In order to help guide you through the vast amount of music that has been written so far during this century and to point you to some of the best, we have compiled a list [in alphabetic order] of who we consider to be the twelve greatest living composers, along with brief commentary about what makes each of them so special. We plan to update this list in the future and look forward to your suggestions as to how to improve it, including for additional composers.
John Coolidge Adams, one of the most creative and popular of contemporary composers, has written eight operas, 22 orchestral works, ten chamber pieces, four choral works and four film scores as well as solo piano music. His style, which he describes as "post-minimalist," employs his strong orchestration skills to move beyond conventional minimalism with the addition of complex orchestral textures reminiscent of those of the Romantic era. Moreover, it is often dramatic and stimulating, in contrast to the more subdued nature of much contemporary art music. Another distinction from many minimalists is that most of his works are composed for mainly traditional classical instrumentation.
One of Adams's best known works is his first opera, Nixon in China, which has endured despite predictions to the contrary and which is now regarded by many as among the best of modern operas. His 1986 Short Ride in a Fast Machine, a brief but lively fanfare that skillfully utilizes numerous types of percussion instruments, has been one of the most frequently performed works of the past several decades. Adams's official website is https://www.earbox.com.
John Corigliano is likewise consistently ranked among the greatest of contemporary American composers. Although he is primarily a twentieth century composer, with his first piece to achieve prominence his Sonata for Violin and Piano in 1964, Corigliano's lengthy career has continued well into the 21st century. His more than one hundred published compositions feature a considerable variety of styles and forms, including orchestral, chamber and solo works as well as operas, choral pieces, and film scores, and utilize elements of a full range of later 20th and early 21st century composition techniques, including minimalism, microtones, serialism, enhanced percussion, and extended instrumental techniques. Yet, he manages to defy the current dominant atonal trend of contemporary art music, as his music is largely tonal and often very expressive, and thus it is frequently much more accessible to classical music audiences than most contemporary music. Corigliano has been particularly active in composing concerti, for a variety of instruments, and his 1977 clarinet concerto remains among his most highly regarded. His official website is http://www.johncorigliano.com.
Paul Dupré is one of the most prolific and diverse of living creators of art music, having already completed well in excess of 130 works in various instrumental genres, ranging from full orchestral compositions to chamber music to solo piano pieces. The orchestral works include concerti (one each for violin, piano, guitar and clarinet), tone poems, dances, marches, a requiem and various others. But clearly his greatest distinction is his gift for melody. Nearly all of his works are infused with unique and memorable melodies, this at a time when melody seems to have long gone out of fashion and been relegated to a minor or negligible role in both art music and popular music. In fact, it might not be an exaggeration to say that he is one of the greatest melodists of our era.
Because of the importance which Dupré attaches melody, together with his choices regarding instrumentation and structure, much of his work bears at least a superficial resemblance to music of the common practice era, and it could even be mistaken for such by those without an in-depth knowledge of music of that period. However, he firmly rejects his work being categorized as "classical," and, instead, prefers to describe it as "a new direction in twenty-first century music" that builds on the progress made during the Classical and Romantic eras rather than abandoning such progress for minimalism, serialism and other 20th century innovations. Selections from many of his works can be found at http://www.pauldupre.info.
Péter Eötvös is one of the most influential and widely-performed of contemporary composers. He has produced a large number of large and small-scale symphonic works as well as compositions for chamber ensembles and film. In addition, he has written twelve operas and is one of the most successful opera composers of recent decades.
Eötvös's music, although showing the influence of many 20th century composers as well as that of his native Hungarian culture, has been pioneering in what might best be described as creating new "sound worlds," which take the audience beyond the sounds that are typically heard with orchestral instruments and on to an extensive variety of timbres that are refreshingly novel and often light and airy. This is accomplished mostly using conventional instruments but through the application of various 'extended instrument techniques' together with subtly blended electronically synthesized sounds. His official website is https://eotvospeter.com.
Thierry Escaich is widely regarded as one of the most important French composers of his generation. His specialty is the pipe organ, and he also performs and improvises on this most magnificent of instruments, following in that very French tradition after Camille Saint-Saëns, Marcel Dupré, and Maurice Duruflé. His many organ works include solo pieces, three concerti and a symphonic poem for organ and orchestra. His more than a hundred compositions actually encompass a full range of instruments and many genres, from solo instruments to symphony orchestras, even including a ballet, The Lost Dancer, which premiered in New York City in 2010. His style is anything but minimalist, unlike so much art music of recent decades; rather, it is generally fast-moving and dynamic and keeps the listener excited with its energy in combination with its expert exploration of timbre and color. Escaich's official website is http://www.escaich.org.
