Modernist and Contemporary Composers

He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.

Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 1874-13 July 1951) was an Austrian and American modernist composer, music theorist, and teacher associated with developing variation, the emancipation of the dissonance, and twelve-tone composition.

But he found that composing orchestral music in a modernist style, which he had adopted while studying abroad, was unprofitable, particularly in light of the Great Depression.

A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde.

Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹; pronounced [takeꜜmitsɯ̥ toːɾɯ]; 8 October 1930-20 February 1996) was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music and writer on music.

s of subsequent composers to incorporate folk music and classical traditions from whatever culture into their works," and was "a formidable modernist who in the face of Schoenberg’s breathtaking formulations showed another way, forging a language that was an amalgam of tonality, unorthodox scales an