<p>Who are your favorite composers of the 20th and 21st centuries? I am always looking to broaden my musical knowledge especially in regards to contemporary composers...</p>
<p>My favorites: Zoltan Kodaly, Gyorgy Ligeti, Toru Takemitsu, Arvo Part, George Crumb, Phillip Glass, Steve Riech, John Taverner, Witold Lutoslawski, James MacMillan, Thomas Ades and John Harbison</p>
<p>Also Stravinsky, Bartok and Mahler.</p>
<p>Not sure if you’d count him as within the time period you are looking for, but Scriabin is one of my favorites.</p>
<p>In addition to all those above, I think Lowell Liebermann is awesome. Definitely my favorite living composer. His piano works and his Flute Sonata are out of this world.</p>
<p>Bruch, Stravinsky, Mahler, John Cage, Phillip Glass, Berg, Prokofiev…the usual suspects</p>
<p>These aren’t necessarily my absolute favorites, in that a couple you’ve already named are even greater than any below, but you already know about them, so here are some other names to investigate if you haven’t already:
George Rochberg (3rd quartet is the beginning of the end of American academic serialism), Morton Feldman (Rothko Chapel), Kaia Saariaho, Gyorgy Kurtag (Signs, Games, and Messages; Kafka Fragments), Augusta Read Thomas, Pierre Jalbert, Helmut Lachenmann, Aaron Cassidy, Aaron Travers, Joan Tower, Osvaldo Golijov</p>
<p>I highly recommend listening to the internet radio station Q2 which is at wqxr.org - NYC NPR classical radio. It is only 20th & 21st century classical and a terrific introduction to the newest music. I listen to it all the time when I’m at my home computer.</p>
<p>There are so many, but John Corigliano comes to mind first for me… John Adams, Elliot Carter…David Lang…Of the newest generation, I like Cynthia Wong and Judd Greenstein (just discovered the latter, thanks to Spirit Manager)</p>
<p>Charles Ives, Conlon Nancarrow, Olivier Messiaen</p>
<p>Mahler, Debussy, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Ravel…just listened to Golijov for the first time the other day and really liked it; the Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi writes beautiful music as well. Toshiko Akiyoshi for jazz.</p>
<p>Daughter’s recent discovery: Dutilleux</p>
<p>Prokofiev!</p>
<p>Agreed, I have been listening to his piano concertos a lot lately</p>
<p>I find it depressing when Prokofiev, Mahler, Ravel & Debussy are referred to as modern music. Hey guys - some of that music you’re talking about was written 100 years ago! I admit there are some, like Charles Ives, with whom our musical sensibility is still catching up - but all you aspiring musicians and composers out there should also be listening to music composed in your own lifetimes, the music of the present.
There are so many opportunities to hear contemporary music - if not live, then streamed on the internet or via Pandora, or downloaded online. Try to make a point of going to concerts where there is a living composer’s work being played, and listen with ears wide open, as they say. And perform the music! Nothing is bound to bring greater understanding and appreciation than internalizing the music and making it your own.</p>
<p>This is a fantastic time in contemporary music - lots of great works are being performed and the boundaries are ever widening.</p>
<p>I recommend reading The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross, and Music Downtown by Kyle Gann to get started with a wider understanding of, as my son’s radio show puts it: The Music of Now.</p>
<p>The thread said to pick our favorites from the 20th and 21st centuries, but I agree with you that many of these people aren’t in truth all that modern. For what it’s worth I write contemporary music and go to concerts frequently.</p>
<p>The problem is the term modern music, that generally is assigned to anything that is post Romantic (well, okay, not a good label either, because some of the composers called “modern” wrote music that was quite in the style of the late romantic as well…but in a sense, “modern” music is a blanket label for 20th and 21st century music (probably better to use the term contemporary music). Though as someone once said, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” no matter how old will always be modern:)</p>
<p>The use of quotations around the word “modern” by the original poster led me to believe that the intent was to focus on more contemporary composers. However, other posters included earlier composers, and it was fun to see all of them, no matter what the interpretation of the word…nice idea to share favorites…</p>
<p>Frank Tichelli. I’m a concert band whore. <3</p>
<p>John Adams and Phillip Glass! :)</p>
<p>An article by Allan Kozinn in the New York Times about performing new music, as well as the importance of it being played, and being listened to. <a href=“For Players of New Music, a Constant Search for Keepers - The New York Times”>For Players of New Music, a Constant Search for Keepers - The New York Times;
"Lately young composers and players have come to understand that audiences will always make up their own minds about which composers from past eras are important, and they have therefore developed a new approach to creating the futures classics: they simply refuse to worry about it.</p>
<p>Instead of creating works meant to resonate as grand statements through all eternity, they are doing what Handel, Haydn and Mozart did before them: writing the music that they want to write, according to their own lights, and letting history take care of itself.</p>
<p>They are tweaking convention by weaving currents of indie rock and jazz into their compositions, alongside the influences of Serialism, Minimalism, Cagean indeterminacy, neo-Classicism or whatever interests them at the moment. They are writing for ensembles in which electric guitars and laptops join forces with classical string, woodwind, brass and percussion instruments. And they are performing this music wherever they can, in concert halls, lofts and, increasingly, in trendy clubs where mostly (though not exclusively) young audiences eagerly soak it up.</p>
<p>They are making the business of new music fun."</p>