Era: 20th Century

20th Century American

MOORE, Undine Smith

Image courtesy of Indiana University LIbraries Archives of African American Music and Culture Collections, No. SC 102

Born in Jarratt, VA, Aug 25, 1904
Died in Petersburg, VA, Feb 6, 1989

Moore was educated at Fisk University and Columbia University Teachers’ College. She also received honorary doctorates from Virginia State University and Indiana University.¹
Moore was a professor at Virginia State University in Petersburg, where her educational accomplishments included co-founding and co-directing the university’s Black Music Research Center.²
Moore specialized in choral compositions and sacred music.³
Her oratorio on the life of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., Scenes from the Life of a Martyr, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1981.⁴

Biographical sketch from the Undine Smith Moore Collection at Indiana University, Bloomington

Biography from African American Registry

Biography from the African Diaspora Music Project

Pieces

Daniel, Daniel, Servant of the Lord

20th Century Russian

MYASKOVSKY, Nikolai

Born in the fortress of Novo-Georgiyevsk [now Modlin], Poland, 8/April 20, 1881
Died in Moscow, Aug 8, 1950

Nikolai Myaskovsky obtained a musical education during childhood but was forbidden from pursuing a music career (despite his passion for the subject) by his military engineer father.
- After going through military training, Myaskovsky finally entered the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1906, where he studied composition with Lyadov and orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov.
During WWI, as a reserve officer, Myaskovsky was mobilized and sent to the Austrian front. Following the October Revolution, he moved to Moscow in 1918.
- Sad fact – Myaskovsky’s father died this same year under horrific circumstances. As a general of the Russian army, he was torn to pieces by the Revolutionary mob. This tragic event, combined with his experiences during the war, undoubtedly left a lasting effect on the composer. In fact, in Myaskovsky’s sixth symphony, “the finale relies on the contrast between songs of the French revolution (the ‘Carmagnole’ and ‘Ça ira’) and an old Russian sacred chant ‘O rasstavanii dushi s telom’ (‘On the Parting of the Body and Soul’) the title of which is of obvious significance.”
In 1921, Myaskovsky was invited to teach at the Moscow Conservatory, where he would remain until he died in 1950. Aram Khachaturian would become one of his pupils.
As a composer, Myaskovsky’s principal genre was the symphony. He wrote 27 (!) during his lifetime and is best known for these works, along with his string quartets.³
Fun fact – first meeting as students at the St Petersburg Conservatory, Myaskovsky and Prokofiev became lifelong friends.⁵

Learn More

Short biography

Pieces

20th Century Japanese

NARITA, Tamezō

Born in the Kitaakita District, Akita, 15 December 1893
Died on 29 October 1945

Narita was a member of the “Nursery Rhyme Movement,” a movement in art education in Japan during the Taisho period. Narita and the other composers in this movement wrote influential children’s songs partly inspired by Western nursery rhymes.⁶
Narita graduated in 1917 from the National School of Music in Tokyo,⁷ and subsequently studied music in Berlin from 1922-1926. He was one of several Japanese composers who visited Germany and other Western nations to music in the 1920s-40s.⁸
In the early twentieth century, Japan saw a flourishing movement of new poetry for children, often disseminated in literary journals for children. Narita’s music was sometimes also distributed this way. In her introduction to Yuki Ohta’s A Rainbow in the Desert: An Anthology of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Children’s Literature, Joan E. Ericson tells how the text of “Canary,” one of Narita’s well-known songs, was first published in the journal Akai tori in 1918, a few months later, the same journal published Narita’s song setting of the poem. Ericson refers to Narita as “a famous composer of children’s songs.”⁹

Pieces

Hamabe no uta (Song of the Seashore)

NAZARETH, Ernesto

Born in Rio de Janeiro, March 20, 1863
Died in Rio de Janeiro, Feb 4, 1934

Nazareth was a Brazilian pianist and composer of salon music (mostly dances for piano).
Nazareth’s teachers included Louisiana-born composer Lucien Lambert Sr.
Nazareth’s dances, especially his tangos, inspired composers like Heitor Villa-Lobos and Darius Milhaud.¹⁰

