PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: musical composition
German composer
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer, the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. Widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived, Ludwig...
Austrian composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer, widely recognized as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. With Haydn and Beethoven he brought to its height the achievement of...
German composer
Johann Sebastian Bach composer of the Baroque era, the most celebrated member of a large family of north German musicians. Although he was admired by his contemporaries primarily as an outstanding harpsichordist,...
Italian composer
Giuseppe Verdi was a leading Italian composer of opera in the 19th century, noted for operas such as Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), La traviata (1853), Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1871), Otello (1887),...
Austrian composer
Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer who was one of the most important figures in the development of the Classical style in music during the 18th century. He helped establish the forms and styles for...
German composer
Richard Wagner was a German dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against...
Austrian composer
Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer who bridged the worlds of Classical and Romantic music, noted for the melody and harmony in his songs (lieder) and chamber music. Among other works are Symphony...
American composer
George Gershwin was one of the most significant and popular American composers of all time. He wrote primarily for the Broadway musical theatre, but important as well are his orchestral and piano compositions...
Russian composer
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was the most popular Russian composer of all time. His music has always had great appeal for the general public in virtue of its tuneful, open-hearted melodies, impressive harmonies,...
American musician
Bob Dylan is an American folksinger who moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, theretofore concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with the intellectualism...
Italian composer and musician
Claudio Monteverdi was an Italian composer in the late Renaissance, the most important developer of the then new genre, the opera. He also did much to bring a “modern” secular spirit into church music....
German composer
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote symphonies, concerti, chamber music, piano works, choral compositions, and more than 200 songs. Brahms was the great...
German composer
Christoph Willibald Gluck was a German classical composer, best known for his operas, including Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), Alceste (1767), Paride ed Elena (1770), Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), the French...
American singer, songwriter, and bandleader
Bruce Springsteen is an American singer, songwriter, and bandleader who became the archetypal rock performer of the 1970s and ’80s. With his poetic lyrics describing the lives of everyday Americans, his...
French composer
Hector Berlioz was a French composer, critic, and conductor of the Romantic period, known largely for his Symphonie fantastique (1830), the choral symphony Roméo et Juliette (1839), and the dramatic piece...
Hungarian composer
Franz Liszt was a Hungarian piano virtuoso and composer. Among his many notable compositions are his 12 symphonic poems, two (completed) piano concerti, several sacred choral works, and a great variety...
Russian composer
Igor Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer whose work had a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and whose compositions remained a touchstone of modernism...
Austrian composer
Gustav Mahler was an Austrian Jewish composer and conductor, noted for his 10 symphonies and various songs with orchestra, which drew together many different strands of Romanticism. Although his music...
Russian composer
Sergey Prokofiev was a 20th-century Russian (and Soviet) composer who wrote in a wide range of musical genres, including symphonies, concerti, film music, operas, ballets, and program pieces. Prokofiev...
British actor, director, writer, and composer
Charlie Chaplin was a British comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture...
Polish-French composer and pianist
Frédéric Chopin was a Polish French composer and pianist of the Romantic period, best known for his solo pieces for piano and his piano concerti. Although he wrote little but piano works, many of them...
German-English composer
George Frideric Handel was a German-born English composer of the late Baroque era, noted particularly for his operas, oratorios, and instrumental compositions. He wrote the most famous of all oratorios,...
American composer
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian-American composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, namely serialism and the 12-tone row. He was also one of the most-influential teachers...
Italian composer
Gioachino Rossini was an Italian composer noted for his operas, particularly his comic operas, of which The Barber of Seville (1816), Cinderella (1817), and Semiramide (1823) are among the best known....
German composer
Richard Strauss was an outstanding German Romantic composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His symphonic poems of the 1890s and his operas of the following decade have remained an indispensable...
German musician and composer
Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, musical conductor, and teacher, one of the most-celebrated figures of the early Romantic period. In his music, Mendelssohn largely observed Classical models...
Austrian composer
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer of the 12-tone Viennese school. He is known especially for his passacaglia for orchestra, his chamber music, and various songs (Lieder). Webern’s father, a mining...
