The 56 Greatest Classical Composers ( by Musical Period and Country )
This is a selective list of 56 of the greatest classical composers ordered chronologically and by musical period. I use “classical” as a classifying word for all these composers which is actually wrong. Only composers that were part of the musical period between 1730 and 1820 are correctly called classical composers. Nonetheless, it is very common to entitle all following composers as classical composers. I want this article to be found and that’s why I named it “The 56 Greatest Classical Composers“. I hope you forgive me 😉
In the Medieval era or more precisely in the ars antiqua most composers wrote for the church only. They wrote in the name of god and didn’t credit their works for themselves. The collection of monophonic works from this era are named after Pope Gregory I and therefore called Gregorian chant. The troubadours and the trouvères are also collections of works where composers are not personally credited. For the rest all entries in this list stand for one single person.
This list is fairly personal as I mainly selected composers that were familiar to me. Nevertheless, I think that this list contains the most famous and relevant composers to our present time.
Medieval
500 – 1400
| Composer | Time | Country | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gregorian Chant | 600-900 | Western Christianity | Monophon |
| Léonin | 1150-1201 | France | Notre Dame School |
| Pérotin | around 1200 | around 1200 | Notre Dame School |
| Troubadours | 1100-1350 | Italy, Spain, Greece | Poetry, Composition |
| Trouvères | 1160-1300 | France | Poetry, Composition |
| Franco of Cologne | Mid-13th Century | Germany | theoris |
| Guillaume de Machaut | 1300-1350 | France | Isorithmic Motet |
| Francesco Landini | 1335-1397 | Italy |
Renaissance
1400 – 1600
| Composer | Time | Country | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Dunstaple | 1390-1454 | England | Franco-Flemish school |
| Guillaume Dufay | 1397-1474 | Netherland | Burgundian school |
| Johannes Ockeghem | 1425-1497 | Netherland | polyphonic vocal music |
| Antoine Brumel | 1460-1512 | France | Franco-Flemish school |
| Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina | 1525-1526 | Italy | Roman school |
| William Byrd | 1540-1623 | England | |
| Giovanni Gabrieli | 1554-1612 | Italy | Venetian school |
Baroque
1600-1750
| Composer | Time | Country | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claudio Monteverdi | 1567-1643 | Italy | L’Orfeo 1607 (first opera) |
| Heinrich Schütz | 1585-1672 | Germany | Dafne (opera) |
| Arcangelo Corelli | 1653-1713 | Italy | |
| Alessandro Scarlatti | 1660-1725 | Italy | Neapolitan school |
| Antonio Vivaldi | 1678-1741 | Italy | The Four Seasons |
| Georg Philipp Telemann | 1681-1767 | Germany | Recorder |
| Jean-Philippe Rameau | 1683-1764 | France | Treatise on Harmony |
| Johann Sebastian Bach | 1685-1750 | Germany | no remark needed |
| Georg Friedrich Händel | 1685-1759 | Germany | Messiah (1742) |
| Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti | 1685-1767 | Italy | son of Allessandro Scarlatti |
Classical Period
 1750-1820
| Composer | Time | Country | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christoph Willibald Gluck | 1714-1787 | Germany | opera composer |
| Joseph Haydn | 1732-1809 | Austria/Germany | father of symphony and string quartet |
| Luigi Boccherini | 1743-1805 | Italy | cellist |
| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | 1756-1791 | Germany | |
| Ludwig van Beethoven | 1770-1827 | Germany | symphony 9 and 5 |
Romantic
 1800-1900
| Composer | Time | Country | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johann Nepomuk Hummel | 1778-1837 | Austria | bridge between C. and R. |
| Franz Schubert | 1797-1828 | Austria/Germany | Der Tod und das Mädchen |
| Hector Berlioz | 1803-1888 | France | Symphonie Fantastique |
| Felix Mendelssohn | 1809-1847 | Germany | Wedding March; Symphony No. 4 |
| Frédéric Chopin | 1810-1849 | Polish | virtuoso pianist |
| Robert Schumann | 1810-1856 | Germany | pianist |
| Franz Liszt | 1811-1886 | Hungary | hungarian rhapsodies |
| Giuseppe Verdi | 1813-1901 | Italy | Aida |
| Richard Wagner | 1813-1883 | Germany | Tristan und Isolde |
| Anton Bruckner | 1824-1884 | Austria | |
| Bedřich Smetana | 1824-1884 | Czech | nationalist composer |
| Johannes Brahms | 1833-1897 | Germany | Violin Concerto |
| Camille Saint-Saëns | 1835-1921 | France | The Carnival of the Animals |
| Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky | 1840-1893 | Russia | The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty |
| AntonÃn Dvořák | 1841-1904 | Czech | New World Symphony |
| Edvard Grieg | 1843-1907 | Norway | Nature |
| Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov | 1844-1908 | Russia | Flight of the Bumblebee |
20th Century
 1900-2000
| Composer | Time | Country | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Composer | Time | Country | Remark |
| Gustav Mahler | 1860-1911 | Austria | bridge between R. and M., Expressionism |
| Claude Debussy | 1862-1918 | France | Impressionism, Clair de Lune |
| Richard Strauss | 1864-1949 | Germany | Also sprach Zarathustra |
| Jean Sibelius | 1865-1957 | Finnland | Â |
| Sergei Rachmaninoff | 1873-1943 | Russia | Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini |
| Arnold Schoenberg | 1874-1951 | Austria | atonalism, serialism |
| Maurice Ravel | 1875-1937 | France | Boléro (1928) |
| Sergei Prokofiev | 1891-1953 | Russia | Peter and the Wolf |
| Oliver Messiaen | 1908-1992 | France | Â |
What are your favorite composers of all time? Do you agree with my choice of the greatest classical composers? Feel free to share your thoughts!
Copy & Paste fail with the classical era!
Indeed! (from my old blog)
A list of greatest classical composers that does not have Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is no list at all.
You seem to have mistake: You wrote the Baroque twice, instead of the Classical period.
You are right, it was a copy/paste fail from my old blog
Just wondering why Stravinsky( and less so Shostakovich ) were not included in contemporary
HAYDN IS AUSTRIAN
MOZART AND SCHUBERT ARE AUSTRIANS TOO !!!