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.

Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of all time.A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2000 works by his death in 1959.
His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bachian-pieces). His Etudes for guitar (1929) were dedicated to Andrés Segovia while his 5 Preludes (1940) were dedicated to Arminda Neves d’Almeida, a.k.a. "Mindinha", both are important works in the guitar repertory.

Erwin Schulhoff is amongst the composers who have fallen into oblivion, and yet played an important role in the history of music. Dvorak already noticed him when he was a young boy, because of his musical talent and interest in everything new.
Schulhoff was one of the first European composers to find inspiration in jazz. He mainly made use of harmonic and rhythmic elements and dances like the foxtrot, charleston and shimmy. After the First World War, he also embraced the influence of Dadaism and composed a few pieces with absurd elements, such as In futurum, which consists entirely of rests.
In the 1930s, Schulhoff became a sympathizer of communism under influence of his friends, as a result of which he was not permitted to perform in Germany. Due to his Jewish descent and radical politic interests his music became labeled as ‘Entartete Musik’. His communist sympathies also brought him trouble in Czechoslovakia, were he had to work under a pseudonym after the invasion of the Nazis. In 1941, the Soviet Union approved his petition for citizenship, but he was arrested and deported to a concentration camp before he could leave Czechoslovakia.
Schulhoff was admired by his acquaintances, and recognized as a promising, gifted talent. As a pianist he was known as a virtuoso with brilliant technique and a strong touch.

György Ligeti is considered as one of the most important representatives of the postwar avant garde, next to Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciana Berio and Iannis Xenakis. While the science fiction classic 2001: A Space Oddyssey created publicity for Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra in particular, most of the impressive music comes from Ligeti's Atmosphères and his Requiem. Ligeti's somber sounds could also be applied to happier things: in his obscene and death-defying opera Le Grand Macabre he would mock the horroreffects of experimental music in a hilarious manner.

Ligeti's maniac experiments often exceeded the human measure (think of his virtuoso Etudes for piano). Perhaps his most consequent work is the purely mechanic Poème Symphonique for 100 ticking metronomes. Legend goes that its première was recorded only to be archived with the note: never to be broadcasted again!

Iannis Xenakis was Romanian-born, Greek-French composer, music theorist, architect, and engineer. After 1947, he fled Greece, becoming a naturalized citizen of France. He is considered an important post-World War II composer whose works helped revolutionize 20th century classical music.
Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic and computer music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances.
Among his most important works are Metastaseis (1953–54) for orchestra, which introduced independent parts for every musician of the orchestra; percussion works such as Psappha (1975) and Pléïades (1979); compositions that introduced spatialization by dispersing musicians among the audience, such as Terretektorh (1966); electronic works created using Xenakis's UPIC system; and the massive multimedia performances Xenakis called polytopes. Among the numerous theoretical writings he authored, the book Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (French edition 1963, English translation 1971) is regarded as one of his most important. As an architect, Xenakis is primarily known for his early work under Le Corbusier: the Sainte Marie de La Tourette, on which the two architects collaborated, and the Philips Pavilion at Expo 58, which Xenakis designed by himself.

Krystof Maratka’s music ranges from chamber music to full- scale symphonic works with choir and they have been performed all over the globe and received numerous prizes. His most outstanding works invite us on journeys in time and in space: Anthology of dreams – piano trio, Hypnozy - a woodwind quintet, The four legged crow- a melodrama, Chant g’hai for traditional Chinese suona and orchestra, and even Otisk (Imprint) for large symphonic orchestra that explores an audacious hypothesis regarding the nature of Palaeolithic music fifty thousand years ago. This work was commissioned in 2004 by three American orchestras (Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Saint-Luke Orchestra and Colorado Symphony Orchestra) and played several times in Denver, New York and Toronto.
A well as composing, orchestral conducting is a major part of Maratka’s work; “It is a necessity for me, it is one thing to write music and something else to bring it to life on stage. The two go hand in hand, and as a composer, it is only during the moments of creation as a performer that I feel whole.” Maratka has performed with many renowned orchestra and groups including: the Prague Philharmonia, Philharmonic Orchestra of the Polish Radio Orchestra, Orchestra Colonne Paris, the National Theatre Orchestra in Prague, the Irkoutsk Philharmonic Orchestra, La Follia in Strasbourg, the Academy Orchestra of St. Cézaire, Jyväskyla Orchestra (Finland), Nordenwest Philharmonie Herford in Germany, Bydgoszcz Philharmonia Pomorska (Poland), Ensemble Calliopée (Paris), Talich Chamber Orchestra (Czech Republic).
Born in Prague, Maratka, studied piano and chamber music, and then style, analysis and composition at the Prague Conservatoire with Bohuslav Rehor and Petr Eben. With a grant from the French institutes in Prague he moved to Paris and continued is studies with Jean-Claude Pennetier and then computer music at the IRCAM. He has collaborated with many international orchestras and ensembles such as Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of France, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France, the Camerata of Saint Petersburg, the Lodz Philharmonic, as well as with the Evian Competition, the Présences Festival at Radio France, the Contemporary Music Festival in Dresden, Korsholm Music Festival in Finland, the Rostal Competition in Berlin, the Caramoor Festival in the USA.
Two CDs of Krystof Maratka’s works have been released. In June 2001 a disc of his Chamber Music on the Lyrinx label which received a prize from the Académie Charles Cros. In 2005, the second CD was released on Arion, which includes his clarinet concerto Luminarium and his viola concerto Astrophonia.
Recent highlight have included: the premier of Zverohra a series of anthropoid songs for soprano and orchestra, commissioned by Radio France and premiered at the Prague Premiers Festival in April 2008 with Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Mélopa for harpsichord dedicated to Élisabeth Chojnacka 2009 and Praharphona a concerto for harp and orchestra, commissioned and premiered by the Kiel Symphony Orchestra (Germany) 2010.
Maratka has won numerous prizes including: 1st Prize from the Shanghai Spring Festival for his piece Chant G’hai in 2007, the Tansman Prize in 2006 and the Audience Prize for his work Luminarium, a concerto for clarinet and orchestra, at the Fourth International Musical Celebrity Competition in Lodz.
In 2007 the Académie des Beaux-Arts in France awarded Maratka the Pierre Cardin Prize in musical composition for that year. The television channel, MEZZO recently made a documentary portrait about him.
His works are published by Editions Jobert Paris.