Era: 20th Century

20th Century Hungarian

KODÁLY, Zoltán

Born in Kecskemét, Dec 16, 1882
Died in Budapest, March 6, 1967

Kodály was an ethnomusicologist who taught at the Academy of Music in Budapest. In addition to composing, he was dedicated to promoting youth musical literacy in Hungary.
Kodály worked throughout his life with Béla Bartók to study and preserve Hungarian folk music, and to promote new Hungarian compositions.
Kodály’s love for authentic Hungarian folk music began in childhood; he heard folksong as he grew up in a small town in the Hungarian countryside where his father was a railway station master.¹

Biography from Boosey & Hawkes

Pieces

Summer Evening

20th Century Late Romantic Austrian

KORNGOLD, Erich Wolfgang

Born in Brno, May 29, 1897
Died in Hollywood, CA, Nov 29, 1957

Korngold was a child prodigy who impressed Mahler, Richard Strauss, Puccini and many other with his youthful compositions.
Korngold was a successful composer, conductor and teacher of opera in Europe before he began his Hollywood career in the 1930s.
In addition to The Sea Hawk (1940), Korngold’s symphonic film scores include Anthony Adverse (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Of Human Bondage (1946).
After WWII, Korngold focused on concert music, and his works were given premieres by the likes of Heifetz (Violin Concerto, 1937/45) and Furtwängler (Symphonic Serenade, 1947-52).²
Style: Korngold’s film scores make use of Wagnerian leitmotif, assigning a motif to each character. This film scoring technique would become hugely influential for Hollywood, found again in scores by John Williams and others.

“Korngold saw his films as ‘operas without singing’ and drew no distinction between writing in this genre and any other. He brought techniques of Wagner, Strauss, and Puccini into the cinema and, along with his fellow emigres in Hollywood… helped turn film music into an art in its own right.”
Jessica Duchen, BBC Music Magazine Vol. 30, No. 9

Learn More
Korngold Intro from Erich Korngold Society website

Pieces

20th Century Ukrainian

KOSENKO, Victor

Born in Petersburg, 12/Nov 24, 1896
Died in Kiev, Oct 3, 1938

Kosenko studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1918.³
Kosenko’s teachers included Nikolai Tcherepnin, Alexander Glazunov, and Nikolay Sokolov.⁴
Kosenko taught at a school of music in Zhitomir (which was later renamed in his honor)⁵ then relocated to Kiev, and taught at the Lysenko Music Institute (1929-34) and the Kiev Conservatory (1934-8).⁶
Kosenko’s music in Romantic in style, influenced by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.⁷

Biography from Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine

Pieces

Cello Sonata in d minor, Op. 10

20th Century Late Romantic Austrian

KREISLER, Fritz

Born in Vienna, Feb 2, 1875
Died in New York, Jan 29, 1962

While also a composer, Fritz Kreisler is best known for his mastery of the violin. At just seven years old, Kreisler was admitted to the Musikverein Konservatorium (the youngest student ever to enter).
- He went on to study at the Paris Conservatory, where he won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome at 12 years old.
In his teens, Kreisler toured in the United States. However, following his return to Vienna, he began feeling discouraged about his success as a musician and switched his focus to studying medicine.
In 1899, after nearly a decade away from performance, Kreisler returned to the stage where he would continue to foster an international career as a virtuoso violinist.
Fun fact – Kreisler was an anomaly in that he achieved such an exemplary skill level on his instrument despite devoting very little time to practicing.
As a composer, Kreisler is well-known for his compositions ascribed to 18th-century composers, such as Pugnani, Francoeur, and Padre Martini. The pieces were originally published as arrangements, but the composer later admitted they were original works.⁷

Learn More

Biography from Interlude, which goes into more detail about Kreisler’s military experience, among other aspects of his life.