Short biography and timeline from Musica Brasilis

Pieces

Vem cá, branquinha

Late Romantic Danish

NIELSEN, Carl

Born in Sortelung, near Nørre Lyndelse, Funen, June 9, 1865
Died in Copenhagen, Oct 3, 1931

Nielsen is best known for his six symphonies, but he was also prominent in Denmark as a teacher, writer on music, conductor, and composer of songs.¹¹

Biography from the Carl Nielsen Society

Pieces

Maskarade: Overture

20th Century Czech

NOVÁK, Vítězslav

Born in Kamenice nad Lipou, Dec 5, 1870
Died in Skuteč, July 18, 1949

Vítězslav Novák studied under Antonín Dvořák at the Prague Conservatory. He eventually became a professor at the institution himself, influencing many future 20th Century Czech composers.
Novák’s music is known for its Czech nationalism and exploration of regional folk idioms.¹²
Sadly, Novák’s music is rarely heard today outside the Czech Republic despite the composer’s celebrity status during his lifetime.¹³

Biography

Pieces

Eternal Longing (O věčné touze)

20th Century Japanese

ŌNO, Tadasuke

May 3, 1895-December 3, 1929

Ōno was a Japanese violinist and composer.¹⁴
The composer’s surname is sometimes transliterated as “Ohno.”

Pieces

Yoimachigusa (Evening Primrose)

20th Century German

ORFF, Carl

Born in Munich, July 10, 1895
Died in Munich, March 29, 1982¹⁵

Biography from the American Orff-Schulwerk Association (Organization dedicated to Orff’s music education techniques)

Pieces

Carmina Burana

20th Century English

ORR, Charles Wilfred

Born in Cheltenham, July 31, 1893
Died in Painswick, Feb 24, 1976

Orr is best known as a composer of art songs, particularly his settings of A.E. Housman’s poetry.
Orr and his wife lived a quiet life in the countryside because Orr was ill with eczema and tuberculosis most of his adult life.
Orr’s composition mentors included Frederick Delius and Peter Warlock.¹⁶

Composer biography

Pieces

A Cotswold Hill-Tune

20th Century Romantic Polish

PADEREWSKI, Ignacy Jan

Born in Kuryłówka, Podolia province in Russian Poland, Nov 6, 1860,
Died in New York, June 29, 1941

[ig-NAT-see yahn pah-de-REF-ski; pronunciation]

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Polish concert pianist, composer, and politician.
In 1872, Paderewski attended the Warsaw Conservatory and became a professor of piano just a few years later.
In the late 1880s, Paderewski debuted as a concert pianist to much acclaim and developed an overwhelmingly devoted fan following (think Lisztomania).
During WWI, Paderewski became a member of the Polish National Committee. As a representative to the U.S., Paderewski urged President Wilson to support Polish independence, which he did as part of his “Fourteen Points.“¹⁷
- Fun fact – as a representative of Poland, Paderewski signed the Versailles Treaty in 1919. That same year, he became Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland. By 1922, he resigned all political positions and resumed his musical career.¹⁸
As a composer, the bulk of Paderewski’s oeuvre (unsurprisingly) consists of piano works, though he also wrote orchestral music, chamber music, choral music, art songs, and an opera.¹⁹

Pieces

6 Humoresques de concert, Op. 14

20th Century Romantic English

PARRY, Sir Charles Hubert Hastings

Born in Bournemouth, Feb 27, 1848
Died in Rustington, Sussex, Oct 7, 1918

Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry was one of the foremost English composers, music scholars and teachers of the 19^th century and did much to revitalize music education standards in England.
Parry’s most influential musical mentor was Edward Dannreuther, who was largely responsible for aiding Parry’s passion for Richard Wagner‘s music.
Parry was Director of the Royal College of Music from 1895 to the end of his life. Due to this role, in addition to his position as Heather Professor of Music at Oxford from 1900-08, Parry was essentially the face of British classical music at the time.
- At the Royal College of Music, some of Parry’s pupils included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge, and John Ireland.
Fun fact: Parry worked for George Grove as a sub-editor for the first edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Parry wrote more than 100 articles in the first Grove’s.²⁰

