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- Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Bach is the definitive Baroque composer. If you have sublime Bach you don’t need the others (and we’re only half kidding).
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Continuing the tradition of names with three words and four well-formed syllables in the middle one, is the child prodigy and all-round genius, Mozart.
- Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Beethoven’s name is widely interchanged with the phrase ‘greatest composer who ever lived’. And we’re okay with that.
- Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) Jumping back in time, and way back to medieval times, let’s meet Hildegard von Bingen. She was a saint, poet and composer who in her lifetime was one of the most influential women in Europe.
- 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
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...
- 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.
- Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn was a remarkable composer, epitomizing the meaning of classical period composition, and though he wasn't as flashy as the younger Mozart, his music always stayed true to form.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Did you know that nearly half of Mozart's life was spent touring the European continent? Born in 1756, Mozart was a musical prodigy who began composing at the age of five.
- Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) Salieri may have been envious of young Mozart's musical genius, however, the rumors of Salieri poisoning Mozart are, in fact, simply rumors.
- Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) Thanks to Christoph Willibald Gluck, opera as we know them today could be radically different. Gluck revolutionized opera by softening the contrast between recitatives (the dialogue between one aria to the next) and arias by weaving underlying melodic themes and orchestral passages within the recitatives as they flowed into the arias.
- Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach. Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach – ‘Cello Concerto in A minor’ C.P.E. Bach emerged from one of Western music’s most impressive musical dynasties as the fifth child of Johann Sebastian Bach, perhaps the Baroque era’s greatest composer.
- Christoph Willibald Gluck. ‘Orfeo ed Euridice‘ by Christoph Willibald Gluck. Opera had developed as an art form during the Baroque era, but it was during the Classical period that it really began to flourish.
- Muzio Clementi. Muzio Clementi – ‘Piano Concerto in C Major’ While harpsichord and organ had been the dominant keyboard instruments of the Baroque era, one of the Classical period’s more significant technological developments was the invention of the piano.
- Joseph Haydn. Joseph Haydn – ‘Surprise’ The symphony is an extended, large-scale orchestral piece made up of three or four movements, while the string quartet follows a similar musical structure in a classic chamber music format of two violins, viola, and cello.
Jan 24, 2022 · Monday, January 24, 2022. The Classical era was dominated by many of the greatest composers in the history of music, including Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert.
Nov 25, 2020 · Classical composers: Haydn, Marianna Martines and Mozart. Picture: Getty. By Maddy Shaw Roberts. We all know ‘classical music’ – music that’s distinct from pop, rock or jazz. But what of the Classical era? From Mozart to Beethoven, we explore the greatest composers active in the second half of the 18th century.