Pieces

20th Century American

KROLL, William

Born in New York, Jan 30, 1901
Died in Boston, Mar 10, 1980

Learn More
Short obituary in the NY Times

Pieces

Banjo and Fiddle

20th Century American

KURKA, Robert

Image courtesy of Wise Music Classical

Born in Cicero, IL, Dec 22, 1921
Died in New York, Dec 12, 1957⁸

Robert Kurka was an American composer best known for his orchestral suite, The Good Soldier Schweik. This suite was later expanded into a two-act opera.
Kurka briefly studied under Otto Leuning and Darius Milhaud, though he was largely self-taught.⁹
Kurka taught at City University of New York and Queens College. He also briefly served as composer-in-residence at Dartmouth College.¹⁰
The composer died of Leukemia at just 35 years old. In a tragic moment of irony, just months before his death, Kurka received a Creative Arts Award from Brandeis University with the following declaration: “To Robert Kurka, a composer at the threshold of a career of real distinction.”¹¹

Pieces

Julius Caesar, Symphonic Epilogue after Shakespeare, Op. 28

20th Century French

LAGOYA, Alexandre

Alexandre Lagoya and his wife Ida Presti, during their 1964 tour of Southern Africa.

Born in Alexandria, June 21, 1929
Died in Paris, Aug 24, 1999

Lagoya was a Greek-born French guitarist. He was part of a guitar duo with his wife Ida Presti.
Lagoya taught at the Paris Conservatory from the late 1960s to the mid-90s.⁹

Pieces

Forbidden Games: Variations

Late Romantic Romantic French

LAMBERT, JR.: Lucien-Leon Guillaume

Born in Paris, 1858
Died in 1945

Lambert Jr. (or Lambert fils) was the son of Louisiana-born composer of Creole descent, Charles Lucien Lambert Sr. (c. 1828 – 1896).
Lambert Jr. was a pianist as well as a composer. His teachers included his father, Theodore Dubois and Jules Massenet.
Lambert Jr. Spent the first portion of his career in Paris, composing piano music, orchestral music and a Requiem, among other works. He spent the latter part of his career in Portugal, employed as a pianist for the Portugese royal court.¹¹
Lambert Jr. made several wax cylinder recordings in 1905; as such, he is thought to be the first classical musician of African descent to appear in music recordings.¹²

Biography from AfriClassical

Pieces

Overture to Brocéliande

20th Century Mexican

LARA, Agustín

Born in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, 30 Oct 1897
Died in Mexico City, 6 Nov 1970

Agustín Lara was an internationally famous singer-songwriter. His songs have been covered by some of the most famous musicians of the 20th century, including Frank Sinatra, Mario Lanza, and Enrico Caruso.¹³

Learn More
Lara’s obituary in the NY Times

Pieces

Granada

20th Century Swedish

LARSSON, Lars-Erik

Born in Åkarp, Skåne, May 15, 1908
Died in Helsingborg, Dec 26, 1986

Larsson studied at the Stockholm Conservatory and also took composition lessons with Alban Berg.
Larsson spent much of his career as a composer and director for Swedish radio orchestras and was also a university composition professor.
Style: Larsson’s music shows the influence of Nordic Romanticism (i.e. Grieg) but also of serialism and polytonality.¹⁴

Pieces

Pastoral Suite: Movement 2, “Romance”

20th Century Venezuelan

LAURO, Antonio

Image by Alfredo Cortina, courtesy of the Sphinx Organization

Born in Ciudad Bolívar, Aug 3, 1917
Died in Caracas, April 18, 1986

Guitarist and composer Antonio Lauro initially pursued piano as his primary instrument at the Caracas Conservatory but later changed to guitar after hearing Paraguayan guitarist Agustín Barrios.
Although Lauro wrote for a variety of media, he is best known for his guitar music.
- Lauro was particularly fond of Valses venezolanos (Venezuelan waltzes), “characterized by rhythmic vitality, teasing hemiolas and lyrical melody.” His music has a distinct sense of nationalism.
For years, Lauro toured South America with the folk music trio Los Cantores del Trópico.¹⁵
In the early 1950s, Lauro was imprisoned by the military junta for his democratic ideals. According to Naxos, Lauro “later shrugged off the experience, telling his friends that prison was a normal part of life for the Venezuelan man of his generation.” (!)¹⁶
Shortly before he died in 1986, Lauro received the Premio Nacional de Musica, the highest artistic award in Venezuela.¹⁷