“Although Parry’s ceremonial music embodies a sense of strength and confidence, on a deeper level his musical language imparts something much more aspirational – a longing for a better world in which music will help to raise humanity to new heights.”²¹

Short biography
Timeline via Google Arts & Culture

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Croatian

PEJAČEVIĆ, Dora

Born in Budapest, Sept 10, 1885
Died in Munich, March 5, 1923

Pronunciation (IPA): [peja’tʃɛvɪtʃ]

Pronunciation: “peh-ya-CHEH-vich”

Pejačević was a Croatian composer whose musical style is late Romantic and Impressionist. Her works include a symphony, a piano concerto, vocal works and chamber works.²¹
Pejačević was a member of Croatian nobility and she grew up in her family’s estate at Našice, Slavonia.²²
Pejačević studied at the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb,²³ and privately in Dresden and Munich.²⁴.
Pejačević’s Piano Concerto in g minor, Op. 33, was the first concerto by a Croatian composer. During her lifetime, her music was performed many times in musical centers of Germany, Austria, and Croatia.²⁵
Pejačević died shortly after the birth of her first child, at the age of 38.²⁶

Biography from the Croatian Music Information Center

Pieces

20th Century American

PERKINSON, Coleridge-Taylor

Photograph of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson courtesy of Cedille Records, https://www.cedillerecords.org/artists/coleridge-taylor-perkinson/

Born in Winston-Salem, NC, June 14, 1932
Died in Chicago, IL, Mar 9, 2004

Perkinson was named after the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.²⁵
Perkinson studied composition at the Manhattan School of Music and Princeton Univeristy. He studied conducting at the Berkshire Music Center.²⁶
Perkinson served as music director of institutions including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the American Theater Lab (with Jerome Robbins), and the Symphony of the New World, which he co-founded.²⁷
Perkinson served as Coordinator of Performance Activities at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago.²⁸

Biography from Keiser Southern Music

Biography from AfriClassical

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Brazilian

PERNAMBUCO, João

Born in Jatobá, November 2, 1883
Died in Rio de Janiero, October 16, 1947²⁶

Pronunciation: first name
Pronunciation: last name

Born João Teixeira Guimarães (Pernambuco, the state in which he was born, appears to have been a stage name)

Pernambuco came from a poor Brazilian family. His father was Portuguese, and his mother was a member of the indigenous Caeté people.
Pernambuco learned the music as a child, from street musicians.
Pernambuco played and composed throughout his life, but earned a living as an ironworker.
Pernambuco was master of the Brazilian musical genre of chôro .
Due to his illiteracy, Pernambuco had to rely on other musicians to transcribe and publish his compositions. Unfortunately, this resulted in the theft of many of this works by unscrupulous composers. One exception was Heitor Villa-Lobos, who heard of Pernambuco’s trouble and had several of the composer’s works published with Pernambuco properly attributed.²⁷
Pernambuco called himself “The Troubadour of the Poor.”²⁹
Biography from AllMusic

Pieces

Sons de Carrilhões

20th Century Late Romantic German

PFITZNER, Hans

Portrait of Hans Pfitzner (1910) by Lothar von Seebach

Born in Moscow, May 5, 1869
Died in Salzburg, May 22, 1949

Pfitzner was a conservatory professor, conductor and a composer of late Romantic, anti-modernist theatrical music (mostly opera and incidental music).
Pfitzner’s musical conservatism (a dedication to the German Classical and Romantic tradition) caused him to vocally oppose the modernist and popular styles of his time, in a pro-German xenophobic manner that make him sympathetic to the Nazis when they rose to power in the 1930s.
- Pfitzner’s political relationship with the Nazi party was complicated. He tried to use his influence to save a Jewish friend from a concentration camp and failed.³⁰

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Argentinian

PIAZZOLLA, Astor

Astor Piazzolla, photographed in 1971.

