Era: 20th Century

20th Century American

WALKER, George

Photograph of George Walker courtesy of the composer's website

Born in Washington, DC, June 27, 1922
Died in Montclair, NJ, Aug 23, 2018

Walker studied at Oberlin, Eastman, and Curtis. His teachers included Nadia Boulanger, Rudolf Serkin, and Robert Casadesus.¹
- Walker began studying at Oberlin at the age of 14, becoming the institution’s youngest student.
- Walker was also the first Black student to earn a doctorate at Eastman in 1956.²
Walker had a distinguished academic career; his longest appointment was at Rutgers University from 1969-92.³
- The stability Walker found in academia paved the way for greater capacity to compose. However, it came at a cost. He had originally pursued a career as a concert pianist but found consistent work too hard to come by due to institutional racism.⁴
Among his many professional honors, George Walker was the first African-American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996 for his vocal and orchestral piece Lilacs.⁵
As a composer, Walker wrote most extensively for string instruments, though his oeuvre also includes concertos for trombone and piano, piano sonatas, sinfonias, brass and wind quintets, song cycles, and more.
Walker cannot easily be associated with other composers because his music is so distinctive. He wrote each piece to be unique, without any resemblance to a previous work.
- He also frequently quoted spirituals, Jazz, and folk music in his works, but only with incredible subtlety.⁶

Learn More

Composer’s website
Obituary article from NPR

Pieces

20th Century English

WALTON, Sir William

Born in Oldham, March 29, 1902
Died in Ischia, March 8, 1983⁶

Biography from Boosey & Hawkes

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic English

WARLOCK, Peter

Born in London, Oct 30, 1894
Died in London, Dec 17, 1930⁷

“Peter Warlock” was a pseudonymn. He was born Philip Arnold Heseltine.

Biography from Boosey & Hawkes

Pieces

20th Century Modernist Austrian

WEBERN, Anton

Born in Vienna, Dec 3, 1883
Died in Mittersill, Sept 15, 1945⁸

Short biography
More extended biography

Pieces

Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10

20th Century Polish Russian

WEINBERG, Mieczysław

Born in Warsaw, Dec 8, 1919
Died in Moscow, Feb 2, 1996

Pronunciation

IPA:[mjɛtʃiswɑv vaɪnbɛrg]

Phonetic: MYEH-chee-swav VINE-berg

Pronunciation via Forvo

Alternate Names

There are various versions of this composer’s name in use. Because he was born in Poland and worked in Russia, his name has been transliterated in several ways. Additionally, when he arrived in Russia as a refugee from Poland, a Russian border guard decided to rename him Moishe (a stereotypically Jewish name) instead of Mieczysław.⁹

If you’re having trouble finding him in search engines, also try these spellings/versions:

Moisey Samuilovich Vaynberg (Oxford Music Online uses this one)

Moishe Vainberg

Mojsze Wajnberg

His wikipedia article also has the Hebrew and Cyrillic versions if you’re interested.

Biography

Weinberg was a Polish-born Jewish composer who spent most of his career in Russia.¹⁰
Weinberg fled Warsaw in 1939 upon the Nazi invasion of Poland and ended up in Minsk. Tragically, the family he left behind ultimately perished in a Nazi concentration camp.
Weinberg was a huge admirer of Shostakovich and his music, and the older composer ended up playing a pivotal role in Weinberg’s entry into Russia in 1943 (where he would spend the rest of his life).
- Weinberg sent Shostakovich the score for his First Symphony (1942), and the latter was so impressed that he urged Soviet officials to permit Weinberg to emigrate to Moscow. The two composers became close friends thereafter.
Weinberg’s music written in the 1940s is characterized by an abrasive neo-classical style, while his works post-war were more simplified (as many composers were inclined to do in light of the political climate) and drew on folk idioms from his Jewish heritage.
Weinberg was affected by the growing Anti-Semitism under Stalin and was even imprisoned in 1953 under trumped-up charges for “promoting bourgeois Jewish nationalism.” Thanks to Stalin’s conveniently timed death and the intervention of his friend, Shostakovich, Weinberg was eventually released.
While Weinberg was an extremely prolific composer, his music was relatively unknown outside of Russia until the fall of the Berlin Wall.¹¹

Scholarly website/database on Weinberg

Pieces

Symphony No. 2, Op. 30

20th Century American Czech

WEINBERGER, Jaromír

Born in Prague, Jan 8, 1896
Died in St Petersburg, FL, Aug 8, 1967¹²

Biography

Pieces

20th Century American

WHITE, Clarence Cameron

Born in Clarksville, TN, Aug 10, 1880
New York, June 30, 1960

White was an African-American composer and violinist.
White studied at Oberlin and in Europe, where his teachers included Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
White toured frequently as a violinist, with his wife, collaborative pianist Beatrice Warrick White.
White taught at West Virginia State College and was the Director of Music at the the Hampton Institute in Virginia.¹³

Biography from the Library of Congress

Biography from The African American Registry

Pieces

20th Century Swedish

WIRÉN, Dag

Born in Striberg, Närke, Oct 15, 1905
Died in Stockholm, April 19, 1986¹⁴

Biography

Name pronunciation:
[dɔg viɾ’in]
“dawg vee-REEN”
Listen

Pieces

20th Century Late Romantic Italian

WOLF-FERRARI, Ermanno

Born in Venice, Jan 12, 1876
Died in Venice, Jan 21, 1948¹⁵

Biography

Pieces

20th Century Chinese

XIAN Xinghai

Born in Macao, June 13, 1905
Died in Moscow, Oct 30, 1945

Note that Xian is the composer’s surname. It is appropriate to refer to him as Xian Xinghai or Xian, not just Xinghai.

