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Post 1900's Era (1930-2000)

  • Issac Albeniz (Impressionism)

    Spanish composer and pianist; very important to Spain
  • Gustav Mahler (Maximalism)

    Austrian composer; some orchestral works can represent maximalism; large 10 programmatic symphonies, orchestral Lieder; conductor in Europe and the USA
  • Claude Debussy (Impressionism)

    French composer and pianist; inventor of musical impressionism; influential modern composers
  • Frederick Delius (Impressionism)

    English composer of German descent; used impressionism
  • Pietro Mascagni (Impressionism)

    Italian composer and conductor; he became the official composer of the Fascist regime in the 1930's
  • Richard Strauss (Maximalism)

    Composer of tone poems and some of the first modern operas; accomplished conductor; works epitomized maximalism
  • Jean Sibelius

    Finnish; his later music is more modern
  • Carl Nielsen

    Danish; prolific and important to the history of Scandinavian music
  • Paul Dukas

    French composer, teacher, and critic; only allowed a few of his works to be published
  • Erik Satie (Impressionism)

    Not an impressionist, but a leader in new French aesthetics on which impressionism was built; incredible innovator
  • Maurice Ravel (Impressionism)

    French composer; extremely versatile; innovator in pianistic style; expert orchestrator
  • Ferruccio Busoni

    Important Italian composer; advocated moving away from "the tyranny of major and minor keys"'; yet his music sounds more conservative than his talk
  • Scott Joplin

    American; popularized ragtime
  • Amy Marcy Cheney Beach

    American composer and pianist; very successful in Europe; conservative style; wrote scholarly articles
  • Enrique Granados

    Catalan composer; teacher and pianist; He is a representative composer of the 19th century Spain
  • Hans Pfitzner

    The leading conservative German composer; also a conductor
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams

    Became the leader in English music; collector and editor of folksongs and hymns, musical editor of the English Hymnal; teacher and conductor
  • Aleksandr Skryabin

    Influenced by chromaticism and inpressionism; complex original harmonic language; virtuoso pianist
  • Max Reger

    German composer; Post-Wagnerian harmony; extreme chromaticism; master of counterpoint
  • Sergei Rachmaniov

    Not interested in nationalism; master of melody; virtuoso pianist; toured the USA
  • Charles ives (Atonality)

    American; probably the most innovative, original, and creative of all 20th century composers; worked virtually in isolation; made a living in insurance
  • Arnold Schoenberg (Expressionism)

    The father of 12-tone music; important as an innovator; teacher of Webern and Berg
  • Gustav Holst

    English; influenced by folksong and Hindu mysticism; original composer and important teacher
  • Manuel de Falla

    The principal Spanish composer of the 20th century; used Spanish popular and folk music; earned international fame
  • Ottorino Respighi (Impressionism)

    Italian composer; used impressionism
  • Bela Bartok

    Hungarian composer and pianist important ethnomusicologist; known for his rhythmic music; he incorporated his own native folk music into his compositions
  • Karol Szymanowski

    Polish composer; the central figure in Polish music in the early 20th century
  • Igor Stavinsky

    One of the most versatile and interesting composers of the 20th century; rhythmic style; harmonically interesting
  • Zoltan Kodaly

    Hungarian; ethnomusicologist, music educator; created moveable 'do' solfege system
  • Gian Francesco Malipiero

    Italian composer and musicologist; original and inventive
  • Anton von Webern (Expressionism)

    Student of Schoenberg; known for his musical brevity and clarity of texture; uses pointilism; wrote no operas
  • Edgard Varese

    French-American; wrote non-tonal music, focusing on elements other than pitch; innovative; took interest in electronic music and the idea of organized sound as music
  • Charles T. Griffes

    American composer and pianist; interested in ethnic music
  • Alban Berg (Expressionism)

    Student of Schoenberg; expressive language; often atonal
  • Luigi Russolo

    Italian inventor, painter, and composer; he created a riot in Milan in 1913 when he demonstrated his new instruments that were to produce machine noises of daily experiences
  • Florence Price

    American composer; adapted Juba folk dance and idioms of black spirituals; the first African-American woman to win widespread fame as a symphonic composer; even so, she was omitted from the New Grove Dictionary in 1980
  • Ernst Toch

    Austrian composer; awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for his Symphony no. 3; prolific composer
  • Nadia Boulanger (Impressionism)

