Alban Berg was an Austrian composer. Berg studied from 1904 to 1910 under Arnold Schoenberg and together with his teacher and fellow student Anton Webern he is part of the Second Viennese School. Berg married with Helene Nahowski (1885-1976), a singer who was a daughter from Anna Nahowski and, allegedly, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.

At first, Berg applied a free atonality, but later he started developing strict twelve tone techniques and combined these to a style which, despite its expressionistic character, reminds of the Late Romantic music of Gustav Mahler.

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.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He enriched established German styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach's compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor, two Passions, and hundreds of cantatas. His music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth.

Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest in and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Together with Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf can be considered as one of the greatest composers of Late Romantic lieder. Both of them followed the tradition of Schubert and Schumann, but intensified the gerne with Wagner's techniques of text declamation and harmonic development. What makes Wolf's song cycles special, is the fact that often they are devoted to a single poet, like in his Mörike-Lieder (1889), Eichendorff-Lieder (1889) en Goethe-Lieder (1890). For each cycle, he spent a considerable time studying the text to create the best matching music. His accomodation of musical structure, harmonic subteties and pianistic texture are all inseperable from the lyrics. Partly due to his psychological sophistication his songs can be heard as miniature operas.
Even though he did start writing on several full-fledged operas, it never became a true succes. Only his opera Der Corregidor (1896) was completed. Things went downhill from there. In 1897, Wolf had a nervous breakdown as a consequence of a syphilis infection he had since his teens. After a failed suicide attempt, he was admitted to a clinic in Vienna. The somber Michelangelo-Lieder (1898) would become his last completed composition. Wolf died in 1903, three weeks before his 43st birthday.

Oswald von Wolkenstein was a German composer whose music bridged the Medieval and Renaissance eras; the last of the poet-musician knights whose monophonic music explored the ideal of courtly love, he also wrote polyphonic music in more contemporary forms. As noble "von" indicates, Oswald was from a knightly family of the Villanders line. The surname "von Wolkenstein" comes from the name of their property of Wolkenstein in Groednertal, South Tyrol (a mountainous Austrian province that was taken by Italy in World War II). As he was of high birth, there is some information available about his life; key events were written in family archives. Still, as is the norm with composers of the day, there are numerous gaps that can be filled in only imperfectly by extrapolation from his works. Oswald was a second son, which put him at a disadvantage, but also gave him freedom to pursue an adventurous life, and to enter the political sphere. He spent his youth as a page in service, which took him to various countries and gave him fluency in several languages. He became a diplomat for the league of Tyrolean nobles and for Emperor Sigismund and took part in several German councils.

His seat was Hauenstein castle near Bolzano, but in 1407 he inherited only part of Hauenstein itself, and spent the rest of his life in a property dispute with the other tenant, the family of Martin Jaeger. As a result of this dispute, and also because of political intrigues, he was imprisoned several times. Nevertheless, he fell in love with Anna Hausmann, the daughter of one of his adversaries in this dispute. He wrote several love poems to her, continuing even after his marriage to Margarete von Schwangau in 1417. He also wrote poems addressed to a "Barbara," but fortunately did not neglect to write love poetry addressed to his wife.

Oswald himself preserved a quantity of his own in two manuscripts designated "A" and "B." There is also a manuscript "C" that contains text but no music, and a few other sources. His songs are typically in AABB form, with arched, flowing melodic lines. There are some exceptions, such as Es komen neue mer gerant, which is a description of a military raid in northern Italy and is written in an almost parlando style, scoffing at the losers.

Oswald's poetry often drew on events he himself experienced or witnessed. The unusual fit between text and musical line in his music inspired a description of him as the "creator of the individual lied," which is ahistorical. Nor was he, as has sometimes been said, a Meistersinger, the German counterpart to the French troubador or trouvère. His music includes not only monophonic songs but also polyphony in three or four parts. Towards the end of his life he composed religious music in simple textures.