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Aug 20, 2024 · Learn about the most famous and influential composers in music history, from Bach and Mozart to Debussy and Tchaikovsky. Discover their biographies, works, styles and recordings with Classic FM.
- Strauss I
Johann Strauss I (1804-1849) was an Austrian Romantic...
- Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) was an Italian composer,...
- Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) was a Russian composer and...
- Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian composer who...
- Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was an Austrian Romantic composer...
- Ludovico Einaudi
As an adult, Einaudi decided to take up music as his career,...
- Philip Glass
Philip Glass (1937-present) an American composer, who...
- Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was a German composer, conductor...
- Strauss I
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Ludwig Van Beethoven
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Richard Wagner
- Johannes Brahms
- Franz Schubert
- Robert Schumann
- Giuseppe Verdi
- George Frideric Handel
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Music poured out of Bach, all for the greater glory of God and, in Bach’s words, “the refreshment of the soul.” Organ music, church cantatas and incidental music for his employers were his daily bread. Bach, one of the greatest classical composers, wrote ceaselessly: it’s interesting that the hardest-working composer of all time should also be the ...
Forget all that stuff about taking dictation from God. Mozart was always working, teaching himself to be a better composer and trying to be more than just a maker of music. He was a philosopher whose language was music, a pure product of the Enlightenment who believed the world could be healed through its power. He attempted to do all this in a way...
It’s not just the tunes, the blazing triumphs, the thundering highlights or the contemplative hymns and the rhapsodies. We all love Beethoven because even though it was all such a struggle against the world, his emotions and his deafness, he never lost his idealism or his faith. Beethoven, one of the greatest classical composers, is the composer as...
The beau idéal of the Romantic composer, Tchaikovsky, put Russian music on the European map. A devotion to Mozart, Bellini and Donizetti reflects his own endless melodic gifts, which he yoked to a brilliant orchestral sense, plus his own very intense emotionality. This is music that wears its heart on its sleeve and concentrates obsessively on love...
You can love other composers more, but it’s hard to argue that Wagner, one of the greatest classical composers, didn’t have the most boundless musical imagination of all time. He stretched the language beyond all previous limits to create a wholly new expressive role for the orchestra, taking the forms and harmonic structures that had existed since...
Because he chose to work in forms and idioms that had apparently reached their zenith a generation earlier, Brahms has (wrongly) been thought academic and dull. You may even picture a stern and bearded patriarch, but the younger Brahms was a passionate Romantic Adonis, tormented with love for the wife of his mentor Robert Schumann. In the symphony ...
Schubert was one of the greatest classical composers and there’s a serenity to much of his work which, if you didn’t know better, you might attribute to the idea that it all came easily to him. Yet his music has a special quality of interiority, expressed through an almost Italian devotion to melody combined with some rigorously German ideas of har...
Schumann is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. He is particularly renowned for his piano music, songs (lieder) and orchestral music. The originality of his work pushed at emotional, structural and philosophical boundaries. Schumann’s music is largely programmatic, meaning it tells a story (through music, not speci...
Italian opera of the mid-19th century seems almost too unsubtle a creature to have produced a great composer. Yet over the course of 50 years, Verdi turned its forthright poundings into a vehicle for conveying the most tearing emotions in an incredibly powerful way. Italian music had always relied on the power of melody, particularly conveyed throu...
He might have been Bach’s exact contemporary, but Handel and Bach could hardly be more different. Handel’s concerns are intensely human – real, aching hearts – and he is the master of massive effects made through the most apparently simple musical language. But don’t be misled by the grand ceremonial stuff and those vast choruses: they may be stirr...
Discover the selection of the greatest and most influential classical composers throughout history, from Bach to Wagner. Listen to their masterpieces and learn about their lives and styles.
From the hundreds of classical music composers working in the Western tradition during the last 600 years, we list 10 that are generally regarded as the most essential composers to know, including Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Wagner, and more.
Discover the 50 greatest classical composers of all time - do you agree with our choices? Meet the great composers with BBC Music Magazine.
- Johann Sebastian Bach. Holding the #1 spot in our list has to be none other than Johann Sebastian Bach, who is highly regarded as one of the best composers of all time.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If there is one person who epitomizes the word composer, it is none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756, Mozart was a musical prodigy composing his first piece of music at the age of five.
- Ludwig van Beethoven. Even non-musicians will recognize the name Ludwig van Beethoven, who is widely considered one of the greatest composers in history.
- Joseph Haydn. Often called the Father of the Symphony, Joseph Haydn was one of the most prolific and influential composers of the classical era. Born in Austria in 1732, Haydn showed an early aptitude for music and was given rigorous training by his uncle, a professional musician.
Nov 25, 2020 · Learn about the greatest composers active in the second half of the 18th century, from Haydn to Mozart, and their contributions to the Classical music genre. Discover their styles, influences, works and legacy through examples and recordings.
Feb 5, 2024 · Check below some of the genius of these incredible composers of classical music and some of their best known works, I hope you like it. So let’s meet these 50 classical composers and find out why they’re so great. 1. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) This fabulous German genius is recognized as one of the greatest classical ...
