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Christoph Willibad Gluck
Gluck was a German composer, from the Bohemian region, Czech Republic. He fused the traditions of Italian opera with the rich choruses popular in France and wrote eight operas with a unique synthesis for the Parisian stage. Gluck completely reformed the opera by eliminating the da capo arias, suppressing the extensive dry harpsichord recitatives and replacing them with recitatives accompanied by the orchestra, dispensing with the castrati and giving greater relevance to the plot of the works. -
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was the second of the twelve children that Mathias Haydn and Maria Koller had. Two of his brothers also dedicated themselves to music, Johann Evangelist was a tenor and Michael was an important composer. Haydn was already a famed and respected composer when he became Beethoven's first composition teacher in Vienna, and shared a friendship with Mozart. The Creation was his most important work. -
Nannerl Mozart
Anne-Marie Mozart – Nannerl is the family affectionate nickname – was the older sister of the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. She also had prodigious musical gifts: she sang, played the violin and piano, and composed. No known composition by Nannerl Mozart survives, although there is debate about whether some of Amadeus's early compositions are actually hers, and that authorship could have been confused: Nannerl is known to have composed pieces for her brother. -
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer who wrote a wide variety of works, including piano concertos, string quartets, symphonies, operas, and sacred music. Besides being blind, Mozart wrote more than 600 works during his lifetime, including 41 symphonies, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and 27 piano concertos. Three of his most famous operas include The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni. It is also famous for its Requiem mass. -
Maria Theresia Von Paradis
Maria Theresia von Paradis was an Austrian pianist and composer who lost her sight as a child. Despite this, she received exceptional musical training from figures like Salieri and Mozart. She toured Europe, gaining fame for her virtuosity, and it’s believed Mozart composed Piano Concerto K. 456 for her. After retiring from performing, she founded a school for the blind in Vienna, promoting music education for the visually impaired. -
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a german composer, conductor, pianist and piano teacher. The prodigious German musician marked an era and emerged as a genius in the history of music, overcoming tough challenges. A pioneer of romanticism, he composed despite his deafness and faced his father's abuse at an early age. Beethoven's most famous works are the Moonlight Sonata, the Emperor Piano Concerto, the Eroica Symphony... -
Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Rossini was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. A leading figure of the early 19th century, Rossini's works include The Barber of Seville, William Tell, and La Cenerentola. His operas are marked by lively rhythms, catchy melodies, and intricate vocal ensembles. Rossini composed 39 operas and was influential in the development of Italian opera. After a successful career, he retired young, focusing on composing other works and enjoying a life of luxury. -
Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer. Born in Vienna, he showed early musical talent and studied with Antonio Salieri. In his short life, he composed over 600 lieder, seven symphonies, sacred music, operas, and chamber works. Notable works include the "Trout Quintet," "Unfinished Symphony," and song cycles like "The Fair Maid of the Mill". Though not widely recognized during his life, his music gained posthumous fame and influenced composers like Mendelssohn. -
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French composer and conductor, known for his dramatic and innovative orchestral works. His most famous composition, Symphonie Fantastique, revolutionized the use of orchestration and program music. Berlioz was a pioneer in expanding orchestral resources and created memorable works such as Harold in Italy and Requiem. Despite facing limited recognition during his lifetime, his music influenced later composers like Wagner and Liszt. -
Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, and conductor, renowned for his contributions to the early Romantic period. His notable works include the Wedding March, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and his symphonies, especially the Scottish and Italian symphonies. Mendelssohn was known for his melodic invention, orchestral color, and mastery of form. -
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist, renowned for his piano works. Known for his expressive depth, Chopin composed primarily for solo piano, creating masterpieces like nocturnes, etudes, mazurkas, and polonaises. His music is characterized by lyrical melodies, intricate harmonies, and innovative techniques. Chopin's works had a profound influence on piano music and remain central to the repertoire today, despite his short life and struggle with illness. -
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann was a german composer. Born in Zwickau, Saxony, he initially studied law but shifted to music, studying piano. A hand injury ended his piano ambitions, leading him to focus on composition. In 1840, he married Wieck's daughter, Clara, a renowned pianist. Schumann's works include piano pieces like "Carnaval" and "Kinderszenen," songs such as "Dichterliebe," and four symphonies. His mental health declined later in life, resulting in his institutionalization. -
Franz Listz
Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and conductor, considered one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of all time. He revolutionized piano technique and composition, with works like Hungarian Rhapsodies, Liebesträume, and Transcendental Études. Liszt's music is known for its dramatic intensity, technical difficulty, and rich harmonies. He was a key figure in the Romantic era and helped shape modern piano performance. Liszt also composed orchestral and choral works. -
Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, and theater director, known for his operas. His works, including The Ring Cycle, Tristan und Isolde, and The Flying Dutchman, revolutionized opera with their use of leitmotifs. Wagner's music and innovative approach to opera influenced the development of Western classical music. His ideas on total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) transformed the role of music in theater, and his legacy remains highly significant in opera and beyond. -
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi was an Italian composer, widely considered one of the greatest opera composers. His works, including Aida, La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Il Trovatore, revolutionized Italian opera with their dramatic intensity and memorable melodies. Verdi's music is known for its emotional depth, complex characters, and mastery of the orchestra. He played a key role in the development of opera in the 19th century and became a symbol of Italian nationalism. -
Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann was a German pianist, composer, and one of the most distinguished musicians of the Romantic era. She was a child prodigy and later became a renowned concert pianist. Clara composed piano works, chamber music, and songs, with pieces like her Piano Concerto in A minor and Lieder standing out. She was also married to composer Robert Schumann and played a crucial role in promoting his music. -
Smetana
Bedřich Smetana was a composer born in Bohemia, a region that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during his lifetime. He was a pioneer in the development of a musical style that was closely linked to Czech nationalism. For this reason, he is recognised in his country as the father of Czech music. At the age of 50, Smetana became completely deaf, but, freed from his theatre duties and the controversy he caused, he began a period of constant composition that lasted for the rest of his life. -
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, renowned for his contributions to Romantic music. Born in Hamburg, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna, where he became a leading figure in the musical scene. Brahms composed four symphonies, two piano concertos, chamber works, and over 200 songs. His music is known for rhythmic vitality and expressive contrapuntal textures. Brahms was a master of symphonic and sonata style in the second half of the 19th century. -
Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the Five. His works include the opera Boris Godunov, the symphonic poem A Night on Bald Mountain, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period. -
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer known for his expressive music. His famous works include Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, 1812 Overture, and Piano Concerto No. 1. Tchaikovsky's music is noted for its emotional depth, rich orchestration, and dramatic intensity. Despite personal struggles, he remains one of Russia's most celebrated composers. -
Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a post-romantic composer from Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire. He was one of the first Czech composers to achieve worldwide recognition and one of the great composers of the second half of the 19th century.
Dvořák's Stabat Mater premiered on 23 December 1880 at the National Theatre in Prague. After receiving a standing ovation in the Czech Republic, the cantata was also a great success in England three years later. -
Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg, commonly referred to as Edvard Grieg, was a Norwegian composer and pianist, considered one of the main representatives of late Romanticism.
Grieg wrote his beautiful Piano Concerto in 1868. It was the author's only concert work, and an absolute success.
His three best-known works are his piano concerto, his All of them exude tradition, mythology and the grandeur of Scandinavian nature with its mountains, forests and fjords. -
Rimski Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, conductor, and educator who was a member of the group of composers known as The Five.
Scheherazade is a major female figure in the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales known as The Thousand and One Nights. Although the piece was written by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888, the story of Scheherazade emerged during the Islamic Golden Age, dating from the 8th to the 14th century. -
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini was an Italian composer, renowned for his operas. His works, including La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are known for their emotional intensity, memorable melodies, and masterful orchestration. Puccini is considered one of the greatest opera composers, and his music helped shape the verismo style, focusing on realistic portrayals of human emotion. -
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was an Austrian composer and conductor, known for his symphonies and song cycles. His works are famous for their emotional depth, complexity, and orchestral innovation. Mahler was also the principal conductor of the Vienna Court Opera. Though not widely recognized during his lifetime, his music gained great popularity after his death. -
Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf was an Austrian composer, best known for his lieder. A prominent figure in late Romanticism, he wrote over 250 songs, including cycles like Mörike Lieder and Spanisches Liederbuch. Wolf's music is noted for its expressive depth, complex harmonies, and meticulous attention to the text. Despite struggles with mental health, he remains a key influence in the world of German art song. -
Debussy
Achille Claude Debussy was a French composer, one of the most influential of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some authors consider him the first impressionist composer, although he categorically rejected the term.
