List of modernist composers

Lists of composers by philosophical stance: modernist composers

Austria

• Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) (Webster 2008, 285)
• Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) (Frisch 2005, 182–85, 203–13; Gagné 2012, 178)
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) (Taruskin 2010, Vol. 4, 449)

Russia/Soviet Union

• Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) (Gagné 2012, 178; Rifkin 2006, 133–41, 145–47)
• Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915) (Gagné 2012, 178)
• Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) (Rifkin 2006, 134)
• Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) (Ashby 2004a, 3; Ashby 2004b, 351)

Second Viennese school

• Alban Berg (1885–1935) (Ashby 2004a, 8; Ashby 2004b, 351)
• Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) (Ashby 2004a, 8; Whitesell 2004, 104)
• Anton Webern (1883-1945)

Germany

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) (Clapp 1916, passim)
• Georg Böhm (1661–1733) (Hanley 1954, 293)
• Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) (Ashby 2004a, 8; Gagné 2012, 178; Rifkin 2006, 134, 157)
• Hans Pfitzner (1869–1949) (Frisch 2005, 244–52)
• Max Reger (1873–1916) (Dahlhaus 1989, 335; Frisch 2005, 139, 149, 150–54, 168–72)
• Franz Schreker (1878–1934) (Dahlhaus 1989, 335)
• Richard Strauss (1864–1949) (Dahlhaus 1989, 335; Frisch 2005, 214–44; Whitesell 2004, 103)
• Johann Gottfried Walther (1684–1748) (Hanley 1954, 289)
• Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942) (Dahlhaus 1989, 335)

Finland

• Erik Bergman (1911–2006) (Howell 2011, passim)

France

• Pierre Boulez (born 1925) (Bauer 2001, 121) (Also described as a postmodern composer)
• Claude Debussy (1862–1918) (Gagné 2012, 178)
• Gabriel Fauré (Rifkin 2006, 134)
• André Jolivet (1905–1974) (Gagné 2012, 146)
• Arthur Honegger (Rifkin 2006, 134)
• Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) (Gagné 2012, 178)
• Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) (Gagné 2012, 178)
• Francis Poulenc (Rifkin 2006, 133–34, 141–43)
• Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) (Gagné 2012, 178)
• Erik Satie (1866–1925) (Gagné 2012, 178)
• Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) (Gagné 2012, 178)

Italy

• Luciano Berio (1925–2003) (Wilmotte 1994, passim) (Also described as a postmodern composer)
• Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) (Frisch 2005, 139)
• Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) (Tommasini 2007; Werder 1965; Whenham 1997, 36)

Hungary

• Béla Bartók (1881–1945) (Gagné 2012, 178)
• Franz Liszt (1811–1886) (Loya 2011, 1–5 et passim)

Poland

• Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937) (Ross 2007, 159)

Scotland

• Oliver Knussen (born 1952) (Gagné 2012, 151, 179)

United States

• Milton Babbitt (1916–2011) (Ashby 2004a, 8; Bauer 2004, 121)
• Samuel Barber (1910–1981) (Lien 2002, xii–xiii, 54–55; Rifkin 2006, 157; Wright 2010, 87–88)
• Irving Berlin (1888–1989)(Ross 2007, 136)
• John Cage (1912–1992) (Bernstein 2002, passim; Williams 2002, 241) (Also described as a postmodern composer)
• Aaron Copland (1900–1990) (Gagné 2012, 178; Lien 2002, 53–54)
• Henry Cowell (1897–1965) (Lien 2002, 51)
• Ruth Crawford-Seeger (1901–1953) (Ashby 2004a, 3)
• George Crumb (born 1929) (Petersen 2010, 311, 313)
• Vernon Duke (1903–1969) (Holden 2010, 296)
• Morton Feldman (1926–1987) (Ross 2007, 355) (Also described as a postmodern composer)
• George Gershwin (1898–1937) (Ross 2007, 136)
• Philip Glass (born 1937) (Schwarz 1990, 247) (Also described as a postmodern composer)
• Bernard Herrmann (1911–1975) (Ashby 2004a, 8)
• Charles Ives (1874-1954) (Botstein 2008)
• Jerome Kern (1885–1945)(Ross 2007, 136)
• Leon Kirchner (1919–2009)
• Donald Martino (1931–2005) (Ashby 2004a, 3)
• Leo Ornstein (1893-2002) (Broyles and Von Glahn 2007, xvi, 119)
• Harry Partch (1901–1974) (Lien 2002, 51–52)
• Cole Porter (1891–1964) (Ross 2007, 136)
• Ezra Pound (1885–1972) (Gagné 2012, 211)
• Lou Reed (born 1942) (Ashby 2004a, 8)
• Steve Reich (born 1936) (Schwarz 1990, 247, 271) (Also described as a postmodern composer)
• Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) (Ross 2007, 136)
• Dane Rudhyar (1895–1985) (Gagné 2012, 178)
• Charles Seeger (1886–1979) (Ross 2007, 271)
• Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) (Lien 2002, 52)
• Brian Wilson (born 1942) (Ashby 2004a, 8)