Pronunciation

Xian studied at multiple Chinese conservatories, and also studied in France with d’Indy and Dukas.
Xian was associated with the Communist party’s reformist or revolutionary school of composers, who emphasized nationalistic compositions and the use of Chinese folk music, rather than imitation of Western music.
In the late 30s Xian was head of music at the Lu Xun College of the Arts. From 1940 until his death in 1945, he was based in the Soviet Union.¹⁶

Biography from the Cultural Institute of Macao

Pieces

Piano Concerto “The Yellow River”

20th Century Japanese

YAMADA, Kōsaku

Kōsaku Yamada conducting in Manhattan in 1918.

Born in Tokyo, June 9, 1886
Died in Tokyo, Dec 29, 1965

Yamada was a Japanese composer, orchestral conductor, and educator.
Yamada attended at the Tokyo Music School, and then studied composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. His music shows a significant influence from late German romanticism.
After his studies in Germany, Yamada sometimes used the somewhat Germanic name of Kósçak as a variation of his Japanese given name, Kōsaku.¹⁷
Yamada founded the Tokyo Philharmonic Society Orchestra (which is a different organization than that which current operates under that same name) and directed this ensemble in Japan’s first-ever professional classical orchestral concert in 1915. In addition to his work in Japan, Yamada’s conducting career also took him abroad, including conducting a concert of his compositions at Carnegie Hall in 1918.
Yamada composed more than 1600 works, including operas, tone poems, songs, and chamber works. As a composer, he was particularly interested in finding a musical language well suited to the rhythms of the Japanese language.
Tragically, a large number of Yamada’s compositions were destroyed in the air raid that targeted Tokyo on May 25, 1945.¹⁸

Short biography from Naxos

Pieces

20th Century Japanese

YOCOH, Yuquijiro

Photograph of Yuquijiro Yocoh courtesy of the composer's website.

Born in Hita City, Japan, 1925
Died in 2009

Yocoh is a Japanese guitarist and arranger best known for his set of variations on the folk tune Sakura.¹⁹

The composer’s website is in Japanese, but it contains some fascinating photos of the composer over the course of his life.

I have run his bio through Google Translate and derived the following information. Please take it with a grain of salt, because I do not know Japanese – however, Yocoh’s site is by far the most thorough source of information available about him online.

Yocoh reports that he met Segovia during the guitarist’s visit to Japan in 1959. He also writes that Segovia’s performance in Japan, the first of a classical guitarist in that country since WWII, was an influential experience for him. He says he worked on learning Spanish just so he could speak with Segovia.
- Here’s a photo of Yocoh with Segovia, as well as lots of photos from the composer’s life and career.
Yocoh’s most famous work, his set variations on Sakura, has been recorded by a plethora of classical guitarists, including John Williams and Angel Romero.
Yocoh writes that in addition to composing, he enjoys arranging preexisting classical works for the guitar, and that he values the artistic satisfaction of creating handwritten music manuscripts.

Pieces

Variations on an Old Japanese Folksong, “Sakura”

Late Romantic Austrian

ZEMLINSKY, Alexander

Born in Vienna, Oct 14, 1871
Died in Larchmont, NY, March 15, 1942

Alexander Zemlinsky was a composer, conductor, and educator whose contributions to classical music at the turn of the century have largely been overshadowed by his Austrian contemporaries.
The composer’s earlier works reflect the influence of Brahms and Wagner. Coincidentally, one of Zemlinsky’s earliest advocates was Johannes Brahms, who was impressed by the young composer’s music.
Unlike his contemporaries of the Second Viennese School, Zemlinsky rejected atonality. Rather, his music is known for its emotional intensity.
Zemlinsky had a lifelong friendship with Arnold Schoenberg. The two met in 1895 when Schoenberg joined an amateur orchestra that Zemlinsky was conducting at the time called the Polyhymnia. Zemlinsky would go on to instruct Schoenberg in composition. And in 1901, Schoenberg married Zemlinsky’s sister, making the two brothers-in-law.
Fun fact – Zelminsky was involved in a passionate love affair with Alma Schindler, one of his composition students, shortly before she married Gustav Mahler.²⁰

Biography

Pieces

Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid)

20th Century Ukrainian

ZHUK, Alexander

Born in 1907
Died in 1995

Alexander Zhuk was a Kharkiv composer, conductor, and educator.²¹

Pieces

Ukrainian Rhapsody