Isaac Albéniz

1860-1909

Spanish virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor 

"I want the Arabic Granada, that which is art, which is all that seems to me beauty and emotion."

Ambroise Thomas

1811-1896

French composer and teacher, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet

Amy Beach

1867-1944

American composer and pianist 

“Music is the superlative expression 
of life experience…”

Ludwig van Beethoven

1770-1827

German composer and pianist 

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents."

Barbara Strozzi

1619-1677

Italian singer and composer of the Baroque Period.

Louis-Hector Berlioz

1803-1869

French Romantic composer and conductor

"Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down."

Georges Bizet

1838-1875

French composer of the Romantic era

"As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note."

Johannes Brahms

1833-1897

German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period

“The idea comes to me from outside of me - and is like a gift. . ."

Anton Bruckner

1824-1896

Austrian composer, organist, and music theorist best known for his symphonies, masses, Te Deum and motets.

"It is no common mortal who speaks to us in this music."

Cécile Louise Stéphanie Chaminade

1857-1944

French composer and pianist

César Franck

1822-1890

Composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher  

"I dared much, but the next time, you will see, I will dare even more. . ."

Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier

1841-1894

French Romantic composer and pianist

Clara Josephine Schumann

1819-1896

German pianist, composer and piano teacher 

"There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it."

François Couperin

1668-1733

French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist

Antonín Leopold Dvorák

1841-1904

Czech composer

"In the Negro melodies of America I find all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."

Sir Edward Elgar

1857-1934

English composer

"My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require."

Luigi Cherubini

1760-1842

Italian Classical and Romantic composer

Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre

1665-1729

French musician, harpsichordist and composer

Claude Debussy

1862-1918

French composer

"Art is the most beautiful of all lies."

 Erik Satie

1866-1925

French composer and pianist 

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth

1858-1944

English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement

“I feel I must fight for [my music] because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs, not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea.” 

Fanny Mendelssohn

1805-1847

German composer and pianist of the early Romantic era

“It must be a sign of talent that I do not give up, though I can get nobody to take an interest in my efforts.” 

Gabriel Urbain Fauré

1845-1924

French composer, organist, pianist and teacher 

Florence Beatrice Price

1887-1953

American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.

Francesca Caccini

1587-1640

Italian composer, singer, lutenist, poet, and music teacher of the early Baroque era. 

Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi

1583-1643

Italian composer of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods

Germaine Tailleferre

1892-1983

French composer and the only female member of the group of composers known as Les Six.

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka

1804-1857

Russian composer often regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music.

"A nation creates music. The composer only arranges it."

Christoph Willibald Gluck

1714-1787

Composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period

Edvard Grieg

1843-1907

Norwegian composer and pianist

"To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery."

Gustav Mahler

1860-1911

Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer

"The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content." 

George Frideric Handel

1685-1759

German-born Baroque composer

"Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows."

Hans Sachs

1494-1576

German Meistersinger, poet, playwright, and shoemaker

"All poetic inspiration is but dream interpretation."

Hildegard of Bingen

1098-1179

Also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath of the High Middle Ages.

"The truly holy person welcomes all that is earthly."

Orlande de Lassus

1532-1594

Composer of the late Renaissance, considered to be one of the three most famous and influential musicians in Europe at the end of the 16th century. 

Jean-Marie Leclair

1697-1764

Baroque violinist and composer

Lili Boulanger

1893-1918

French composer, and the first female winner of the Prix de Rome composition prize. Her older sister was the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger.

Franz Liszt

1811-1886

Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, and organist of the Romantic era

"Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist."

Louise Farrenc

1804-1875

French composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher

Jean-Baptiste Lully 1632-1687

Italian-born French composer, instrumentalist, and dancer who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style

Maddalena Casulana

1544-1590

Italian composer, lutenist and singer of the late Renaissance

Maria Szymanowska

1789-1831

Polish composer and one of the first professional virtuoso pianists of the 19th century

Marion Eugénie Bauer

1882-1955

American composer, teacher, writer, and music critic

Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet

1842-1912

French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas

"I have departed from this planet and I have left behind my poor earthly ones with their occupations which are as many as they are useless; at last I am living in the scintillating splendor of the stars, each of which used to seem to me as large as millions of suns."

Felix Mendelssohn

1809-1847

German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period

"Life and art are not two different things."

André Charles Prosper Messager

1853-1929

French composer, organist, pianist and conductor

Giacomo Meyerbeer

1791-1864

German opera composer

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky

1839-1881

Russian composer, and one of the group known as "The Five"

"Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity." 

Wolfgangus Mozart

1756-1791

A prolific and influential composer of the Classical period.

“The music is not in the notes, 
but in the silence between."

Nadia Boulanger

1887-1979

French composer, conductor, and teacher

She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century

"Nothing is better than music. 
When it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for…"

Jacques Offenbach

1819-1880

German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period 

Giacomo Puccini

1858-1924

Italian opera composer

“Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements.”  

Maurice Ravel

1875-1937

French composer, pianist and conductor 

“The only love affair I have ever had
was with music.”

Rebecca Helferich Clarke

1886-1979 British-American classical composer and violist 

“I can’t do it unless it’s the first thing I think of every morning when I wake and the last thing I think of every night before I go to sleep.”

Igor Stravinsky

1882-1971

Russian composer, pianist and conductor

"Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time." 

Richard Strauss

1864-1949

German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist

"The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play."

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov

1844-1908

Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five. 

"Orchestration is part of the very soul of the work. A work is thought out in terms of the orchestra, certain tone-colors being inseparable from it in the mind of its creator and native to it from the hour of its birth."

Gioachino Antonio Rossini

1792-1868

Italian composer 

"Give me a laundry-list and I'll set it to music."

Ruth Crawford Seeger

1901-1953

American modernist composer

Camille Saint-Saëns

1835-1921

French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era

"The artist who does not feel completely satisfied by elegant lines, by harmonious colors, and by a beautiful succession of chords does not understand the art of music."

Robert Schumann

1810-1856

German composer, pianist, and influential music critic

"To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist."

Franz Peter Schubert

1797-1828

Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras

"You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves."

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi

1678-1741

Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, impresario, and Roman Catholic priest

"There are no words, it's only music there."

Virgil Thomson 1896-1989

American composer and music critic. 

"Let your mind alone, and see what happens."

Richard Wagner

1813-1883

German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor 

"The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice."

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

1840-1893

Russian composer of the Romantic period

“Truly there would be reason to go mad 
were it not for music.”

Teresa Carreño

1853-1917

Venezuelan pianist, soprano, composer, and conductor