England

• Brian Ferneyhough (born 1943) (Ashby 2004a, 3) (Also described as a postmodern composer)
• William Walton (1902–1983) (Karolyi 1994, 43)

See also

• Modernism
• Postmodernism

References

• Ashby, Arved Mark. 2004a. "Introduction". In The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology, edited by Arved Mark Ashby, 1–22. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 1-58046-143-3.
• Ashby, Arved Mark. 2004b. "Modernism Goes to the Movies". In The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology, edited by Arved Mark Ashby, 345–86. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 1-58046-143-3.
• Bauer, Amy. 2004 "'Tone-Color, Movement, Changing Harmonic Planes': Cognition, Constraints, and Conceptual Blends in Modernist Music". In The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology, edited by Arved Mark Ashby, 121–52. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 1-58046-143-3.
• Bernstein, David W. 2002. "Cage and High Modernism". The Cambridge Companion to John Cage, edited by David Nicholls, 186–213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78348-8 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-78968-0 (pbk).
• Leon Botstein. "Modernism", Grove Music Online, edited by Laura Macy (accessed December 20, 2008), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
• Broyles, Michael, and Denise Von Glahn. 2007. Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34894-4.
• Clapp, Philip Greeley. 1916. "Sebastian Bach, Modernist". Musical Quarterly 2, no. 2 (April): 295–313.
• Dahlhaus, Carl. 1989. Nineteenth-Century Music, translated by J. Bradford Robinson. California Studies in 19th-Century Music. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-07644-0.
• Frisch, Walter. 2005. German Modernism: Music and the Arts. California Studies in 20th-Century Music. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25148-9.
• Gagné, Nicole V. 2012. Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music. Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-6765-6.
• Hanley, Edwin. 1954. "Chorale Variations. Johann Gottfried Walther: Meinen Jesum lass' ich nicht; Jesu meine Freude. Georg Böhm: Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flüchtig; Auf meinen lieben Gott; Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend. Finn Viderø, organ. 12" LP. Haydn HSL-3066" (record review). The Musical Quarterly 40, no. 2 (April): 289–94.
• Holden, Scott. 2010. "The 'Adventures and Battles' of Vladimir Dukelsky (a.k.a. Vernon Duke)". American Music 28, no. 3 (Fall): 296–319.
• Howell, Tim. 2011. "The Legacy of a Modernist". Finnish Music Quarterly, no. 4:38–41.
• Karolyi, Otto. 1994. Modern British Music: The Second British Musical Renaissance—From Elgar to P. Maxwell Davies. Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-8386-3532-6.
• Lien, Anthony Marcus. 2002. "Against the Grain: Modernism and the American Art Song, 1900 to 1950". PhD diss. Davis: University of California, Davis.
• Loya, Shay. 2011. Liszt's Transcultural Modernism and the Hungarian-Gypsy Tradition. Eastman Studies in Music. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 9781580463232.
• Petersen, Nils Holger. 2010. "Quotation and Framing: Re-contextualization and Intertextuality as Newness in George Crumb’s Black Angels". Contemporary Music Review 29, no. 3 (June): 309–21.
• Rifkin, Deborah. 2006. "Making It Modern: Chromaticism and Phrase Structure in Twentieth-Century Tonal Music". Theory and Practice 31:133–58.
• Ross, Alex. 2007. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-24939-7.
• Schwarz, K. Robert. 1990. "Process vs. Intuition in the Recent Works of Steve Reich and John Adams". American Music 8, no. 3 (Autumn): 245–73.
• The Oxford History of Western Music (2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2010).
• Tommasini, Anthony. 2007. "The Savvy Operator Who Aced That Newfangled Art Form, Opera". The New York Times (17 August).
• Webster, James. 2008. "Rosen's Modernist Haydn". In Variations on the Canon: Essays on Music from Bach to Boulez in Honor of Charles Rosen on His Eightieth Birthday, edited by Robert Curry, David Gable, Robert Lewis Marshall, 283–90. Eastman Studies in Music 58. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 9781580462853.
• Werder, Felix. 1965. "Monteverdi the Modernist: Monteverdi, by Leo Schrade". The Age (17 April).
• Whenham, John. 1997. Monteverdi: Vespers (1610). Cambridge Music Handbooks. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521459792.
• Whitesell, Lloyd. 2004. "Twentieth-Century Tonality, or, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do". In The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology, edited by Arved Mark Ashby, 103–120. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 1-58046-143-3.
• Williams, Alastair. 2002. "Cage and Postmodernism". The Cambridge Companion to John Cage, edited by David Nicholls, 227–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78348-8 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-78968-0 (pbk).
• Wilmotte, Marie-Hélène. 1994. "L'expérimental comme gage de la modernité: La Sequenza I de Luciano Berio". Les cahiers du CIREM, nos. 30–31:71–84.
• Wright, Jeffrey Marsh, II. 2010. "The Enlisted Composer: Samuel Barber's Career, 1942–1945". PhD diss. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.