Александр Константинович Глазунов (Alexander Glazunov; 10th August 1865–21st March 1936) was a Russian composer and influential music teacher. Glazunov was born in St Petersburg. He studied music under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The first of his nine symphonies was premiered in 1882, when Glazunov was sixteen years old. His popular "Stenka Razin" was also a youthful work. Glazunov also wrote three ballets.
Howells was born in Lydney, Gloucestershire, and was the youngest of six children born to Oliver and Elizabeth Howells. His father was an amateur organist, and Herbert himself showed early musical promise. He studied first with Herbert Brewer at Gloucester Cathedral, as an articled pupil alongside Ivor Novello and Ivor Gurney, the celebrated English songwriter and poet, with whom he became great friends.
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett, O.M. (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was one of the foremost English composers of the 20th century. Tippett was regarded by many as an outsider in British music, a view that may have been related to his early conscientious objection and his homosexuality. His pacifist beliefs led to a prison sentence in World War II, and for many years his music was considered ungratefully written for voices and instruments, and therefore difficult to perform.
George Carl Johann Antheil (June 8, 1900, Trenton, New Jersey – 12 February 1959, New York City) was an American avant-garde composer and pianist. His technique was loud, brazen, and percussive. Critics wrote that he hit the piano rather than played it, and indeed he often injured himself by doing so. Audiences in Budapest got so restless sometimes that Antheil would pull a pistol from his jacket and lay it on the piano to make people pay attention.
Krzysztof Penderecki (born November 23, 1933 in D?bica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these works exhibit novel compositional techniques. Since the 1970s Penderecki's style has changed to encompass a post-Romantic idiom.
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin(Александр Николаевич Скрябин) (1872-1915, Moscow) was a Russian composer and pianist. Many of Scriabin's works are written for the piano; the earliest pieces resemble Frédéric Chopin and include music in many forms that Chopin himself employed, such as the etude, the prelude and the mazurka. Later works, however, are strikingly original, employing very unusual harmonies and textures.
