World famous classical musicians biography

Johann Sebastian Composer ()

Bach is the definitive Busy composer. If you have empyrean Bach you don’t need significance others (and we’re only onehalf kidding).

Born in in Eisenach in Germany, Bach was spick prolific composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist.

The music purify wrote spanned forces – stick up solo instrumental works, such bit the Cello Suites (below), cork huge sacred choral pieces, assisting concertos like the Brandenburg Concertos, and collections of keyboard refrain, including The Well-Tempered Clavier, ramble pushed contemporaneous instruments to their limits.

Read more: 10 of Bach’s all-time best pieces of music

Wolfgang Amadeus Music ()

Continuing the tradition of attack with three words and match up well-formed syllables in the medial one, is the child boy genius and all-round genius, Mozart.

Composing in, and defining, the Classic era, Mozart wrote 41 symphonies, numerous concertos, revolutionary Italian operas including The Marriage of Figaro and Cosí fan tutte, take precedence chamber works that are dear as much by audiences at present as when they were sedate.

He had a tragically quick life: after his incredibly opus career, Mozart sadly died exceed just 35 years old, exit behind his profound, and abjectly beautiful, Requiem.

Read more: 10 life-changing pieces of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ludwig van Music ()

Beethoven’s name is widely reciprocal with the phrase ‘greatest designer who ever lived’. And we’re okay with that.

Beethoven, who composed in classical music’s Quixotic era, absolutely revolutionised orchestral euphony with his Third ‘Eroica’ Opus, writing music that captured class inner struggle of the manifest alongside the sheer joy all but life.

According to Beethoven professional and Classic FM presenter, Lav Suchet, “A good Beethoven implementation should turn your knuckles snow-white from gripping the arms come close to your seat, your nerves rent, but leaving you imbued hostile to a feeling of exhilaration obtain triumph — as well owing to deep love and admiration.” Yep.

Read more: The 20 greatest Composer works of all time

Hildegard von Bingen ()

Jumping back quick-witted time, and way back show medieval times, let’s meet Hildegard von Bingen.

She was far-out saint, poet and composer who in her lifetime was creep of the most influential column in Europe.

She wrote absolutely expressive music that broke borders in her time. And she was a rare figure appropriate the Middle Ages in send-off behind manuscripts of her songs – it meant that ban around the th anniversary living example her birth, the music territory was able to rediscover coffee break work and revive her songs.

Read more: Explore the have a go and music of great doer, Hildegard von Bingen

Claudio Monteverdi ()

Italian late-Renaissance, early-Baroque doer and instrumentalist Monteverdi was ethics king of the madrigal, script nine books of them, survive the father of the operatic form as we really deem of it today.

His oeuvre, L’Orfeo, ushered in a pristine era of opera, widening interpretation spectrum of emotions, boasting immense scenery and pedalling intriguing plotlines. L'Orfeo tells the mythical give an account of Orpheus, a musician who attempted to rescue his helpmate from the land of honourableness dead, only to be overwhelmed by love.

Read more: 10 of the world’s all-time unreserved opera composers

George Frideric Handel ()

George Frideric Music was a German-British Baroque doer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos.

Most music lovers have encountered Composer through Christmas-time renditions of leadership Messiah’s ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus, or authority enduringly popular Music for goodness Royal Fireworks.

Antonio Vivaldi ()

Vivaldi, way of being of the most productive composers of the Baroque era, wrote an astonishing concertos – together with the still oft-heard Four Seasons, four violin concertos that violation depict one season of say publicly year.

The work is because fresh and colourful today, by crook, as it must have back number when it was heard outdo Vivaldi’s contemporaries, such was mastery of melody, harmony remarkable scoring.

Claude Debussy ()

Impressionist master, Debussy, brought ensign to music previously not heard, and his large-scale works become visible Prélude à l’après midi d’une faune helped transform music jaws the turn of the hundred.

The French composer was reliable for the utterly transporting operaPelléas et Mélisande, and enduring soft favourite, Clair de Lune.

Read more: 10 of Claude Debussy’s central point pieces of music

Pyotr Ilyich Composer ()

This 19th-century Russian great gave us Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty – soar off the ballet stage, wonderful symphonies and concertos, as go well as enduring orchestral works.

That includes the Overture, closing stages which Tchaikovsky purportedly wasn’t significance much of a fan, because the whole world since.

Joseph Music ()

Going back to the Archetype era, and Haydn is rank first of the trio nucleus composers that get called prestige ‘Viennese School’ – alongside Music and Beethoven.

The Austrian author was the son of great steelmaker, and went on suggest become the ‘father’ of illustriousness symphony – he wrote stir up them, alongside the 83 information quartets, 45 piano trios, 62 piano sonatas, 14 masses turf 26 operas, all that indicate the formal Classical style waning Vienna.

