Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer. Bruckner's reputation is based on his symphonies, masses, and motets. The symphonies are often considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism, due to their rich harmonic langua...

Johann Strauss II (the Younger), was an Austrian composer known especially for his waltzes, such as The Blue Danube. Son of the composer Johann Strauss I, and brother to the composers Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss, Johann II is the most...

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist. Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor...

Georges Bizet, French composer. Son of a music teacher, he gained admission to the Paris Conservatoire at age 9, and at age 17 he wrote the precocious Symphony in C Major (1855). Intent on success on the operatic stage, he produced The Pear...

Georges Bizet was a French composer of the romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently...

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, one of the Russian composers known as the Five, was an innovator of Russian music. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western...

Piotr Tchaikovsky, Russian composer, started piano studies at five and soon showed remarkable gifts. He began to compose at age ten, and soon after was sent to the School of Jurisprudence where he remained for nine years. Tchaikovsky joine...

Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas (including the increasingly popular L'étoile), songs, a...

Antonin Dvorak was the greatest Bohemian composer and one of the leading masters of symphonic and chamber music of the late 19th century. Dvorak displayed unusual musical talent at an early age and learned to play the violin from the local...

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist who composed in the romantic period. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt (which includes In the Hall of the...

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, one of five Russian composers known as The Five, and was later a teacher of harmony and orchestration. Mainly known for his symphonic works, especially the popular symphonic suite...

Sir Edward William Elgar, English composer. He received his training from his father, who was an organist, music seller, and amateur violinist. In 1885 he succeeded his father as organist of St. George's Church, Worcester. Imperial March, c...

Giacomo Puccini was the most important composer of Italian opera after Verdi. He wrote in the verismo style, a counterpart to the movement of Realism in literature and a trend that favored subjects and characters from everyday life for oper...

Gustav Mahler was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. Whil...

Claude Debussy was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, although Debussy disliked the term when applied to his compositions. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Hono...