Engelbert Humperdinck (1 September 1854 – 27 September 1921) was a German composer. He is known widely for his opera Hansel and Gretel (1893). Humperdinck was born at Siegburg in the Rhine Province in 1854. After receiving piano lessons, he produced his first composition at the age of seven. His ...

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian composer and conductor who, having lost his Austrian nationality, adopted US citizenship. A child prodigy, he became one of the most important and influential composers in Hollywood history.He was a noted pianist and compo...

Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm. He coined the term "organized sound" in reference to his own musical aesthetic.Varèse's conception of music reflected his vision of "sound as living matter" and of "musical space as open rather than bounded".He conceived the elements of his music in te...

Eugène Ysaÿe came from a background of "artisans", though a large part of his family played instruments. As violinist Arnold Steinhardt recounts, a legend was passed down through the Ysaÿe family about the first violin brought to the lineage:

Francesco Cavalli (born Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, 14 February 1602 – 14 January 1676) was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. He took the name "Cavalli" from his patron, Venetian nobleman Federico Cavalli.

Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy. He became a singer (boy soprano) a...

Born in Palmi near Reggio di Calabria, Cilea gave early indication of an aptitude for music when at the age of four he heard a performance of Vincenzo Bellini's Norma and was greatly affected by it. He was sent to study music at the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella in Naples, where he quickl...

Franz Lehár (30 April 1870 – 24 October 1948) was an Austro-Hungarian composer. Lehár was born in the northern part of Komárom, Kingdom of Hungary (now Komárno, Slovakia).
He is mainly known for his operettas, of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe). bu...

Franz Liszt ( 22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a German-speaking Austro-Hungarian composer, musician and pianist of the Romantic era.

Liszt gained renown in Europe during the early nineteenth century for his virtuoso skill as a pianist. He was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many...

César-Auguste Jean-Guillaume Hubert Franck 10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a Romantic composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life.

He was born at Liège, in what is now Belgium (though at the time of his birth it was part of the United Kingdom...

Georges Charpentier (December 22, 1846 - November 15, 1905) was a 19th-century French publisher who became known as a champion of naturalist writers, especially Émile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, and Guy de Maupassant. He also promoted Impressionist painters and together with his wife, Marguerite Char...

Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007) was an Italian-American composer, librettist, director, and playwright who is primarily known for his output of 25 operas. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. One of the most frequentl...

Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study wi...

He was born in Foggia in Apulia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples.His first opera, Marina, was written for a competition promoted by the music publishers Casa Sonzogno for the best one-act opera, remembered today because it marked the beginning of Ital...

György Kurtág (born 19 February 1926) is a Hungarian classical composer and pianist. György Kurtág was born in Lugoj in the Banat region of Romania, to Hungarian parents. He was an academic teacher of piano at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music from 1967, later also of chamber music, and taught unt...

György Sándor Ligeti (28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progres...

Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jacob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer of Jewish birth, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera Robert le diable and its successors, he gave the ge...

Johann(es) Simon Mayr (also spelled Majer, Mayer, Maier), also known in Italian as Giovanni Simone Mayr or Simone Mayr (14 June 1763 – 2 December 1845), was a German composer. He was an early inspiration to Rossini. He was born in Mendorf near Altmannstein, Landkreis Eichstätt, Bavaria, and studi...

Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini (14 November 1774 – 24 January 1851) was an Italian opera composer and conductor. Born in Maiolati, Papal State (now Maiolati Spontini, Province of Ancona), he spent most of his career in Paris and Berlin, but returned to his place of birth at the end of his life. ...

George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (/ˈhændəl/; baptised Georg Friederich Händel, German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhɛndl̩] 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759 ) was a German-British Baroque composer becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. Handel rec...

Sir Harrison Birtwistle, CH (born 15 July 1934) is a British composer of contemporary classical music. Among his many compositions, he is best known for The Triumph of Time (1972) and his operas, particularly The Mask of Orpheus (1986), Gawain (1991) and The Minotaur (2008). The latter was ranked...

Henry Purcell (10 September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer. Although he incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements, Purcell's style was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest English composers; no later native-born ...

Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition. In particular, h...

John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer and conductor whose music is rooted in minimalism. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, which are often centered around recent historical events. ...

Leoš Janáček ( July 3, 1854 Hukvaldy - August 12, 1928 Moravská Ostrava ) was a world-renowned Czech composer of classical music. Although he belongs to the generation of Czech musical modernity , his style is very distinctive and original. It is appreciated especially for its unusual melody, bas...