French composer
Claude Debussy was a French composer whose works were a seminal force in the music of the 20th century. He developed a highly original system of harmony and musical structure that expressed in many respects...
German composer
Robert Schumann was a German Romantic composer renowned particularly for his piano music, songs (lieder), and orchestral music. Many of his best-known piano pieces were written for his wife, the pianist...
Italian composer
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of more than 105 masses and 250 motets, a master of contrapuntal composition. Palestrina lived during the period of the Roman Catholic...
English composer
Henry Purcell was an English composer of the middle Baroque period, most remembered for his more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas; and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare’s...
Italian composer
Giacomo Puccini was an Italian composer, one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism, who virtually brought the history of Italian opera to an end. His mature operas included La Bohème (1896), Tosca...
Italian composer
Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer noted particularly for his 555 keyboard sonatas, which substantially expanded the technical and musical possibilities of the harpsichord. Domenico, the son of...
Austrian composer
Alban Berg was an Austrian composer who wrote atonal and 12-tone compositions that remained true to late 19th-century Romanticism. He composed orchestral music (including Five Orchestral Songs, 1912),...
German composer and musician
Carl Maria von Weber was a German composer and opera director during the transition from Classical to Romantic music, noted especially for his operas Der Freischütz (1821; The Freeshooter, or, more colloquially,...
English author [1835-1902]
Samuel Butler was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satire Erewhon (1872) foreshadowed the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress. The Way of All Flesh (1903), his autobiographical...
Italian composer
Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian composer and violinist who left a decisive mark on the form of the concerto and the style of late Baroque instrumental music. Vivaldi’s main teacher was probably his father,...
Austrian composer
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer of a number of highly original and monumental symphonies. He was also an organist and teacher who composed much sacred and secular choral music. Bruckner was the...
Bohemian composer
Antonín Dvořák was the first Bohemian composer to achieve worldwide recognition, noted for turning folk material into 19th-century Romantic music. Dvořák was born, the first of nine children, in Nelahozeves,...
Hungarian composer
Béla Bartók was a Hungarian composer, pianist, ethnomusicologist, and teacher, noted for the Hungarian flavour of his major musical works, which include orchestral works, string quartets, piano solos,...
American musician
Duke Ellington was an American pianist who was the greatest jazz composer and bandleader of his time. One of the originators of big-band jazz, Ellington led his band for more than half a century, composed...
Italian opera composer
Gaetano Donizetti was an Italian opera composer whose numerous operas in both Italian and French represent a transitional stage in operatic development between Rossini and Verdi. Among his major works...
French composer
Jean-Philippe Rameau was a French composer of the late Baroque period, best known today for his harpsichord music, operas, and works in other theatrical genres but in his lifetime also famous as a music...
Russian composer
Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian composer, renowned particularly for his 15 symphonies, numerous chamber works, and concerti, many of them written under the pressures of government-imposed standards of...
Russian composer
Modest Mussorgsky was a Russian composer noted particularly for his opera Boris Godunov (final version first performed 1874), his songs, and his piano piece Pictures from an Exhibition (1874). Mussorgsky,...
French composer
Maurice Ravel was a French composer of Swiss-Basque descent, noted for his musical craftsmanship and perfection of form and style in such works as Boléro (1928), Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899;...
French composer
Georges Bizet was a French composer best remembered for his opera Carmen (1875). His realistic approach influenced the verismo school of opera at the end of the 19th century. Bizet’s father was a singing...
British musician
Paul McCartney is a British vocalist, songwriter, composer, bass player, poet, and painter whose work with the Beatles in the 1960s helped lift popular music from its origins in the entertainment business...
German composer
Georg Philipp Telemann was a German composer of the late Baroque period, who wrote both sacred and secular music but was most admired for his church compositions, which ranged from small cantatas to large-scale...
Canadian musician and filmmaker
Neil Young is a Canadian guitarist, singer, and songwriter best known for his idiosyncratic output and eclectic sweep, from solo folkie to grungy guitar-rocker. Young grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with...