Born in Mar del Plata, March 11, 1921
Died in Buenos Aires, July 5, 1992

Born in Argentina to Italian immigrants, Piazzolla was a bandoneón child prodigy who grew up in New York’s Greenwich Village.
As a young person, Piazzolla worked in Argentine dance bands and studied classical music with Alberto Ginastera.
Piazzolla studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, who encouraged his unique blend of tango influenced by classical and jazz styles, which he called tango nuevo.³¹
- Piazzolla is responsible for bringing Tango, the beloved national genre of Argentina, to the international stage. However, many native Argentinians disapproved of the composer’s tango nuevo and thought his music cold and cerebral.
- Nevertheless, Piazzolla’s distinctive voice is widely appealing and accessible to lovers of classical, jazz, and popular music.³²

Learn More

Biography from the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society
Biography from Britannica

Pieces

Late Romantic French

PIERNÉ, Gabriel

Born in Metz, Aug 16, 1863
Died in Ploujean, Finistère, July 17, 1937

Pierné studied at the Paris Conservatoire with César Frank (organ) and Jules Massenet (composition).
Pierné won the Prix de Rome when he was 19.
Pierné was the conductor of the Concerts Colonne, in which capacity he directed premieres of works by Debussy and Ravel. He also directed the premiere of The Firebird for the Ballets Russes.³³

Short biography

Pieces

Ramuntcho

Late Romantic Mexican

PONCE, Manuel

Born in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, Dec 8, 1882
Died in Mexico City, April 24, 1948

Full name: Manuel María Ponce Cuéllar

Ponce was recognized as the leading Mexican composer of his time, instrumental in helping to create a Mexican national style.
As a young man, Ponce was a church chorister and organist. He then went on to study music in Mexico City, then in Bologna, Italy, and then in Berlin, before returning to Mexico. He also visited France from 1925-1933 to refresh his compositional style, studying with Dukas and collaborating with Andrès Segovia.
Ponce served at the Conservatorio Nacional in Mexico City as a piano professor, and latterly as its Director.
Ponce was a lecturer on musicology, especially Mexican music. He also edited Mexican music publications and wrote extensively on musical topics.³⁴

Short biography

Pieces

20th Century French

POULENC, Francis

Born in Paris, Jan 7, 1899
Died in Paris, Jan 30, 1963³⁵

Short biography from Naxos

Pieces

20th Century American

PRICE, Florence

Portrait of Florence Price by G. Nelidoff, courtesy of Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries.

Born in Little Rock, AR, 9 April 1887
Died in Chicago, IL, 3 June 1953

Born Florence Beatrice Smith

Price was the first African-American woman to achieve national recognition as a composer.
Price studied at the New England Conservatory, and was also a student of George Whitefield Chadwick.
Price’s Symphony no. 1 in e minor won the Wanamaker Competition in 1932, which provided a premiere with the Chicago Symphony in 1933. This premiere constituted the first time a major American orchestra performed a work by an African-American woman.
Price was especially prolific and successful as a composer of art songs.³⁶

Florence Price website maintained by Price scholar and Karen Walwyn

20th Century Russian

PROKOFIEV, Sergei

"Sergei Prokofiev Giving the Premiere of His 3 Pieces Op.59" (1935) by Hilda Béatrice Wiener

Born in Sontsovka, Bakhmutsk region, Yekaterinoslav district, Ukraine, 11/April 23, 1891
Died in Moscow, March 5, 1953

Biography

Pieces

Late Romantic Italian

PUCCINI, Giacomo

Portrait of Giacomo Puccini by Arturo Rietti

Born in Lucca, Dec 22, 1858
Died in Brussels, Nov 29, 1924

Fun fact: Giacomo Puccini represented the fifth generation of musicians and composers in his family. His family had been professional musicians in Lucca since the 1700s.³⁷

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic English

QUILTER, Roger

Born in Hove, Nov 1, 1877
Died in London, Sept 21, 1953

Quilter was best known as a writer of English art song, especially favoring texts by Shakespeare, Shelley and Herrick.³⁸

Short biography

Pieces

Late Romantic Russian

RACHMANINOV, Sergei

Sergei Rachmaninoff, photographed c. 1910.