Learn More

Biography from Naxos

Pieces

20th Century American Cuban

LECUONA, Ernesto

Born in Guanabacoa, Aug 7, 1896
Died in S Cruz de Tenerife, Nov 29, 1963

Lecuona was a child prodigy: he wrote his first song at the age of 11.
Lecuona was a graduate of the National Conservatory in Havana, where he received several awards.
In addition to his career as a composer-pianist specializing in Cuban music, Lecuona toured Europe, the USA, and Latin America with his dance band, Lecuona’s Cuban Boys.
Lecuona spent a portion of his career in New York City, where he wrote music for musicals, radio, and film.¹⁸
Lecuona is sometimes known as the “Gershwin of Cuba” for his ability to meld pop and classical styles.¹⁹

Biography from the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame

Pieces

Andalucía: Suite for Piano (Suite Española)

Late Romantic Austrian Hungarian

LEHÁR, Franz

Born in Komáron, Hungary, April 30, 1870
Died in Bad Ischl, Oct 24, 1948

Born in Hungary, Lehár (accent on first syllable) entered the Prague Conservatory at 12, and served as an army bandmaster for more than a decade until his career as a conductor and composer of operetta got off the ground.
Later in his career Lehár founded a music publishing house and composed original film scores.
Not-Fun Fact: Lehár’s situation during WWII was complicated: Hitler loved Die lustige Wittwe, but Lehár’s wife was Jewish and a number of his friends perished in concentration camps. Lehár was criticized outside Germany and Austria for not taking an early and vocal stand against Hitler.²⁰

Pieces

20th Century English

LEIGHTON, Kenneth

Kenneth Leighton, photographed in 1988

Born in Wakefield, Oct 2, 1929
Died in Edinburgh, Aug 24, 1988

Leighton was a child chorister at Wakefield Cathedral, studied composition at Queen’s College, Oxford, and went on to teach at Leeds University, Oxford, and Edinburgh University.
Style: Leighton composed many pieces of choral sacred music, and his instrumental works are also influenced by liturgical tradition, with themes frequently inspired by plainsong or chorales.²¹

Pieces

Suite: Veris Gratia (True Grace), Op. 9: Epilogue

20th Century Austrian Hungarian

LIGETI, György

Born in Transylvania, May 28, 1923
Died in Vienna, June 12, 2006

As a Hungarian Jew, Ligeti had several traumatic experiences during his early life. His father and younger brother were both victims of the Holocaust (a fate that Ligeti only narrowly escaped himself).
After the war, Ligeti finished his musical studies and began teaching in Budapest. However, during the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the composer fled to Vienna, eventually becoming an Austrian citizen.
Ligeti shared a lifelong long of math and natural sciences in addition to music. He drew much inspiration for his music from these outside disciplines.²²
Ligeti’s music became widely known after three of his compositions (Atmosphères, Requiem, and Lux Aeterna) were featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).²³
- Ligeti’s music was used for the film without the composer’s knowledge or consent.²⁴

Short biography
Composer’s website (translate to English)

Pieces

Études Pour Piano

20th Century Late Romantic Swedish

LINDBERG, Oskar

Born in Gagnef, Dalarna, Feb 23, 1887
Died in Stockholm, April 10, 1955

Lindberg was an organist and teacher as well as a composer.
Lindberg was a conservatory professor of harmony and also taught high school music. He was instrumental in compiling a hymnal in 1939, which contained 14 of his original hymn compositions.
Style: Lindberg’s composition was influenced both by the late Romantic music of styles of Rachmaninoff and Sibelius, and by his own family heritage of folk music (he had peasant violinists in his ancestry).²⁵

Pieces

Andante (arr. Milone)

20th Century Late Romantic English

LLOYD, George

Born in St Ives, Cornwall, June 28, 1913
Died in London, July 3, 1998

“I never wrote 12-tone music because I didn’t like the theory. I studied the blessed thing in the early 1930s and thought it was a cock-eyed idea that produced horrible sounds. It made composers forget how to sing.”²⁶
– George Lloyd

