Charles-Marie-Jean-Albert Widor was a French organist, composer and teacher of the mid-Romantic era, most notable for his ten organ symphonies. He is best known for the toccata of his fifth organ symphony, which is frequently played as recessional music at weddings and other celebrations.
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music written, according to its oldest extant sources, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). The piece opens with a toccata section, followed by a fugue that ends in a coda. Scholars differ as to when it was composed. It could have been as early as c. 1704. Alternatively, a date as late as the 1750s has been suggested. To a large extent, the piece conforms to the characteristics deemed typical of the north German organ school of the Baroque era with divergent stylistic influences, such as south German characteristics.
Nicolaus Bruhns was a Danish-German organist, violinist, and composer. He was one of the most prominent organists and composers of his generation.
Charles Peter Wuorinen was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He also performed as pianist and conductor. Prolific, he composed more than 270 works: orchestral music, chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal works, and operas such as Brokeback Mountain. His work was termed serialist but he came to disparage that idea as meaningless. Time's Encomium, his only purely electronic piece, received the Pulitzer Prize. Wuorinen taught at several institutions, including Columbia University and Manhattan School of Music.
Leroy Anderson was an American composer of short, light concert pieces, many of which were introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. John Williams described him as "one of the great American masters of light orchestral music."
Douglas Stuart Moore was an American composer, songwriter, organist, pianist, conductor, educator, actor, and author. A composer who mainly wrote works with an American subject, his music is generally characterized by lyricism in a popular or conservative style which generally eschewed the more experimental progressive trends of musical modernism. Composer Virgil Thomson described Moore as a neoromantic composer who was influenced by American folk music. While several of his works enjoyed popularity during his lifetime, only his folk opera The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956) has remained well known into the 21st century.
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger was a Liechtensteiner organist and composer, residing in Bavaria for most of his life.
David Conte is an American composer who has written over 150 works published by E.C. Schirmer, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Conte has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Harvard University Chorus, the Men’s Glee Clubs of Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame, GALA Choruses from the cities of San Francisco, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., the Dayton Philharmonic, the Oakland Symphony, the Stockton Symphony, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera, and the Gerbode Foundation. He was honored with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Brock Commission in 2007 for his work The Nine Muses, and in 2016 he won the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Art Song Composition Award for his work American Death Ballads.
Sir William Henry Harris was an English organist, choral trainer and composer.
Rued Langgaard was a late-Romantic Danish composer and organist. His then-unconventional music was at odds with that of his Danish contemporaries but was recognized 16 years after his death.
Frederik Reesen Magle is a Danish composer, concert organist, and pianist. He writes contemporary classical music as well as fusion of classical music and other genres. His compositions include orchestral works, cantatas, chamber music, and solo works, including several compositions commissioned by the Danish Royal Family. Magle has gained a reputation as an organ virtuoso, and as a composer and performing artist who does not refrain from venturing into more experimental projects – often with improvisation – bordering jazz, electronica, and other non-classical genres.
Naji Subhy Paul Irénée Hakim is a Franco-Lebanese organist, composer, and improviser.
Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.
John Knowles Paine was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music. The senior member of a group of composers collectively known as the Boston Six, Paine was one of those responsible for the first significant body of concert music by composers from the United States. The Boston Six's other five members were Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, George Chadwick, and Horatio Parker.
David John Briggs is an English organist and composer.
Jean Victor Arthur Guillou was a French composer, organist, pianist, and pedagogue. Titular Organist at Saint Eustache in Paris, from 1963 to 2015, he was widely known as a composer of instrumental and vocal music focused on the organ, as an improviser, and as an adviser to organ builders. For several decades he held regular master classes in Zurich and in Paris.
Mark Oakland Fax was an American composer and a professor of music.
Stanley Drummond Wolff was an English organist, choirmaster, composer, and music educator who was primarily active in North America. His compositional output primarily consists of anthems for choir and works for solo organ. In the 1980s he completed and published four volumes of hymns. Many of his compositions have been published by Concordia Publishing House and MorningStar Music Publishers.
Marco Lo Muscio is an Italian organist, pianist and composer, who lives and works in Italy, Europe, Russian Federation and America.
Rachel Laurin is a Canadian organist, composer and music educator living in Quebec.