    Important teacher of composers in the 20th century; most prominent American composers of the first half of the century studied with her; conductor and composer
  • Heitor Villa-Lobos

    Brazilian composer and cellist
  • Louis Durey (Les Six)

    Turned communist in 1936; not talked about much in music history; anti-USA
  • Frank Martin

    Swiss composer of French descent
  • Cole Porter

    American Songwriter
  • Sergei Prokofiev

    Russian composer and pianist, important as a Russian voice in Western culture
  • Arthur Honegger (Les Six)

    From Switzerland; admired Bach
  • Darius Milhaud (Les Six)

    Friends with Satie; used polytonality; one of the first to use jazz in concert music; came to the US in 1940
  • Germaine Tailleferre (Les Six)

    French composer; too modest; beautiful music
  • Lili Boulanger (Impressionism)

    French composer; first woman to win the Prix de Rome, 1913; sister of Nadia
  • Alois Haba

    Czech composer, theorist and teacher
  • Walter Piston

    American composer and teacher; Neo-classic and crafted-oriented
  • William Grant Still

    American composer; the first African-American composer to have his symphony performed by a leading orchestra; the first black American to conduct a major orchestra; the first black American to write for radio, TV, and films; he incorporated folk idioms, jazz, and spirituals
  • Paul Hindemith

    German conductor, teacher, author and composer; wrote music for the practicing musician; Gebrauchsmusik
  • Carl Orff

    German composer and educationist; indebted to folksong (Bavarian); wrote a collection of graded material for children for use in schools
  • Roger Sessions

    American composer, theorist, and teacher; atonal mostly; intense and dissonant
  • Howard Hanson

    American composer, teacher, and conductor of Swedish ancestry; Neo-romantic style
  • Virgil Thomson

    American composer and critic; influenced by hymnody; his style unwittingly foreshadowed minimalism
  • Ira Gershwin

    Brother of George; used the pen name Arthur Francis early in his career (Arthur was their brother and Francis was their sister)
  • Henry Cowell

    American composer, teacher, and writer; innovator of indeterminacy (chance music) his experimental enthusiasm helped to create modern music
  • George Gershwin

    Influential American composer, pianist, and conductor who worked in Hollywood; he successfully fused jazz and pop music into the classical style and concert hall
  • Hanns Eisler

    German composer; pupil of Schoenberg; politically committed composer in East Germany Post WWII; fought against capitalism and fascism
  • Roy Harris

    American composer; influenced by folk music
  • Georges Auric (Les Six)

    French composer; by age 15 he had written over 200 works; wrote for French film
  • Francis Poulene (Les Six)

    French composer; delicate and sometimes irreverent style; harmonically charming
  • Duke Ellington

    American Jazz composer, band-leader and pianist; Created a unique style of big-band jazz; one of the first African-American composers to cross races with his music
  • Carlos Chavez

    Mexican composer, conductor, teacher, writer, and government official; extremely important to Mexican culture
  • Randall Thompson

    American composer and teacher
  • Silvestre Revueltas

    Mexican composer and violinist of international acclaim; he is representative of the "metizo realism" movement that drew upon the popular culture of Mexico
  • Developments

    music experienced the most varied and radical developments in its history; no one style or trend; tonality was abandoned then redefined into neo-tonality; mixed meter and new ideas about rhythm, bizzare rhythms and new notations; most things that were common in music were taken to their limits then abandoned; Blues, ragtime, jazz, followed by rock, pop, and urban vernacular music; new electronic instruments that changed musical composition and performance
  • Maximalism

    style of music which musical elements were pushed to the extreme; Expansion - expand forms, genres, and sizes of traditional musical entities; music was thick with motives and themes; Maximalist music often used an orchestra;
  • Impressionism

    Claude Debussy introduced Impressionism in France in the 1890's; Vague quality of each musical element; Harmonics were also vague, but tonal; Parallel chords, fifths, sevenths, and ninths were used to create color; dissonance was common; variations and sonata form were abandoned for large-scale, binary and ternary forms; quiet dream-like quality, loud dynamics were short lived in pieces; new tone colors were introduced.
  • Expressionism

    Most rebellious of Post-Romantic styles; Strong Emotional Expression; Melodies were optional; harmonies could not be analyzed; texture was often indeterminable; Rhythm, form, and timbre stayed traditional; binary and ternary forms were popular as were variations and even contrapuntal devices, all within an atonal system; 12 tone technique was created by Schoenberg in 1921; mostly atonal
  • Aaron Copland