George Lloyd was an English composer and conductor who became an icon for anti-modernism in classical music.
Lloyd studied at Trinity College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. By his late teens/ early twenties, he had composed his first symphony (Symphony No. 1, 1932)and his first opera (Iernin, 1933-34).
Lloyd was highly inspired by Verdi in his writing, particularly in his operas.
During WWII, Lloyd served with the Royal Marines as a bandsman. During a shipping accident, the composer was one of only four survivors and suffered from oil ingestion and shell shock (not to mention trauma).
- Following his recovery from the war, Lloyd intermittently composed while also working as a market gardener in Dorset. About 20 years later, in 1973, he moved to London and once again took up composing full-time, with great success. The last 20 years were seen as a renaissance for the composer.²⁷

Learn More

Biography from the George Lloyd Society (lots of photos!)
Short biography from BBC Music Magazine

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic American Polish

LOW, Leo

Photograph of Leo Low courtesy of JewishChoralMusic.com

Born in Volkovysk, Poland, 1878
Died in 1960

Leo Low was a Jewish composer and conductor of choral music.²⁸
Low studied at the Warsaw Conservatory and subsequently directed several influential Jewish choirs in Warsaw, including the Hazomir Choral Society (Europe’s premier secular Jewish choir), and he served as director of music and resident composer at the Tłomacki synagogue.²⁹
Low emigrated to the United States in 1920,³⁰ and continued his career as a composer and choral director in New York and in Palestine.³¹

Biography and partial works list from the Milken Archive

Pieces

Likhtelekh

20th Century Late Romantic Norwegian

LUND, Signe

Born in Christiania [now Oslo], April 15, 1868
Died in Oslo, April 6, 1950

Lund was a Norwegian composer who studied music in Christiana, Berlin, Copenhagen and Paris.³⁰
Lund was encouraged by Edvard Grieg early in her career.³²
Around 1901, the London Times described Lund as “The most interesting composer of the younger Scandinavian school.”³³
- I found that quotation in a 1901 profile in the English magazine The Sketch, which also discussed her mentorship from Edvard Grieg, called her “the latest Parisian beauty,” and detailed her love of creating soup recipes. All in all, an interesting example of turn-of-the-century attitudes toward women composers.
Lund taught in Norway and the United States; she was based in Chicago from 1902-1920, and in addition to composing, she lectured frequently on Norwegian topics.³⁴
Lund helped found the Norwegian Composers Association in 1917.³⁵
Lund was outspoken about her political opinions, and her support for Adolf Hitler and the Norwegian Nazi party more or less destroyed her reputation in the United States by the 1940s. (In 1943 she wrote a string quartet celebrating the 10^th anniversity of the Norwegian Nazi party.)³⁸

Biography from music publisher Bergmann Edition

Pieces

Barcarolle, Op. 33, No. 1

20th Century Modernist Polish

LUTOSLAWSKI, Witold

Born in Warsaw, Jan 25, 1913
Died in Warsaw, Feb 9, 1994

Witold Lutosławski (pronunciation) began formal music training at six years old. In 1932, he enrolled in the Warsaw Conservatory, studying piano and composition. Fun fact: at this time, Lutosławski was simultaneously enrolled in Warsaw University for mathematics.
Lutosławski’s burgeoning compositional career was quickly interrupted by the outbreak of WWII. During the Nazi occupation, he made a living playing piano in cafes.
The composer rose to prominence in his native Poland following the premiere of his Concerto for Orchestra in 1954. As the years passed, he became more active in conducting his own works as well.³⁴
As a composer, Lutosławski “never belonged to any composing ‘school,’ did not yield to any trends or fashions, did not uphold a tradition, nor did he take part in avant-garde revolutions. He was, however, both an avant-garde artist and a follower of tradition.”
- He is best known today for his orchestral works, though he also wrote choral works, songs, chamber music, and pieces for solo piano.³⁵
Quote from Lutosławski’s obituary in the NY Times:
- “Mr. Lutoslawski prized beauty in music and made a point of saying so even when beauty in new music was out of fashion. His works are distinguished by long-lined melodies, an ingenious use of orchestral structure and harmonies that vary from comfortable lushness to pungent acidity. Yet it would be wrong to think of them as neo-Romantic. In creating what he called his ‘sound language,’ Mr. Lutoslawski drew freely on avant-garde techniques, spicing his works with a light atonality and limited improvisation.”

