20th century

Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart. He studied piano with Jürgen Uhde and composition and theory with Johann Nepomuk David at the Stuttgarter Musikhochschule from 1955 to 1958 and was the first private student of Luigi Nono in Venice from 1958 to 1960. From Nono, he acquired the belief that music should aim to serve a message of social relevance. He also worked briefly at the electronic music studio at the University of Ghent in 1965, but thereafter focused almost exclusively on purely instrumental music.

Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. (born December 11, 1908) is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City, a composer encompassing many facets of classical music, from neoclassicism to serialism. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, during which time he published his first composition in 1937 and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music.

http://www.lubomyr.com Continuous music exists when the harmony becomes involved with the sound of the instrument. One of the main composers of continuous music is Lubomyr Melnyk, who, through his works for solo piano, two pianos, and piano quartets occasionally accompanied by small ensembles, explores new directions in contemporary classical music. A listener of continuous music falls into a trance-like state.

George Benjamin (born January 31, 1960, London, England) is a British composer of classical music. He is also a conductor, pianist and teacher. Benjamin attended Westminster School and then studied with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire during the second half of the 1970s. Messiaen himself was reported to have described Benjamin as his favourite pupil. He then read music at King's College, Cambridge, studying under Alexander Goehr, and emerged in his early twenties as a mature and confident voice.