American Composers

Famous quote, "When we separate music from life we get art."

John Cage

He composed the operetta Candide and the score for the 1954 film On the Waterfront.

Leonard Bernstein

His concert works include his Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah" (1942), and a jazz clarinet concerto premiered by Benny Goodman: "Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs" (1949).

Leonard Bernstein

This American composter was born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1918, to Russian-Jewish immigrants. He was a shy and sickly child.

Leonard Bernstein

He composed three major ballets: Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944). He is most known for Appalachian Spring.

Aaron Copland

One of many American composers who studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger.. "El Salón México" (1936) was the first of his highly successful "Populist" works based on folk or folk-like themes.

Aaron Copland

This American composer was born in Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish family.

Aaron Copland

When Copland was eleven, he wrote his first notated melody, seven bars of an opera he called Zenatello.

Aaron Copland

An American composer that was a modernist, experimental composer that used polytonality (more than one active key center at a time).

Charles Ives

Called the "Americanist" that played the organ in church. He combined church music and american popular music.

Charles Ives

His Piano Sonata No. 2 (1915), the "Concord" sonata, depicts four leading figures of the transcendentalist movement.

Charles Ives

His Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting" (1947), was awarded the 1947 Pulitzer Prize.

Charles Ives

An American composer that blended classical w/ jazz.

George Gershwin

At age 15 this American composer dropped out of school and took a job as a pianist and song plugger.

George Gershwin

His opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the songs "Summertime" and "It Ain't Necessarily So," featured an entirely African-American cast.

George Gershwin

Who composed "An American in Paris" (1928) and "Cuban Overture" (1932) that were inspired by his trips abroad?

George Gershwin

Who composed "Rhapsody in Blue" (1924) and "Concerto in F" (1925) both feature solo piano and orchestra?

George Gershwin

Who composed the Broadway musical Girl Crazy that featured two of his best-known songs, "Embraceable You" and "I Got Rhythm,"?

George Gershwin

A minimalist composer whose music often features an "American" program. He is best known for his opera Nixon in China (1987), which dramatizes the 1972 presidential visit and meeting with Mao.

John (Coolidge) Adams

He composed "On the Transmigration of Souls" (2002) to memorialize the September 11th attacks; that work received the Pulitzer Prize.

John (Coolidge) Adams

An experimentalist composer whose works are known for aleatoric (chance-based) composition and other forms of indeterminacy.

John Cage

His best-known piece, 4'33" (1952), is created from the ambient sounds of the concert space while the performer(s) sits silently on stage.

John Cage

Famous for "Semper Fidelis" song of the United States Marine Corps. Also composed "Stars and Stripes Forever"

John Philip Souza

Known as the "March King" and Conductor of the USMC band.

John Philip Souza

American composer of West Side Story (1957).

Leonard Bernstein

An American composer and conductor who gave numerous televised "Young People's Concerts" during his eleven-year tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic (1958-1969).

Leonard Bernstein

A minimalist composer who is best known for his trilogy of "Portrait Operas," which include Einstein on the Beach (1976), Satyagraha (1979), and Akhnaten (1983).

Philip Glass

American Composer that is known for his "minimalism" style.

Phillip Glass

An American composer that was a prolific composer of film scores; his most prominent include his score for The Truman Show.

Phillip Glass

A classicist composer best known for his "Adagio for Strings" (1936).

Samuel Barber

Famous quote, "I was meant to be a composer and I will be I am sure. Don't ask me to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football."

Samuel Barber

For much of his life, he maintained a romantic relationship with opera composer Gian-Carlo Menotti.

Samuel Barber

His first opera, Vanessa (1958), won the Pulitzer Prize; his second major opera, Antony and Cleopatra (1966), was a flop.

Samuel Barber

Famous for "Maple leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer"

Scott Joplin

Jazz composer of "Ragtime"

Scott Joplin

He composed Sweeney Todd (1979), about a barber's murderous quest for revenge and Into the Woods (1987), a dark mash-up of several fairy tales

Stephen Sondheim

One of the most celebrated lyricists and composers in musical theater and was the lyricist for West Side Story.

Stephen Sondheim