Learn More

Biography via USC’s Polish Music Center

Pieces

Concerto for Orchestra

Late Romantic Russian

LYAPUNOV, Sergei

Born in Yaroslavl’, Nov 18/30, 1859
Died in Paris, Nov 8, 1924

Sergei Lyapunov was a Russian composer, pianist, educator, conductor, and ethnomusicologist. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Karl Klindworth (a pupil of Liszt), Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Taneyev. After graduating from the conservatory, Lyapunov met Mily Balakirev and chose the leading figure of “The Five” as his mentor. With Balakirev’s encouragement, Lyapunov began publishing his compositions.
In 1893, Lyapunov was commissioned by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society to collect Russian folksongs from the regions of Vologda, Vyatka, and Kostroma, to the northeast of Moscow. The experience had a significant on the composer’s musical voice, and folk elements made regular appearances in his music from that point on.
As a composer, Lyapunov primarily wrote works for orchestra, piano, and voice.
After the Russian Revolution, Lyapunov emigrated to Paris, where he sadly passed away from a heart attack just a year later.³⁶

Biography

Pieces

Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes, Op. 28

20th Century Chinese

MA Sicong

Born in Haifeng, Guangdong province, May 7, 1912
Died in Philadelphia, May 20, 1987

Note: the composer’s surname is Ma and his given name is Sicong.

A guide for pronouncing Chinese names

Ma studied violin and composition in France, and served on the faculties of conservatories in China, including his position as head of the Central Conservatory from 1950 until the mid 1960s.
Ma emigrated to the United States in 1966 to escape persecution during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.
Ma’s works include symphonies, a ballet, and patriotic songs.³⁷

Biographical article from ArtsJournal

Pieces

Late Romantic Romantic Scottish

MACKENZIE, Sir Alexander Campbell

Born in Edinburgh, Aug 22, 1847
Died in London, April 28, 1935³⁸

Short Biography

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Finnish

MADETOJA, Leevi

Born in Oulu, Feb 17, 1887
Died in Helsinki, Oct 6, 1947

Leevi Madetoja (pronounced “Leh-vi Mah-det-oya”) was a Finnish composer, educator, and music critic who followed in the footsteps of Jean Sibelius in leading the Finnish national Romantic school.
Madetoja studied at the music institute in Helsinki under Sibelius, followed by a period of study in Paris under Vincent d’Indy and in Vienna/ Berlin under Robert Fuchs.³⁹

Biography

Pieces

The Ostrobothnians: Suite, Op.52

20th Century Late Romantic Austrian

MAHLER, Alma

Born in Vienna, August 31, 1879
Died in New York, December 11, 1964⁴⁰

Perhaps best known for her marriage to Gustav Mahler and/or her relationships with some of Europe’s most acclaimed artists, Alma Mahler was also a composer in her own right.
Alma Mahler’s marriage to Gustav Mahler was famously fraught with challenges, not the least of which was Gustav Mahler’s disapproval of his wife’s compositional aspirations. Consequently, nearly all of Alma Mahler’s works were composed between 1898-1901, before her marriage to Gustav Mahler in 1902.
As a composer, Alma Mahler exclusively wrote songs (Lieder). Three sets were published during the composer’s lifetime (Fünf Lieder, Vier Lieder, and Fünf Gesänge) along with a small handful of individual songs published posthumously, though her oeuvre likely contains many more pieces that have not been published and/or have been lost.⁴¹
A note on Alma Mahler’s various names – the composer is most commonly referred to as Alma Mahler or Alma Mahler-Werfel today; however, you might find Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler on her published songs because they were composed before her marriage to Gustav Mahler (Schindler was her maiden name).