Born in Oneg, 20 March/April 1, 1873
Died in Beverly Hills, CA, March 28, 1943

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Contemporary Finnish

RAUTAVAARA, Einojuhani

Born in Helsinki, 9 Oct, 1928
Died in Helsinki, 27 July, 2016

[PRONUNCIATION / AY-no-yu-hah-ni ROW-ta-vah-ra]

Einojuhani Rautavaara began studying music in his teens, earning a place Helsinki University for musicology and the Sibelius Academy for composition.
- In 1955, Jean Sibelius selected Rautavaara for a scholarship to study in the United States. Rautavaara spent two years studying with Vincent Persichetti at Juilliard. He also took part in the summer courses at Tanglewood given by Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland.³⁹
As a composer, Rautavaara cycled through several styles throughout his long career. In the 1950s, his music is most often characterized by neoclassical elements, while the 60s brought a shift toward the avant-garde and experiments in 12-tone techniques. In the 70s, the composer embraced Romanticism, ultimately reaching his final “mystical” phase with music featuring angels.⁴⁰
Rautavaara was quite prolific, writing eight symphonies, nine operas, 12 instrumental (and one choral) concertos, chamber music, choral music, and vocal works.⁴¹

Learn More
Short biography

Pieces

20th Century Impressionist French

RAVEL, Maurice

Maurice Ravel, photographed in 1914.

Born in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, March 7, 1875
Died in Paris, Dec 28, 1937

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Italian

RESPIGHI, Ottorino

Photograph of Ottorino Respighi (1934) by Ghitta Lorell

Born in Bologna, July 9, 1879
Died in Rome, April 18, 1936

Respighi studied violin and viola at the Liceo Musicale, Bologna, as well as composition. He also had some composition lessons with Rimsky-Korsakov when he was employed as a violist in Russia.
Respighi was an enthusiastic transcriber of 17th and 18th C., the influence of which can be seen in his compositions.
For much of his career Respighi taught composition at the Liceo Musicale di S Cecilia in Rome.⁴²

Short biography

Pieces

20th Century Mexican

REVUELTAS, Silvestre

Born in Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango, Dec 31, 1899
Died in Mexico City, Oct 5, 1940

Revueltas was a violinist, composer and conductor.
Revueltas was the assistant conductor of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra from 1929-35, and he also taught at Mexico City Conservatory.⁴³

Pieces

Late Romantic Austrian

REZNICEK, Emil von

Born in Vienna, May 4, 1860
Died in Berlin, Aug 2, 1945

Reznicek was an Austrian conductor and composer who held theater, military and conservatory appointments at different stages of his life.
Reznicek was a late Romantic, tonal composer. In 1932 he and Richard Strauss founded an organization to support tonal composition, but Reznicek left in 1942 when the Nazis tried to co-opt the group.⁴⁴

Short biography

Pieces

Donna Diana

20th Century American

RISHER, Anna Priscilla

Image courtesy of Pittsburgh Music History

Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Nov 2, 1875
Died in Los Angeles, Aug 29, 1946

Anna Priscilla Risher was a composer, pianist, organist, cellist, violinist, and singer. Additionally, Risher was a respected painter and champion for women in classical music.
Risher composed 350 works, including chamber music and large-scale orchestral works. She also published pedagogical piano technique books.
In addition to composing, Risher established several music organizations, such as the Hollywood Women’s Symphony Orchestra.⁴⁵

Biography

Pieces

Mazurka Brillante

20th Century American

RODGERS, Richard

Born in Hammels Station, Long Island, NY, June 28, 1902
Died in New York, Dec 30, 1979⁴⁶

Biography from Songwriters Hall of Fame

Pieces

Victory at Sea

20th Century Spanish

RODRIGO, Joaquín

Born in Sagunto, Nov 22, 1901
Died in Madrid, July 6, 1999

In addition to being Spain’s most famous 20^th C. composer, Rodrigo also:
- was a music critic
- worked in the music department of Spanish national radio
- worked in the Spanish National Association for the Blind (Rodrigo lost his sight at age 3 due to diphtheria)
- held the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music at Complutense University, Madrid⁴⁷⁴⁸