In 1918, Debussy died of cancer. -
Sibelius
Jean Sibelius, born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, was a Finnish composer and violinist of the late Romantic and early Modern periods.
His best-known compositions are Finlandia, the Karelia Suite, Valse triste, the violin concerto, the choral symphony Kullervo, and The Swan of Tuonela.
The name Sibelius (both the software and the company) comes from the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). Some users have speculated that this choice was due to the developers' surname, Finn. -
Schönberg
Arnold Schönberg, or Schoenberg, was a Viennese (later American) musician who also happened to paint. As a musician he would revolutionize the entire 20th century a little, inventing dissonance, although critics and the public did not understand very well what this man was talking about. As a painter, he left works of evident personality. Schönberg was born for music. As a child he began self-taught in this art. -
Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer of the 20th century. His work, often associated with Impressionism, also displays a bold neoclassical style and, at times, traits of Expressionism, and is the fruit of a complex heritage and musical discoveries that revolutionised music for piano and orchestra. -
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish composer of musical nationalism, one of the most important of the first half of the 20th century, along with Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina and Joaquín Rodrigo, and one of the most important Spanish composers of all. the times. -
Bartók
Bartók is remembered as one of the two great Hungarian composers, along with Franz Liszt. He combined traditional folk melodies and experimental harmonies to create modern Hungarian music. His scientific classification of folk music is often considered the beginning of ethnomusicology.
A few final commissions then brought him back to confidence: the String Quartet No. 6, along with the Concerto for Orchestra, Bartók's most popular work, was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzki . -
Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky or Stravinsky; Oranienbaum, Russia, 1882 - New York, 1971) Russian composer naturalized French and, later, American. One of the key dates that mark the birth of so-called contemporary music is May 29, 1913, the day Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring premiered. Its polytonal harmony, its abrupt and dislocated rhythms and its aggressive orchestration caused among the public one of the biggest scandals in the history of the art of sounds. -
Joaquín Turina
(Seville, 1882 - Madrid, 1949) Spanish composer. His first musical studies were carried out in his hometown and, later, in Madrid. From 1905 to 1914 he lived in Paris, and was a student of Moszkowski and Vincent d'Indy, at the Schola Cantorum. His production, of great technical mastery and nationalist affiliation, is often inspired by Andalusian popular music, without diminishing its universal value. -
Kódaly
Zoltán Kodály was a prominent Hungarian musician whose musical style first went through a post-Viennese-Romantic phase and then evolved into its main characteristic: the mixture of folklore and complex 20th-century harmonies, shared with Béla Bartók. -
Heitor Villa Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian conductor and composer. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and European classical music. He received some musical instruction from his father. -
Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American musician, composer and pianist. He is popularly known for having managed to make a perfect amalgam between classical music and jazz, which is evident in his prodigious works.
Representative works for classical music
"Rhapsody in Blue" (symphonic poem).
"An American in Paris" (symphonic poem).
"Cuban Overture" (symphonic poem).
"Concerto in F" (piano concerto).
"Porgy and Bess" (opera). -
Messiaen
Messiaen was born in Avignon, France, on December 10, 1908, into a family of high cultural level. His father was a scholar of literature and his mother, a poet. As a young man he taught himself to play the piano and began to compose. After the First World War, the family moved to Nantes, where Messiaen received his first formal music lessons and, in 1919, entered the Paris Conservatory, where he was a very successful student until he graduated in 1930. -
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer. He is considered the creator of concrete music. He is the author of the book titled Treatise on Musical Objects, where he exposes his entire theory on this type of music. He composed different works, all of them based on the technique of concrete music. -
John Cage
American musician who decisively influenced the avant-garde of his time, John Cage (Los Angeles, 1912 – New York, 1992) studied with the composers Henry Cowell and Adolph Weiss, as well as with the Austrian Arnold Schönberg. Under the influence of Zen, Cage often used silences in his scores as another element of musical language, giving sounds a time-dependent entity. Chance became, at times, the protagonist of his works. -
Pierre Henry
Born on December 9, 1927 in Paris and died on July 5, 2017 in the same city, Pierre Henry, also known as “The pioneer of concrete music”, was a prominent French composer, of course, in concrete music, and for his advances in experimental music, noise or electroacoustics. -
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American minimalist classical music composer. He studied at the Juilliard School in New York. His international recognition increased since the appearance of his opera Einstein on the Beach.