    Most popular American composer of the 20th century; teacher, conductor, author; his music still has a special appeal to the American public
  • Ernst Krenek

    American composer of Austrian birth; trained in Vienna
  • Kurt Weill

    German opera composer in Berlin; moved to the USA, composed on Broadway in New York City
  • Louis Armstrong

    African-American jazz musician who revolutionized jazz; singer, band-leader and trumpeter
  • Period: to

    Post 1900's

  • Harry Partch

    American innovator, inventor of new instruments; developed a 43-note scale
  • Rush Crawford Seeger

    American composer and folk-music specialist; married to musicologist Charles Seeger; most popular among modernists in the 1920's and 30's
  • Maurice Durufle

    French composer and organist; not very prolific; influenced by chant; popular among choral musicians today
  • William Walton

    English composer; a central figure for England; wrote an example pf Dadaism with his chamber piece, Facade (1922-29)
  • Aram Khachaturian

    Armenian composer; one of the pillars of the Russian school of composers
  • Goffredo Petrassi

    Italian composer and teacher; after Dallapiccola, he is the most important composer in Italy during his day
  • Luigi Dallapiccola

    Italian composer, pianist, and writer; the principal innovator in Italy in the 20th century
  • Michael Tippet

    One of England's most important and original composers; favored neo-classicism
  • Louise Talma

    American composer; exponent of serialism
  • Dimitri Shostakovich

    Versatile; the most important Russian composer working in Russia in his day
  • Elliot Carter

    American composer, teacher; innovative treatment of rhythm and form; contributed compositions into the 21st century
  • Olivier Messiaen

    French composer, author, and organist; incorporated sounds of nature; innovator in rhythm; the first to advocate total serialism
  • Samuel Barber

    American composer and accomplished singer; child prodigy and gifted melodist; continued with a successful conservative tonality in the midst of 20th century musical experiementations
  • Neo-Classicism

    return to ideals of clarity; Used textures, topics, and forms from the past and combined them with modern harmony, tonality, and timbres; Johann Sebastian Bach; Neo-Classicism began with a revival of Bach's music, aswell as the interest of the harpsichord;
  • Primitivism

    western visual art movement; folk like; Paul Gauguin (artist); Igor Stravinsky vigorous, Rite of Spring
  • William Schuman

    American composer and teacher; used borrowed subjects
  • Pierre Schaeffer

    French composer, theorist, writer, and teacher; the innovator of musique concrete
  • Gian Carlo Monotti

    Composer in America but of Italian birth; important as a modern opera composer; Samuel Barber's partner in life and work
  • Alan Hovhaness

    American composer of Armenian and Scottish descent; Armenian influence in his music
  • John Cage

    American composer and philosopher; most innovative composer of the 20th century; changed the definition of music; used indeterminacy; he was the center of avant-garde music in the mid-20th century
  • Conlon Nancarrow

    Mexican composer of American birth; interested in jazz, African music, and music of India; used piano player rolls to play his rhythmically complex music
  • Norman Dello Joio

    American composer, organist, teacher; studied with Hindemith; considers himself an arch conservative
  • Henry Brant

    American composer of Canadian birth; a leader in spatial music
  • Morton Gould

    American composer, conductor, arranger and pianist; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995
  • Witold Lutoslawski

    Polish composer and a leader in aleatoric (chance) music
  • Benjamin Britten

    Most prolific and best-known English composer of the 20th century; kept opera alive in English speaking countries
  • Dadaism

    a movement of anti-art thinking in which artists and poets in the mid 1910's reacted against war and the bourgeois in Europe. Dadaism encouraged the questioning of traditional artistic expectations (avant garde)
  • George Perle

    American composer and theorist; retrained tonal centers in his 12-tone music which he called, "twelve-tone tonality;" won.a Pulitzer Prize in 1986
  • Vincent Persichetti

    American composer, pianist, and conductor
  • Vincent Persichetti

    American composer, pianist, and conductor
  • Milton Babbit

    American composer, teacher, writer; used serialism; he denied the importance of his audience
  • Alberto Ginastera

    Argentine composer and pianist
  • Ulysses Kay

    African-American composer; not folk-oriented; favored neo-classicism
  • Lou Harrison

    American composer and teacher; favored the gamelan
  • Robert Ward

    American composer and teacher; his opera The Crucible won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962
  • George Rochberg

