Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer who is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the Conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. He made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.
As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas, and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies and only one religious work. Many of his works exist in two versions: a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose actual name is Joannes Chrysotomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a composer, pianist, violinist and conductor from the classical period, born in Salzburg. Mozart was a child prodigy. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart is considered to be one of the most influential composers of all of music's history. Within the classical tradition, he was able to develop new musical concepts which left an everlasting impression on all the composers that came after him. Together with Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven he is part of the First Viennese School. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position. From 1763 he traveled with his family through all of Europe for three years and from 1769 he traveled to Italy and France with his father Leopold after which he took residence in Paris. On July 3rd, 1778, his mother passed away and after a short stay in Munich with the Weber family, his father urged him to return to Salzburg, where he was once again hired by the Bishop. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death.

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; his tone poems, including Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, and An Alpine Symphony; and other instrumental works such as Metamorphosen and his Oboe Concerto. Strauss was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire.
Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

Giuseppe Verdi is viewed as one of the most important, and most popular, opera composers of Italy. Few composers knew how to balance artistic ideals and commericial interersts like him. He was a composer of 'hits', like his "La donna è mobile" from his opera Rigoletto and his "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves" from his opera Nabucco, and he was careful not to have his audience feel bored at any moment. Especially his early works are characterised by strongly propelling, rhytmic power. A common example is his Il Trovatore. Yet, Verdi was also a composer with ideals. If he would get intrigued by a character, it became his mission to portray to persona as best as he could in the music. This sometimes meant he was forced to alter or neglect traditional opera forms, like he did in Rigoletto. He was not afraid to touch on socially sensitive matters, which at times led to issues with the establishment. For instance, his opera La traviata turned out to be a controversial one, due to its courtesan heroine. Verdi never engaged in the intellectual discussions on music of his time. He pretended to be a simple man who felt most at home in the countryside. Nonetheless, with the masterful fugal ending of his last opera Falstaff he undoubtedly showed his intellectual level of composing.

Gaetano Donizetti was born in 1797 in a dark basement in Bergamo. He was born in a poor family with six children, but Donizetti was lucky enough to receive a free musical education at the school of the opera composer Simone Mayr. Mayr recognised Donizetti's talent and after giving him composition lessons he ensured he could continue his studies in Bologna. He also helped him get his first opera commission. Donizetti kept working hard and for a considerable period he composed four operas each year. A large part of his career, he worked in Naples, which could be a reason why his artistic style remained relatively conventional. After all, the opera audience in Naples had a conservative taste and censorship was extraordinarily strict: absolutely no violence or 'improper' romantic relationships on stage! Donizetti had the gift to compose remarkably fast and wrote in total more than 80 operas, both serious and comic. His operas L'Elisir d'Amore and Don Pasquale remain popular due to their cheerful and energetic music, uplifting rhythms, and tender melodies. Among his serious operas, his Lucia di Lammermoor, with its famous "mad scene" is most popular. Donizetti died in 1848 in Bergamo, after staying in a medical facility in Paris for months, suffering from dementia and paralysed by syphilis. A tragic death for a composer who was also known for his warm personality.

Jules Massenet (1842-1912) was one of the most popular opera composers of his age. He was also influential beyond the French boundaries, primarily to Italian opera composers like Puccini and Mascagni. This popularity was not valued by many critics. They accuse him of just wanting to please the audience; he would have unabashedly indulged in exoticism and would only owe his success to his gift to compose beautiful melodies. This not very flattering image has since been outdated. Massenet, composer of such diverse opera’s as Manon, Werther and Thaïs, did not indulge in blind formula work. He learned the libretto by heart before he started and he composed the music in his mind, as a result of which only few composers could surpass him in the clarity and subtlety of his orchestrations and in the nuances of his text settings. Not just his aria’s, but also his recitatives and arioso passages are enchanting. He was a master in the evocation of the couleur locale and is the composer of immortal melodies like the Méditation from Thaïs for violin and orchestra and the Élégie for cello and orchestra.
(Source: Muziekweb.nl)

