded film documentaries, combining hymns, ballads, fugues, and jazz. -
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Henry Cowell
"The godfather of American experimental tradition." Believed harmony and rhythm should be interdependent. -
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George Gershwin
Known for Rhapsody in Blue and Porgy and Bess. Blended classical and jazz/popular styles. -
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Roy Harris
American composer who used broad tonal melodies and asymmetrical rhythms. His most well-known work is his third symphony. -
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Kurt Weill
Collaborated with playwrights Georg Kaiser and Bertolt Brecht. Wrote The Threepenny Opera. -
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Aaron Copland
A key figure in American music. Populist style, uses wide open intervals. Well known for Appalachian Spring and Fanfare for the Common Man. -
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Harry Partch
West Coast nonconformist composer. Invented a 43-note scale and sought to close the gap between song and speech. -
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Dmitri Shostakovich
Soviet composer under close scrutiny from Stalin and the Communist Party. Wrote his famous heroic fifth symphony as a response to criticism he received for writing "formalist" music. -
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Olivier Messaien
Well known for his Quartet for the End of Time, which he wrote while he was a prisoner of war. Used complex rhythms and took inspiration from his Catholic faith and nature (particularly birds). -
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Elliott Carter
American composer who embraced the aesthetic of density and difficulty. Used complex textures, polyrhythm, and metric modulation. -
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John Cage
Radical experimentalist American composer. Tape and radio collages, chance process, and multimedia. Most famous for 4'33", a piece in which the performer makes no sound. -
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Benjamin Britten
British composer whose tonal orientation and preference for classical forms went against the grain of the postwar era. Best known for his opera Peter Grimes, which features rich, expansive music with spare orchestration and plain harmonies. -
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Milton Babbitt
Known for his total serialist and electronic music. Wrote Composition for Synthesizer and Philomel for soprano, recorded soprano, and synthesized tape. -
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Leonard Bernstein
Highly influential American conductor, composer, and educator. First American-born conductor to become director of a major American orchestra. Championed American music around the world. Well known for his musical West Side Story. -
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Iannis Xenakis
Originated "stochastic music", applied architecture/engineering models to music and looked at music like a scientist. Translated waveforms into notation. -
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György Ligeti
Avant-garde composer, used a technique called micropolyphony. His Reqiuem was used in 2001: A Space Odyssey. -
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Pierre Boulez
"Avatar of the postwar avant-garde", used total serialism. His piece Polyphonie X uses atonal harmony, rhythmic contrast, and assymmetrical pulse. -
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Morton Feldman
New York experimental composer. Took inspiration from Schoenberg twelve-tone writing and then slowed things down, letting every note and chord breathe. Used sparse textures and irregular, overlapping rhythms. -
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Karlheinz Stockhausen
"Crown prince of the new music kingdom". Articulated the avant-garde mission, assembled the latest sounds, and took influence from serialist, jazz, and electronic music. -
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Terry Riley
Added triads to Young's long-tone process, "completing the minimalist metamorphosis", and created tape loop works. Wrote Mescalin Mix and In C. -
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La Monte Young
"The master of the drone". Slowed down the notes in twelve-tone writing into long tones. Explored Indian music and eventually dropped notated composition in favor of evening-length ritual improvisations, which he called the Theatre of Eternal Music. -
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Steve Reich
New York minimalist composer. Developed a phasing technique. His music has traces of modal jazz, psychedelic trance, African-American protest, and rock n roll. Wrote Piano Phase and Music for 18 Musicians. -
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Philip Glass
Took inspiration from Reich's music. "In place of patterns shifting in and out of phase, Glass introduced constant rhythmic change, adding or subtracting notes in the style of Indian music". -
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John Adams
"Combined Reich-Glass repetition with the sprawling forms and grandiose orchestration of Wagner, Mahler, and Sibelius." Wrote Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Nixon in China.