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Italian

ROTA, Nino

Born in Milan, Dec 3, 1911
Died in Rome, April 10, 1979

Rota was a prodigy whose work was first performed in 1923 when he was 12.
His mother was a pianist and his grandfather was a composer.
Rota studied at the Conservatorio di S Cecilia in Rome and at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. While living in the USA he became friends with Aaron Copland.
In addition to composing film scores for Fellini (La Strada, 8 ½, La dolce vita), Franco Zeffirelli(Romeo and Juliet) and many other directors, he produced a large body of concert music (orchestral, chamber, opera, sacred, ballets). Rota’s music is notable for cross-pollination between his cinematic and concert styles.⁴⁹

Short biography

Pieces

The Godfather II: The Immigrant

20th Century French

ROUSSEL, Albert

Born in Tourcoing, April 5, 1869
Died in Royan, Aug 23, 1937

Albert Roussel had an unusual trajectory to music in that he didn’t pursue composition until his mid-twenties. Though he had music instruction as a child, he was more interested in mathematics. In 1887, Roussel passed the entrance exam for the French Navy and spent the next several years at sea.
At age 25, Roussel decided to become a musician and subsequently resigned from the Navy. He moved to Paris and eventually entered the Schola Cantorum, where he studied under Vincent d’Indy.
- Roussel soon became a teacher at the institution himself and taught notable names such as Erik Satie and Edgard Varèse.
While Roussel’s early works show the influence of impressionism and neoclassicism, both of which were popular styles of the time, the composer came to develop a unique independent musical voice, writing music “his music harmonically spiced and rhythmically vigorous.”⁵⁰
WWI broke out just as Roussel was gaining notoriety as a composer. He joined the cause as a transport officer on the front and only left in 1918 for health reasons.
- His experience in the war made Roussel all the more convinced of his destiny as a composer and significantly changed his aesthetic. From then on, he pursued “purer music: less cluttered, cleansed, and more personal.”⁵¹
Food for thought – the reason why Roussel is not as well known as his French contemporaries, such as Debussy or Ravel, is because he created such a unique musical idiom that was not carried on by later generations – he developed a “unique personal language in which he was to have no followers.”⁵²

Learn More

Biography from Interlude

Pieces

Le festin de l’araignée (The Spider’s Banquet), Op. 17

20th Century American Hungarian

RÓZSA, Miklós

Born in Budapest, April 18, 1907
Died in Los Angeles, July 27, 1995

Rózsa grew up in the city of Budapest, and in his family’s country home, where he got to hear plenty of Hungarian peasant folk music.
He took piano lessons from his mother, who had been a Budapest Academy classmate of Bartók.
Rózsa studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and gained recognition for his concert music in Europe as a young man.
His first Hollywood gig was completing the score for The Thief of Baghdad (1940), and subsequently he was in high demand as a film composer and conductor.
Rózsa taught film music at the University of Southern California from 1945-1965.⁵¹

Short biography

Pieces

Ben-Hur: Parade of the Charioteeers

20th Century Jamaican Swiss

RUSSELL, Oswald

Photograph of Oswald Russell courtesy of Music Unites Jamaica Foundation.

Born in Kingston, Aug 16, 1933⁵³
Died in Geneva, July 2, 2012⁵⁴

Russell was composer and pianist who utilized both classical and jazz styles.
Russell studied at institutions including the Royal Academy of Music, the Julliard School, and the Geneva Conservatory. He taught at the Jamaica School of Music, the Institut Jacques-Dalcroze (Geneva), the Geneva Conservatory, the Kinshasa Conservatory in Zaire, and several other institutions. His teaching specialties were piano, keyboard harmony, and improvisation.
Russell’s compositions include jazz works, liturgical music, and music for film, theater, or ballet.⁵⁵

Biography from Music Unites Jamaica

Pieces

Three Jamaican Dances

20th Century Argentinian

SALGÁN, Horacio

Horacio Salgán performing with the Quinteto Real in 1964.

