François Couperin was a French composer. He is the most imporant and best known member of the Couperin family, which consisted of a whole dynasty of composers. Couperin was nicknamed 'Le Grand' (the Great), and is considered to be one of the most seminal composers of the Baroque period, especially in regard to his music for harpsichord. His keyboard music is characterised by a strong idiomatic nature, both in its personal style and in its close relation to the instrument's features.

Next to his harpsichord music, Couperin composed music for organ, vocal music, both sacred and secular, and chamber music. Moreover, he published several theoretical treatises on the playing techniques on the harpsichord and its role in the accompaniment of music.

Antoine Forqueray stems from a family of musicians, comparable to (but less famous than) the Couperins. He was educated as a viola a gamba player at the French court, under the protection of Louis XIV. In 1789 he was appointed as royal chamber musician. As a younger contemporary of Marais, he was one of the most famous gamba players of his time, and he also composed Pièces de viole and harpsichord pieces which betray more Italian (Corelli, Vivaldi) influence than French. Many of the harpsichord pieces were arranged by his son Jean-Baptiste (1699-1782) and only published in 1747. Rumor has it that the son reported his father to the Parisian police because of ‘fraud, visiting whores and gambling’ since he was jealous at him with his greater success in the 1720’s.
(Source: Musicalifeiten.nl)

William Byrd was an English composer. He was one of the greatest composers of his generation. Hiis name is sometimes spelled as Bird, Byrde, or Byred. The exact dates of his birth and death are not known, and even his place of birth (Lincoln) is merely guesswork, based on the fact that several families named Byrd lived in Lincolnshire during the 17th century. As a child, Byrd received music lessons from the renowned Thomas Tallis in the Chapel Royal in London. Byrd is part of the so-called virginalists. In 1563, he was appointed as organist of the cathedral in Lincoln, even though he must have only been around 20 years old and in 1572 he was appointed as organist of Chapel Royal together with Tallis. In 1575, again with Tallis, he received the rights to publish and sell his music by Queen Elizabeth I. In honour of the Queen, the two composers dedicated their Cantiones Sacrae in the same year.
On multiple occasions, Byrd was prosecuted in court. As a catholic, he was repeatedly prosecuted for the rejection of Anglicanism. Nonetheless, he remained in favour of the Queen, probably because he composed music for both religious branches. Moreover, he wrote both secular and sacred music, and both vocal and instrumental pieces.

Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk was born in Amsterdam in 1955 to a Dutch-Indonesian family. He began to improvise music at a young age, and only later began to write down his musical thoughts. After theatrical projects with pop musicians (such as Debris, soli for singers, electric guitars, wind, brass and percussion, and the dance opera First Things First, for trios of dancers, singers, guitarists, and percussionists) he began more frequently to choose existing music as a point of departure in instrumental works for ensembles such as La Fontegara Amsterdam and Camerata Trajectina. This led to pieces for classical ensembles based on historical music, such as the piano quintet Tandernaken, the guitar quintet Over the Water (with Indonesian kroncong music), the piano trio De tout mon coeur (on Psalm 9 and old Dutch melodies), the violin sonata Deep River, based on the spiritual of that name, and the string quartet Moravian Souls which uses historic hymns of the Moravian Brothers (the Hernhutters). In doing so he strives for no other originality than that of a personal view of traditions. He deliberately avoids the most recent trends in modern classical music. For him the classical music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a model of the combination of all available styles that spark recognition among players and listeners. In the twentieth century that means primarily styles from jazz, popular music and folk music from Africa and South America. As a musicologist he specializes in the music of the twentieth century and teaches 20th and 21st century music at the Amsterdam Conservatory.