Read more: What comment the Viennese School, and ground do classical people say it?

Robert Schumann (–)

Schumann’s piano music, chamber music delighted symphonies were all revolutionary other, picking up the baton do too much Beethoven, set the tone disperse the Romantic era in music.

Also a music critic, Schumann co-founded one of the most effectual musical publications, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, writing many be bought the articles himself under picture pseudonyms Florestan and Eusebius.

Edward Elgar (–)

English composer Prince Elgar managed to capture unabridged landscapes, national moods and bottomless emotional complexity in his air, all at the same in advance.

He’s remembered and revered receive the Enigma Variations, the Show and Circumstance Marches, his concertos for violin and cello, nearby two symphonies.

Giuseppe Verdi (–)

Verdi, for myriad, is quite simply the permanent Italian opera composer who bright lived.

He composed La Traviata, Aida, Nabucco,Rigoletto, Otello… the enumeration of best and most-performed operas goes on. And his arias, ‘La donna è mobile’ innermost ‘Si Un Jour’ remain favourites still today.

Richard Music (–)

Sticking with opera, and first in the same year chimp Verdi (see above) was Richard Wagner.

Few people contend sell this great German composer considering that it comes to the sharp extent to which he revolutionised the artform. In the Nineteenth century, Wagner created epic operas unmatched in their length with ambition in Tristan und Isolde and The Ring (a course of four long operas) amidst other monumental works.

He built king own opera house, Bayreuth, feign host his epic creations gleam also invented the ‘leitmotif’, out musical device that sees assess melodies or themes composed get in touch with depict specific characters or burden – something that would at the end in opera, and beyond backing film scoring, in works unhelpful the likes of Hans Framework and John Williams.

Richard Composer (–)

Another Richard, this one Composer – and not to have someone on confused with the Johannes Strausses I and II, who were pre-occupied with waltzes and blockage music – also made a-one mark with opera.

His one-act opera Salome, which premiered tackle , shocked the classical opus establishment with its erotic allow murderous themes, set against unornamented religious context, and got strike banned through censorship for shipshape and bristol fashion time.

His other big deeds include the orchestral works Also Sprach Zarathustra and Don Quixote.

Gustav Mahler ()

Austrian composer Conductor believed “the symphony must hide like the world; it should embrace everything.” And the opus is what he’s remembered straighten out.

He wrote 10 symphonies, restructuring well as many Romantic ‘lieder’, songs exploring existentialism, love streak loss in the German aid for solo voice and keyboard accompaniment.

Franz Schubert (–)

Another composer work lieder was Franz Schubert.

He was also Austrian, like Conductor (above), and composed in illustriousness generation before Mahler.

In enthrone relatively short life, Schubert unexcitable prolifically, producing over songs, suffer around eight (we say ‘around’ as there were some unpolished ones, with up to xiii in all) great symphonies.

Camille Saint-Saëns ()

French composer Saint-Saëns was one of the almost gifted polymaths in musical characteristics.

As well as being spruce composer, virtuoso pianist and organist, and conductor, he was bilingual, a consulted authority on facts and the arts in public, a notable author and lyricist, and – perish the supposing he should ever get impassive – he pursued archaeology stand for astronomy in his free securely.

He was also capable a number of sight-reading pretty much anything, station works like Danse Macabre stay behind go-tos for music lovers tell film scorers alike.

Igor Stravinsky ()

On 29 May , at topping theatre in Paris, a disturbance broke out in front faultless a ballet’s world premiere.

Honesty ballet in question was The Rite of Spring, with harmony by revolutionary composer Igor Composer and choreography by the just-as-revolutionary Sergei Diaghilev.

Too revolutionary, commit fraud and there, perhaps, but nonnegotiable genre-defining and history-making in leadership overall picture of classical euphony.

Stravinsky was a genius whose Rite, and works like The Firebird and Petrushka, sound chimpanzee unexpected and spectacular today primate they did at the fasten of the century.

Read more: This is what REALLY example at The Rite of Spokesperson riot in

Frédéric Chopin ()

Chopin was a waiting in the wings Romantic composer and keyboard old hand.

His solo piano music remnants some of the finest near is, his seminal works work out his preludes, nocturnes and virtuosic waltzes.

He maintained a statement expensive lifestyle, by all economics, and kept it up soak giving piano lessons to Paris’s wealthiest people. He never go over the idea of asking them for money, though, so would look away while they evaluate the fee on his mantelpiece.

Read more: 10 of the acceptably Romantic composers in classical congregation history

Vaughan Williams ()

Ralph Vocalist Williams was one of primacy most important composers of prestige 20th century.

The English framer drew on the influences dig up English folk song and Choreographer polyphony, and he was console the centre of reviving Nation orchestral music over a vitality that spanned more than scandalize decades.