Who has not heard the Eurovision TV fanfare as opening tune of joint broadcast productions? Only few know that this festive music is composed by the French Marc-Antoine Charpentier, who lived in the second half of the 17th century. Its current use has changed the aim of the piece, since it was originally meant as a hymn for God, the Latin Te Deum Laudamus, instead of a tune for a secular happening.
Apart from that, Charpentier has been neglected for centuries, and has only been rediscovered as one of the greatest French composers of sacred music from the 17th century in the past decades. In any case, he is considerably more valuable in this genre than his contemporary Lully. Namely, his music betrays a greater diversity than that of Lully, often within a single work in which extremes of dignity and intimacy can be heard.
The key to this result was his adaptation of a style which was based on the Italian concerto, in which contrasts between the different parts were placed throughout the work. Furthermore, Charpentier toned down the then primarily formal and grandiose character of French music and introduced a rather Italian sensuality and a greater sensitivity to the text.
Not much is known about Charpentier’s youth. He was born in Paris and stayed in the middle of the 1660’s in Rome, where he studied with the successful oratorio composer Carissimi. Back in Paris he served a few aristocratic patrons, starting with duchesse de Guise, who was known for her piety and the excellent quality of her musical entourage, in which Charpentier sang as a countertenor and conducted.
He also succeeded Lully as composer for Molière and his plays. For instance, in 1673 he wrote the music to his last play La malade imaginaire. In the 1680’s he was at the periphery of the French court; he served the dauphin as music director and was the teacher of Philippe, Duke of Chartres (the later Duke of Orléans and Regent of France), but his illness stood in the way of his appointment as master of the Chapelle royale.
But at the same time Charpentier became composer and maître de musique of the most important Jesuit church, the St. Paul. He worked there until 1698, when he was appointed as maître de musique at the Sainte-Chapelle du palais, an even more important post.
The most striking aspect of Charpentiers sacred choral music is the refined gracefulness of his melodies and the richness of his expressive harmonies. Although a certain religious soberness sets the mood, it is luxuriant music in which the text is underlined at crucial moments and there is also ample contrast between successive episodes.
Even a large-scale, solemn work such as the Te Deum in D from the early 1690, written for the St. Paul church, is clearly split into distinct moods. It starts with the well-known trumpets and timpani, but also contains very calm, pious and intense parts, such as the soprano solo Te ergo quaesunus. In his best mass, the Missa ‘Assumpta est Maria’ , the mood is predominantly somber, but there is also diversity by using different combinations of the eight soloists.
Charpentier wrote a single full-term opera, Médée from 1693, a ‘tragédie lyrique’ after Corneille. Although the composer does not express the complex character of Medea with al her jealousy, indignation, fragility, grief, anger, malevolence, and downright barbarousness as well as Cherubini, let alone Xenakis, it is excepted that the interpreters put it forward. Consequently, success is not guaranteed.
Moreover, the taste of the audience was so decisive and the power of Lully even after his death so great that he overshadowed all others, as a result of which Charpentier’s work was only performed ten times. Les arts florissants from 1686 is a short pieces in five scenes, Actéon a ‘pastorale en musique’ from 1685 and David et Jonathas from 1688 an elaborate tragédie en musique in five acts.
Most of the other theatre works are overtures or prologues with intermèdes, intermezzi. For example, La descente d’Orphée aux enfers from 1687 is a short chamber opera after Ovid with a libretto by an unknown author. The work was only performed once and the occasion for which it had been written is also unknown. Charpentier provided the story with a happy end.
With regard to economy and concentration, the work is somewhat comparable to the opera Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, which originated around the same time. Charpentier’s work only lacks that crushing tragic feeling. It is a rather smooth, pastoral work.
(Source: Musicalifeiten.nl)

The Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini is viewed as the most important succesor of Giuseppe Verdi. Puccini was a true theatre man, who knew how to combine words, gesture and music seamlessly to emotionally touch the audience. Puccini's creative process was a tormented him. Often, librettists had to swallow a lot before he was satisfied with the text. Because of this, he only composed relatively few operas, but among those are some real masterworks. In his opera Tosca, Puccini knows how to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, and in his operas La Bohème and Madame Butterfly, it is hard not to weep in the end.
Moreover, Puccini was able to compose arias which Verdi would have called "something for the organ grinder": melodies which linger in your head and people sing in the streets. This was proven once again by his famous "Nessun Dorma", which was used for the world championship football, and his "O Mio Babbino Caro" which was used in a well-known commercial. Due to his popularity and commercial success, critics did not acknowledge his talents for a long time. They accused him of a sensationalist approach. His reputation as a lover of women and fast cars certainly didn't help with his image either!