    American composer and teacher who helped revive tonality in the 1970's
  • Leonard Bernstein

    American conductor, composer, teacher, author, pianist; most influential American musician of the 20th century; brought classical music to the public via various media
  • Galina I. Ustvolskaya

    Russian composer whose musical style is uniquely her own
  • Non-Tonal

    Percussion ensembles; less pitch focused; Edgard Varese new vision of musical timbres with modern orchestration techniques; experimented with strings often
  • Louis Barron

    Composer of the first commercially released film to feature an entirely electronic soundtrack; a pioneer in electro-acoustic music; John Cage used the Barron studio for his first tape work in 1953; husband of Bebe Barron until the 1970's
  • John La Montaine

    American composer of great versatility; his Piano Concerto No.1 won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958
  • Karel Husa

    Czech-born composer and teacher; his Strong Quartet No.3 won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969
  • Ralph Shapey

    American composer, conductor, and teacher; used syllables in organized sound structures; united avant-garde and romantic aesthetics
  • Newton Strandberg

    American composer with eclectic style; studied with Henry Cowell; worked to create electronic-sounding acoustic instruments
  • Lukas Foss

    American composer, conductor, and pianist of German birth; recognized for his experiments with improvisation and aleatoric (change) music
  • Iannis Xenakis

    French composer of Greek parentage and Romanian birth; advocated Stochastic music (music based on mathematical calculations)
  • George Theophilus Walker

    American composer and pianist; first African American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize (1996)
  • Ned Rorem

    American composer, poet, and author
  • Gyorgy Ligeti

    Austrian composer of Hungarian birth; wrote textural music with sound blocks
  • Luigi Nono

    Italian composer, conductor, and teacher; innovative and modern
  • Luciano Berio

    Important Italian composer, conductor, and teacher; advocated new tonalities and techniques; his recent death leaves Italy lacking internationally famous composers
  • Pierre Boulez

    French composer, author, and conductor; advocated total serialism; he said, "all art of the past must be destroyed"; post modern
  • Gunther Schuller

    American composer, teacher, conductor, author, and jazz musician; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994; recognized for his Third Stream style, which combines jazz idioms with classical art music; in 1972 he orchestrated Scott Joplin's opera from 1910, Treemonisha for its long-delayed premiere
  • Bebe Barron

    Composer of the first commercially released film to feature an entirely electronic soundtrack; a pioneer in electro-acoustic music; John Cage used the Barron studio for his first tape work in 1953; she was married to Louis Barron until the 1970's
  • Hans Werner Henze

    German composer who created a fusion of past musical traditions and new trends; used traditional genres
  • Ben Johnston

    American, microtonal composer; studied with Parch and Cage
  • Earle Brown

    American composer; first to use open form; a leading representative of the Cage school in the 1950's
  • Morton Feldman

    American composer; also a representative of the Cage school in 1950's
  • Betsy Jolas

    French composer who has been influential as a teacher and composer
  • Carlisle Floyd

    American composer; one of the foremost composers of opera in the USA in the 20th century
  • Samuel Adler

    American composer, conductor and teacher; Jewish-German heritage; faculty member at the Julliard School since 1997
  • Thea Musgrave

    Scottish composer; uses traditional genres in a modern context
  • T.J. (Thomas Jefferson) Anderson

    African-American composer; uses Jazz and post-Webern styles
  • Karlheinz Stockhausen

    German composer, teacher, conductor, and theorist; he helped to pioneer electronic music and new forms of modern notation; he has been one of the most important musical innovators in the 20th century, post WWII
  • George Crumb

    American composer; most popular for expressing despair during the Vietnam War
  • Jerry Goldsmith

    American composer
  • Avet Rubini Terterian

    Armenian composer interested in space and temporality; incorporated aspects of Armenian folk elements
  • Ornette Coleman

    American saxophonist and composer; the primary innovator of the free-jazz movement in the 1960's; his album, Sound Grammar won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007
  • Stephen Sondheim

    American composer and lyricist
  • Mauricio Kagel

    German-Argentine composer, filmmaker, dramatist and performer; self taught as a composer
  • Sofia Gubaidulina

    Russian composer; works have spiritual connotations; believes music has mystical properties; unusual instrumental combinations
  • Isao Tomita

    Japanese; pioneer of electronic music known as TOrmita; producer of analog synthesizer arrangements
  • Pauline Oliveros