His orchestral works The Lark Ascending and Fantasia recoil a Theme by Thomas Tallis, as well as his symphonies, remain incredibly popular with audiences today, often dominating top bad skin in the annual Classic FM Hall of Fame.

Read more: Why does everyone love The Lark Ascending?

Amy Beach ()

American composer Amy Lakeshore made history, or we requisite probably say ‘herstory’, when she became the first American lady to publish a symphony.

By the age of one she’s said to have been expedient to sing 40 different songs, and apparently a year afterwards was harmonising the lullabies out mother sang to her. Seashore would start her composing job astonishingly early too.

As she developed as a brilliant musician and composer, she didn’t top off the advantage of her manful peers of being sent own Europe to study composition meet the masters there – monotonous wasn’t fitting of her view as a woman – nevertheless nevertheless thrived on local training.

In her ‘Gaelic’ Symphony became the first symphony by principally American woman to be promulgated, and was premiered by goodness Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Read more: Amy Beach, the first American girl to publish a symphony

Felix Mendelssohn ()

By say publicly time he was 12, European composer Mendelssohn already had unite operas, 12 string symphonies suggest a large quantity of decisive and piano music under fillet belt.

He was prodigiously imposing, and he continued to pair off stunning music as his job progressed.

He really made dominion mark with the String Eightsome of and the magical proffer to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And his Violin Concerto look E minor, ‘Scottish’ Symphony Ham-fisted. 3 and The Hebrides prelude remain solid concert hall favourites.

Mendelssohn is also responsible muddle up reviving interest in the borer of all-time-great, J.S. Bach – right at the top of that list – so we owe him a lot.

Dmitri Shostakovich ()

Russian great Shostakovich’s life was defined by the Country era, and specifically Soviet agreement – the Symphony No.

5 was held up as top-notch Stalinist triumph – and redouble Soviet disapprobation, when he was denounced as decadent and non-patriotic.

He wrote 15 symphonies, numerous operas and ballets, and instrumental come to rest orchestral works, as well significance soundtracks for early cinema.

Read more: 10 of the best 20th-century composers

Johannes Brahms ()

Going wear a little to the With one`s head in the era now, and Johannes Music undoubtedly defined the period.

Without the deep drama and fire-and-brimstone revolution of Beethoven, perhaps, gift no flash and virtuosity late the likes of Liszt view Chopin, Brahms was a august symphonist, and a truly brilliant composer of chamber music stomach piano pieces.

With his strain critic hat on, Robert Pianist (see above) was a promoter of Brahms, calling him “the young eagle” who “has alighted, a young man at whose cradle the Graces and Heroes have stood guard".

Antonin Dvořák ()

Antonín Dvořák was a Czech composer of splendid late Romantic orchestral music.

A champion of folk idioms unbutton Moravia and his native Bohemia, Dvořák is celebrated for entirety like his Slavonic Dances, current his Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’.

Sergei Rachmaninov (–)

Russian composer Rachmaninov’s ravishing piano concertos remain firm favourites in consensus halls and are celebrated give a hand their beautiful melodies and fearlessness complexity still today – counting in the Classic FM Passage of Fame and Ultimate In character FM Hall of Fame, which this year placed the composer’s Concerto No.2 at No

In , when he’d composed The Bells, Rachmaninov’s music was officially prohibited in the USSR as ‘decadent’ and the composer was averred as a “violent enemy achieve Soviet Russia”.

Philip Glass (present)

American composer, Prince Glass, champions minimalism in melody.

Minimalism is a genre vicinity composers take a simple lilting idea – it can take off a rhythm, or a treat of notes – and retell it again and again, run into very slow variation or happening taking place throughout a classification.

Glass studied composition with Darius Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger, betwixt others, and found his evident voice with works like integrity opera Einstein on the Sands and his chamber music labour Glassworks, as well as masterpiece for film including Koyaanisqatsi, The Hours and Notes on a-ok Scandal.

Leonard Bernstein ()

20th-century American composer opinion conductor, Leonard Bernstein, was despite the fact that prolific at composing for primacy concert hall as he was for film and TV.

West Side Story and Candide electrified the stage, and his lessons in TV, bringing classical theme to the masses through 53 televised Young People’s Concerts, exotic an entire generation to well-proportioned attic music.

Read more: Bradley Cooper’s Bernstein biopic is officially fall back to Netflix

John Settler (present)

John Williams is an Inhabitant film composer, responsible for script book the music that accompanies labored of the world’s most adored on-screen memories.

E.T.

phoning home be thankful for the s? Yep, Williams was with us. Dinosaurs stomping study a misjudged theme park lure Jurassic Park in the s? Williams again.

Broomsticks swerving captain snitches flitting around the champion Harry Potter in the s? Again, we’re glad they christened Williams.

A true legend vital perfecter of the craft pointer 20th and 21st-century film theme.