Biography from Universal Edition

Pieces

Fünf Lieder (“Five Songs”)

Late Romantic Austrian

MAHLER, Gustav

Born in Kalischt, near Iglau [now Kaliště, Jihlava], Bohemia, July 7, 1860
Died in Vienna, May 18, 1911⁴²

Biography from The Guardian

Pieces

Late Romantic Catalan

MALATS, Joaquín

Joaquín Malats, photographed by Pau Audouard Deglaire

Born in Barcelona, March 4, 1872
Died in Barcelona, c.1912

Malats was a concert pianist and teacher who studied in Paris, toured Europe and the Americas, but was based for most of his career in his hometown of Barcelona.
Malats was friends with Granados and Albéniz and appeared with each in two-piano duo concerts. Malats helped inspire Albéniz’s Iberia, and Malats played the Spanish premieres of all four parts of Iberia as they appeared.⁴³

Pieces

Serenata Española

20th Century Zimbabwean

MARAIRE, Dumisani

Photograph of Dumisani Maraire courtesy of Discogs.com

Born in Mutare, Zimbabwe, 27 December 1944
Died in Zimbabwe, 25 November 1999

Abraham Dumisani “Dumi” Maraire

Maraire was an ethnomusicologist and a virtuoso of the mbira. As a composer, he wrote in his native language, Shona.
Maraire taught ethnomusicology at the University of Washington, Evergreen State College in Olympia, and the University of Zimbabwe.
Maraire directed marimba ensembles during his tenures in Washington State and is credited with creating a musical culture of marimba performance in Seattle.⁴⁴

Pieces

Mother Nozipo

20th Century Late Romantic Italian

MASCAGNI, Pietro

Born in Livorno, Dec 7, 1863
Died in Rome, Aug 2, 1945

Mascagni studied at the Milan Conservatory, where Puccini was his roommate.⁴⁵
Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana marked the birth of a new style of opera – “verismo” (realism). While Puccini would ultimately become most famous for writing this opera style, Mascagni was responsible for its initiation into the musical vernacular.
In addition to his career as an opera composer, jumpstarted by Cavalleria rusticana, Mascagni had a second career where he conducted opera in Italy and throughout Europe.
Due to the composer’s association with Mussolini and his fascist regime later in his life, Mascagni’s music has largely been overshadowed by his Italian contemporaries (with the exception of Cavalleria rusticana).⁴⁶

Pieces

Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo

20th Century Canadian

MATHIEU, André

Born in Montreal, Feb 18, 1929
Died in Montreal, Jun 2, 1968

Composer and pianist André Mathieu was a child prodigy and showed incredible musical aptitude from a young age. At age four, he composed and performed his first work, Trois Études.
While still a child, Mathieu received a government grant to study piano with Yves Nat and and harmony and composition with Jacques de la Presle in Paris.
- About a decade later, Mathieu returned to Paris to study composition with Arthur Honegger and piano with Jules Gentil.
Sadly, once Mathieu reached his 20s, his fame began to decline. His musical development and innovation seemed to plateau, and he could never recover from it. The composer died at just 39 years old in relative obscurity.
Fun fact – due to his recognition as a brilliant child prodigy, he was nicknamed “the Canadian Mozart.”
- Additional fun fact – both the welcoming song and the theme music for the 1976 Montreal Olympics were arrangements of Mathieu’s music.
Family Connection – André’s father was also a known musician – composer, pianist, and educator Rodolphe Mathieu.⁴⁷

Learn More

Biography from The Canadian Encyclopedia

Pieces

Piano Concerto No. 3 in c minor, Op. 25

20th Century Latvian

MEDIŅŠ, Jānis

Jānis Mediņš, photographed in 1920

Name pronunciation

Born in Riga, Oct 9, 1890
Died in Stockholm, March 4, 1966

Mediņš worked as an opera and orchestral conductor and conservatory professor in Latvia until 1944, when he fled the Soviet invasion, eventually settling in Stockholm.
Mediņš wrote some of the first operas in Latvian, and composed the first Latvian ballet.
His brother Jāzeps Mediņš was also a significant composer and conductor.⁴⁸