    American composer; accomplished tape-music composer
  • Rodion K. Shchedrin

    Russian composer and pianist; prolific and versatile composer embracing many styles
  • John Williams

    American composer and conductor; considered one of the best film score composers in America
  • Krzysztof Penderecki

    Polish composer; wrote textural music using sound blocks; his atonal music has public appeal; Poland's greatest living composer
  • Morton Subotnick

    American composer and teacher; accomplished tape-music composer; his 1966 composition, Silver Apples of the Moon was the first electronic piece to be commissioned by a recording company
  • Henryk Gorecki

    Polish composer; neo-tonal; his later works focused on tonal consonance
  • Fisher Tull

    American composer, teacher, and conductor
  • Peter Maxwell Davies

    British composer and conductor; known for his avant-garde music in England; in 2004 he was made "Master of the Queen's Music"
  • Mario Davidovsky

    American composer of Argentine origin; known for his works that combine live performance with recorded electronic sounds; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his Synchronisms No.6 for Piano and Electronic sound
  • Alfred Schnittke

    Known for his Russian film music; moved 8 to Germany; called his style polystylistic, incorporating styles from the Baroque to the present
  • Giya A. Kancheli

    Georgian composer from the Soviet Union; known for his film music
  • Arvo Part

    Estonian composer; assimilates older styles with a newly created modern tonality; created his own sort of spiritual minimalism with his tintinnabuli technique
  • Terry Riley

    American composer and performer; one of the founders of minimalism with his 1964 work, In C; interested in electronic and tape music; influenced by jazz and Indian classical music
  • La Monte Young

    American composer; used a variety of experimental ideas (some vulgar); one of the founders of minimalism; influenced by ethnic music; he continues to experiment with time in his music, some pieces having no end yet; known for his development of drone music
  • Steve Reich

    American composer and percussionist; one of the pioneers in minimalism
  • Oily Wilson

    African-American composer, teacher, and writer; interested in electronic and African music; he is also a pianist, bassist and musicologist; he established the first conservatory program for electronic music
  • Philip Glass

    American-Jewish composer and performer; one of the innovators of minimalism; he is one of the most influential composers in the 20th century
  • Nikolai Kapustin

    Russian composer notable for his use of jazz in classical genres
  • David Del Tredici

    American; known as the father of Neo-romanticism; influenced by literature; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980
  • Valentyn Sylvestrov

    Ukrainian composer and pianist; considered post-modern, but he believes his music is an echo of the past
  • John Harbison

    American composer; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his choral work, The Flight into Egypt
  • Joan Tower

    American composer pianist, and conductor; mainstream composer influenced by Beethoven and Stravinsky; one of the most successful female composers
  • John Corigliano

    American composer; addresses important social issues in his sometimes intense music; one of our composers to watch for future generations
  • William Bolcom

    American composer and pianist who desired to erase boundaries between popular music and art music; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for his 12 New Etudes for Piano
  • Charles Wuorinen

    American composer, pianist, and teacher; favors serialism; complex music; he composed an opera, Brokeback Mountain in 2008-12; won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his electronic work, Time's Encomium
  • Barbara Kolb

    American composer; known for her serialism and pointillism; first American woman to win the Prix de Rome; she uses sound masses in her music
  • Ellen Taaffee Zqilich

    American composer and violinist; very popular, busy, and noteworthy composer; first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music with her Symphony No.1 from 1982
  • Musique concrete

    French composer, Pierre Schaeffer first developed this technique using a tape recorder; using recorded natural sounds then manipulating the sound by tape-splicing, then mixing, and superimposing the sounds on top of another
  • Brain Ferneyhough

    British composer and teacher; uses complex notation; considered a central figure in the New Complexity movement
  • Tania Justina Leon

    Cuban-American composer and pianist of mixed descent; influenced by gospel, jazz, African, and Cuban elements; teacher
  • Paul Lansky

    American pioneer in digital sound synthesis
  • John Tavener

    British composer known for his choral music and use of neo-tonality
  • Laurie Anderson

    American performance artist and composer; also a painter and teacher; considered experimental
  • John Adams

    American composer and conductor; expanded the new language of minimalism and Neo-romanticism; one of our leading composers of post-minimalist music
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber

    British composer of extraordinary contemporary fame and success
  • Christopher Rouse

    American composer and teacher; his Trombone Concerto won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993
  • Steven Stucky