Born in Buenos Aires, June 15, 1916
Died in Buenos Aires, Aug 19, 2016

Salgán was a classically trained pianist, ⁵⁶ organist, composer and bandleader. He directed a number of tango orchestras starting in 1944. Later in life he also performed as part of the Quinteto Real,⁵⁷ and collaborated in a duo with guitarist Ubaldo de Lío.⁵⁸

“I began to compose because I wanted to play tango in a pre-established way. I didn’t want to be a composer but to play tangos the way I liked. The same happened with the orchestra. As I liked to play tangos in my own style, the only possible way was having my own group. Then I put it together. There are people who enjoy being bandleaders but I was interested in my pianistic vocation. I had no intention of creating anything.”
Horacio Salgán ⁵⁹

“The orchestras led by Salgán in the years 1944 to 1957 widen the traditional form of tango, deal with the rhythmical aspect in depth and add to it a Black touch, creating a new kind of tango trend deeply rooted in its tradition but receptive to Bartók, Ravel, jazz and Brazilian music.”
Music critic for Le Monde (Paris)⁶⁰

“Training in Western symphonic music opened up a whole world of harmony, orchestration and pianistic execution. But there’s also a black dimension to my music. It’s not casual, nor flagrant, but part of my origin . . . my style and my truth.”
Salgán⁶¹

Biography and more

Pieces

A fuego lento

20th Century Late Romantic Modernist French

SATIE, Erik

Born in Honfleur, May 17, 1866
Died in Paris, July 1, 1925

Article on Satie from The Guardian

Selection of Satie facts from France Musique

List of Weird Satie Facts from Soundfly

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic French

SCHMITT, Florent

Born in Blâmont, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Sept 28, 1870
Died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, Aug 17, 1958

“Throughout his life, Schmitt was valued for his independent spirit and refusal to be identified with any school or group. In a time when many composers embraced Impressionism, his music, albeit influenced by Debussy, was admired for its energy, dynamism, grandeur, and virility, for its union of French clarity and German strength… Schmitt was considered a pioneer during his lifetime, rejected by some and embraced by others for a style that influenced and helped prepare for later innovations by Stravinsky, Ravel, Honegger and Roussel.”
Grove Music Online⁶²

Florent Schmitt was encouraged by his parents to pursue music from an early age. In his late teens, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Massenet and Fauré.
- Historical context: The year that Schmitt joined the Conservatoire, 1889, was the same year that the Eiffel Tower was completed and the Moulin Rouge opened.
Schmitt won the Prix de Rome in 1900 for his secular cantata, Sémiramis, and spent the next four years composing in the Italian city.
Schmitt wrote an extensive catalog of works during his long life, which makes how little he is known today relative to his contemporaries (Debussy and Ravel) even more surprising.
One of the distinctive features of Schmitt’s music was his love of unequal time signatures (5/8, 7/8, etc.). He is best known for his orchestral music.
In addition to composing, Schmitt was also a music critic, which caused him to make many enemies through his reviews and articles.
- In everyday life, Schmitt didn’t shy away from making his presence or opinions known, for better or worse.
- “A story goes that some poor pianist, engaged in disentangling Schmitt’s counterpoint, had to cope with the composer’s voice from the back of the hall shouting, ‘It’s a C Sharp!'”⁶³

Learn More

Biography of the composer (with many interesting images)
Biography from Hyperion Records

Pieces

20th Century Modernist Austrian

SCHOENBERG, Arnold

Portrait of Arnold Schoenberg by Richard Gerstl (1906)

Born in Vienna, Sept 13, 1874
Died in Los Angeles, July 13, 1951

Arnold Schoenberg was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He introduced serialism, particularly 12-tone technique, to Western music methodology and taught notable composers such as Alban Berg and Anton Webern.
Schoenberg came from a Jewish family of Hungarian and Czech descent. He began studying violin and composition at age eight. Due to his modest family circumstances, he never studied formally at a renowned institution. However, when the composer was in his early 20s, he met Alexander Zemlinsky, who would become Schoenberg’s mentor.
- Fun fact – In 1901, Schoenberg married Zemlinsky’s sister, Mathilde, making the two brothers-in-law.
In 1933, amid the rise of Nazism, Schoenberg emigrated to the US. At first, he took on a teaching position at the Malkin Conservatory in Boston. About a year later, he moved to Los Angeles, where he would remain for the rest of his life. In 1936, he became a professor at UCLA.⁶⁴
Additional fun fact – In addition to music, Schoenberg further fostered his creativity by painting self-portraits and designing games, toys, and playing cards. Read more about interesting composer hobbies here.

Learn More:

Biography from The British Library
Biographical overview from Britannica