Pieces

Aria

20th Century Late Romantic Russian

MEDTNER, Nikolai

Born in Moscow, Jan 5, 1880
Died in London, Nov 13, 1951

Nikolai Medtner (pronounced MET-ner) was a Russian pianist and composer, and a contemporary of Rachmaninov and Scriabin.
Medtner began learning the piano at a young age and became a highly skilled pianist, eventually graduating from Moscow Conservatory at age 20. However, rather than pursue a career as a concert pianist, Medtner chose to devote himself fully to composition. Unsurprisingly, his most revered works are those written for piano.
Like many Russian artists, Medtner fled Russia during the Revolution, never to return, first settling in Paris and then London.
- Medtner’s Russian colleagues respected and supported the composer’s work, particularly Rachmaninov. However, French audiences found Medtner’s music to be too conservative. Audiences across the channel in England held the composer in extremely high regard, ultimately leading the composer to relocate to London.
As a composer, Medtner’s music is characterized by “rich and dark harmonies in the lower part of the keyboard are frequently adorned by melodic and harmonic inflections borrowed from Russian folk music. However, what truly distinguishes Medtner’s music is ‘a strong vein of classicism apparent in its tightly controlled structures and its contrapuntal textures.'”
Fun/ scandalous fact: Medtner fell in love with his brother, Emil’s, wife, violinist Anna Mikhaylovna Bratenskaya. While Emil was studying in Germany, he was subsequently interned after the breakout of WWI. With Emil out of the picture (for lack of a better phrase), Nikolai and Anna married… Emil must not have held a grudge, however–after their deaths, the two brothers were buried next to each other in London.⁴⁹

Pieces

Skazki (Fairy Tales), Op. 26

Late Romantic Finnish

MELARTIN, Erkki

Born in Käkisalmi, Finland [now Priozersk, Russia], Feb 7, 1875
Died in Pukinmäki, Helsinki, Feb 14, 1937

Erkki Melartin (pronunciation) studied at the Helsinki Music School with Martin Wegelius (1892–9) and in Vienna with Robert Fuchs.
Melartin went on to serve as director of the Helsinki Music School from 1911–36, where he “raised an entire generation of composers as a teacher, and supported young modernists.”
As a composer, Melartin was incredibly prolific, and his extensive output includes six symphonies (in addition to several more pieces for orchestra), stage works, chamber music, art songs, choral pieces, piano works, and more.
- Melartin’s music is rooted in the Late Romantic idiom while experimenting with the newer Impressionist and Expressionist styles.
- Largely overshadowed by his Finnish contemporary, Jean Sibelius, Melartin was writing symphonies around the same time as Sibelius and maintained a distinctive style and musical voice throughout.⁵⁰

Learn More

Short biography from Fennica Gehrman

Pieces

20th Century French

MESSIAEN, Olivier

Born in Avignon, Dec 10, 1908
Died in Paris, April 27, 1992

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist, and educator whose music was highly influenced by his Roman Catholic faith and non-European cultures, mainly Indian and Japanese.⁵¹
In the most basic terms, Messiaen’s musical voice was distinctive and highly personal, filled with unique harmonic language, complex rhythms, and overall richness.
As a professor at the Paris Conservatory, he instructed many of the next generation’s prominent composers, such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.⁵²

Biography
Composer’s website

Pieces

Quatuor Pour la Fin du Temps (Quartet For the End of Time)

