Classical composers
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. The crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. In his lifetime, Brahms' popularity and influence were considerable; he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. Britten's operas are firmly established in the international repertoire. He has more operas played worldwide than any other composer born in the 20th century.
Dietrich Buxtehude
Dieterich Buxtehude was a German-Danish organist and composer of the Baroque period. His organ works represent a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and in church services.
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer, virtuoso pianist, and music teacher. He was one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano".
Arcangelo Corelli
Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) was a great violinist and composer of music for the violin and other stringed instruments. His influence on violin playing was considerable, leading to the great Italian school of violinists, which included several of his pupils.
François Couperin
Couperin belonged to a family of several composers from the mid-17th to mid-19th centuries. He was organist in the chapel of Louis XIV at Versailles, and was the greatest French master of the harpsichord.
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions.
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, and concertos. Handel's music was well known to such later composers as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Franz Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms.
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher. As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School").
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano music and chamber music.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.
Johann Pachelbel
Johann Pachelbel was a German Baroque composer, organist and teacher, who brought the south German organ tradition to its peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (1873 – 1943) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music.
Domenico Scarlatti
Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families.
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. Today, Schubert is admired as one of the leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music and he remains one of the most frequently performed composers.
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer of the Romantic era. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, and the 1812 Overture.
Georg Philipp Telemann
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes.
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist. Vivaldi is recognised as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe.