    American composer and teacher; his Second Concerto for Orchestra won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005
  • Aleatoric

    chance music, composer left one or more musical elements in performance up to change. Performances were never the same twice; Charles Ives and Henry Cowell
  • James Dillon

    Scottish composer and teacher; Inked with the New Complexity group of composers
  • Libby Larson

    American composer; co-founder of the Minnesota Composers Forum (now the American Composers Forum)
  • Indeterminate

    also based on elements of chance, but could imply more directly three specified types of change elements; John Cage; Iannis Xenakis; Karlheinz Stockhausen; Earle Brown; Morton Feldman
  • Electronische Musilk (electronic music)

    developed in Germany after Stockhausen worked in Schaeffer's studio in 1962. Cologne became the leading city for electronische musik with its famous electronic music studio in the radio studios of NWDR in 1953
  • Textural

    functioned with non-tonal music; sound masses could function contrapuntally although not constructed obviously of individual melodies, harmonies or rhythms. Used Sound blocks; Charles Ives; Henry Cowell; Gyorgy Ligeti; Krzysztof Penderecki
  • Maximized Expressionism

    integral serialism; Following Taruskin's notions of Maximalism; Milton Babbitt; George Crumb
  • John Luther Adams

    American composer who writes music inspired by nature; his orchestral work, Become Ocean won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014
  • John Zorn

    American composer; uses a kaleidoscopic approach to composition; saxophonist, producer, arranger
  • Danny Elfman

    American film-score composer, actor, and record producer; his film scores since 1980 have been widely recognized
  • Tobias Picker

    American composer, especially important for his operas
  • Michael Gordon

    American composer associated with post-minimalism and works exhibiting totalism
  • Richard Danielpour

    Prolific American composer of an eclectic style
  • Paul Moravec

    American composer and teacher; won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his chamber work, Tempest Fantasy
  • Mikel Rouse

    American composer associated with totals influenced by popular and world musics
  • Hans Zimmer

    German-born composer; innovator in the use of computer-synthesized soundtracks combined with orchestral music, in 2014 he was head of the film division of Dreamworks studio
  • Tan Dun

    Chinese composer and conductor; he strives to create multicultural, multimedia programs that obscure the boundaries between classical and non-classical, East and West, avant-garde and indigenous art forms
  • Mangus Lindberg

    Finnish composer and pianist; conscious composer with mixed styles and tonalities
  • Uematsu Nobuo

    Japanese composer of video game music (Final Fantasy Series); he is changing the perception of art music
  • Aaron Jay Kernis

    American composer and teacher; Neo-romantic style; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for his String Quartet No.2
  • Mark-Anthony Turnage

    English composer; prolific composer of emotionally charged music; strongly influenced by jazz
  • Koji Kondo

    Japanese video game composer and sound director for Nintendo since 1984
  • Unsuk Chin

    South Korean composer based in Germany; winner of several international competitions intricate serialism with mixed styles
  • Wynton Learson Marsalis

    American trumpeter, composer, teacher, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York; won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for his oratorio, Blood on the Fields
  • Jennifer Higdon

    American composer and teacher; won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for her Violin Concerto; active commissions in the 21st century
  • Eric Whitacre

    American composer, conductor and lecturer; specially known for his Virtual Choir project and large, online musical performances; writes in neo-tonal style
  • Michel van der Aa

    Dutch composer trained first as a recording engineer; 3D film-opera from 2013 is of particular note, Sunken Garden
  • Thomas Ades

    British composer, pianist and conductor; prolific composer; post-minimalist influences
  • Carter Pann

    American composer of particular appeal; teacher
  • Kevin Puts

    American composer; his opera, Silent Night won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012; teacher
  • Heather Schmidt

    Canadian composer and pianist
  • Mason Bates

    American composer who fuses orchestral music with electronics; wrote a work for the Youtube Symphony Orchestra. 2011
  • Kyle Kindred

    American composer and teacher; active commissions in the 21st century
  • Anna Clyne

    British born; co-composer in residence with Mason Bates for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; composes electro-acoustic music
  • Dobrinka Tabakova

    British Bulgarian composer; won the Jean-Frederic Perrenoud Prize in Vienna at age 14, and many International prizes since
  • Kathryn Salfelder

    American composer, conductor, and pianist; internationally awarded; post-minimalist
  • Alex Prior

    British composer and pianist of Russian heritage; by age 8 he had written significant works numbering more than 40