20th Century French

MILHAUD, Darius

Born in Marseilles, Sept 4, 1892
Died in Geneva, June 22, 1974

Milhaud grew up in Provence, where his father was an almond dealer. He reported that the songs of the amandières (the women who sorted almonds for sale) were one of the first musical influences in his life.
Milhaud’s Paris Conservatory teachers included Dukas and Widor.
Influences on Milhaud’s style were many and eclectic, including jazz, polytonality, and the music of Brazil (unable to serve in the military in WWI, he instead served as an attaché to the French minister in Brazil during the war years).
Milhaud was part of the Satie-inspired, Jean Cocteau-befriended group of six French avant-garde composers active in the 1920s, known as Les six.
In the latter part of his life, Milhaud divided his time between teaching at Mills College, Oakland, California, and at the Paris Conservatory. His students included Dave Brubeck.⁵³

Biography from the Milken Archive

Pieces

20th Century Japanese

MIYAGI, Michio

Born in Sannomiya, Kobe, Japan, April 7, 1894
Died in Kariya, Aichi prefecture, Japan, June 25, 1956

Miyagi was a multi-instrumentalist and composer, and particularly a master of the koto.
Miyagi was a professor at the Tokyo College of Music, which is now the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music.
As a composer, Miyagi was part of a modernist movement that sought to add Western musical influences to traditional Japanese musical styles.
Miyagi’s work included creating innovative new instruments inspired by the koto and other traditional Japanese instruments, to increase the compositional options for Japanese music.
Miyagi had a disability: he lost his sight before the age of 8.⁵⁴

Composer Website from the Miyagi Koto Association

Pieces

Sea in Spring (Haru no umi)

20th Century English

MOERAN, Ernest John

Born in Heston, Middlesex, England, Dec 31, 1894
Died near Kenmare, Co. Kerry, Ireland, Dec 1, 1950

Moeran was a prodigy who started to compose as a child, studied at the RCM, and later studied privately with John Ireland.
- Moeran’s study at the RCM was interrupted by service in WWI. He initially served as a motorcycle dispatch rider, and was wounded in France in 1917.
- In 1918 his battalion was sent to Ireland to deal with republican unrest. He collected a lot of Irish folk songs while he was there, and went back to collect more after he left military service.
Coming from an affluent family, Moeran had the ability to compose whatever music appealed to him, rather than having to worry about earning money from his works. He also had the ability to finance performances of his own music.
From 1925-1928 he shared a cottage with Philip Heseltine (Peter Warlock). Their home became a notorious partying house. Unfortunately, Moeran developed a debilitating alcohol dependency at this time, which affected his ability to compose.⁵⁵

Pieces

20th Century Spanish

MOMPOU, Federic (or Federico)

Image courtesy of Pianoversal

Born in Barcelona, 16 April, 1893
Died in Barcelona, 30 June, 1987

[“mum-POW” / PRONUNCIATION]

Music historians claim that Federic Mompou was first inspired to become a composer after hearing a concert of Gabriel Fauré‘s music as a child. Mompou studied piano as well, but his extreme shyness and introverted nature dissuaded him from pursuing a career as a concert pianist.
Mompou studied at the Paris Conservatory and subsequently made Paris his home for two decades. He didn’t return to Barcelona until 1941, when he fled German occupation in Paris.
As a composer, Mompou largely wrote for his own instrument, the piano, and was heavily influenced by French composers such as Fauré, Debussy, and Satie.⁵⁶

“The best word is the unspoken word, as all know I am a man of few words and composer of few notes… Music is written for the inexpressible, it should seem to come out of the shadow in order to move back in to the shadow.”⁵⁷

Pieces

Impresiones íntimas

20th Century Mexican

MONCAYO, José Pablo

Born in Guadalajara, June 29, 1912
Died in Mexico City, June 15, 1958

Moncayo studied with Carlos Chávez at the Mexico City Conservatory. He also took composition lessons with Aaron Copland in 1942.
Moncayo formed the Group of Four with three other Mexican composers in 1934: the group wanted to foster a nationalist school of Mexican music (cf. Russia’s “The Five” and France’s “Les six”)
Moncayo also conducted the National Symphony Orchestra (then called the Mexican Symphony Orchestra) from 1949-1954.⁵⁸

Pieces

Huapango

Late Romantic Italian

MONTI, Vittorio

Born in Naples, January 6, 1868
Died on June 20, 1922

Short biography

Pieces

Csárdás