Philip Glass was a pioneer in the development of minimalist music. He is considered to be one of the most innovative and influential composers of the 20th century and may well be the most famous living composer in the U.S. today. He has also been extremely prolific, composing more than 300 works, including 15 operas, ten string quartets, eleven symphonies, concerti for piano, violin, cello, and harpsichord, vocal works, dance music, and scores for film and television. Despite his fame and originality – or perhaps because of it – some of his work has been the subject of great controversy. This is mainly due to its often excruciatingly slow motion and its extremely repetitive nature.
Glass's extreme minimalism style is most clearly seen in his revolutionary 1976 opera Einstein On The Beach, which is regarded by many as one of the greatest artistic works of the twentieth century. The nearly five hour performance breaks all of the rules of conventional opera, including replacing the orchestra with synthesizers, woodwinds and voices, replacing the plot with a series of powerful recurrent images, eliminating the traditional intermissions, and allowing the audience to freely wander in and out during the performance. However, Glass can also be more traditional and more melodic, as illustrated by, for example, his music for the 2009 movie The Hours and his 2010 work The Poet Acts. His official website is https://philipglass.com.
Sofia Gubaidulina is said by some to be the greatest living composer, and there is little doubt that she is at least one of them. Her music is difficult to characterize, other than to say that it has always been highly innovative and has great depth and complexity. In fact, it remains as innovative, and appealing in its own unique way, despite her age, having been born in 1931, as does that of much younger composers. This depth and complexity reflects that of her background and interests, including her Tatar-Russian ethnicity, having had to endure the brutal Stalinist era in which the study of almost all Western contemporary music was banned, her religious faith, and her deep interest in complex mathematical structures.
As with so many contemporary composers, Gubaidulina is fascinated with percussion and its great range of timbres, although she seems to make much better use of it than most of them. She also has a particular fondness for the lower registers, as can be seen by the numerous works she has written for the double bass, bassoon and bayan (a traditional Russian accordion). Her compositions are also characterized by the use of alternative tunings, microtones and novel instrumentation, including the use of not only Russian but also Japanese traditional instruments. More information is available on Wikipedia.
Arvo Pärt was generally recognized as the most performed living composer from 2011 to 2018, but then became the second-most performed after John Williams. In recent decades Pärt has composed in a self-invented minimalist style referred to as tintinnabuli, which was largely influenced by the his mystical experiences with Gregorian chants. It is characterized by the simultaneous use of two different types of voices, and the works often have a slow and meditative tempo. This style is exemplified by his 1977 Fratres, a three-part composition without fixed instrumentation and that consists of a set of multiple chord sequences separated by a repeating percussion motif.
Pärt's most performed composition is Nunc dimittis (2001), sung by a mixed choir and based on a Christian religious story. His other particularly frequently performed works, in addition to Fratres, include Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) and Für Alina (1976). More information is available here.
Steve Reich, widely regarded as one of America's greatest living composers, was a pioneer in the development of minimalist music in the mid- to late 1960s and has had a huge influence on the course of modern music. His Music for 18 Musicians (1976), his first attempt at writing for larger ensembles, is based on a cycle of eleven chords, with a short selection of music based on each chord, after which it finally returns to the original cycle. His 2003 Cello Counterpoint, a three-movement work scored for eight cellos, can be performed either as a cello octet or by a solo cello accompanied by a recording of the other cello parts.
Reich's 2008 2x5, described as a rock and roll piece, can be performed with two pianos, two drum sets, four electric guitars and two bass guitars, or, alternatively, with five musicians accompanied by a recording of the other instruments. One of his more recent compositions, his 2012 Radio Rewrite, is the first in which he incorporated material from existing popular music. It has five movements, alternating between fast and slow, and is scored for a flute, a clarinet, two violins, a viola, a cello, two vibraphones, two pianos and electric bass. Reich's official website is http://www.stevereich.com.
Max Richter has been one of the most active and influential of composers during the current century. Also a pianist, producer and collaborator, the classically-trained German-born British composer's prolific and diverse works utilize not only large symphony orchestras but also computers and synthesizers and, in addition to concert hall performances, include violin and piano solos, ballets, theater works, video art installations, and film and television productions. In contrast to most contemporary composers, including even many of the best known, his compositions are extremely popular on YouTube, with some of them receiving well over a million visits.
Richter blurs the boundaries between classical and electronic music by skillfully combining a variety of recorded sounds, including human voices some of which are reading poetry, and orchestral performances. This helps give much of his work an etherial, dreamy quality. While his composition style shows a strong influence of minimalism, Richter has taken a big step beyond and has moved into what has been described as "post-minimalism." Much of his work is truly beautiful, although as with much "contemporary classical music," it can likewise become tedious after a while for those who are not fans of minimalism and other forms of "modern" or "post-modern" music due to its lack of a strong melodic line and emotional content. Thus it is frequently best suited for use in conjunction with film, ballet and other media as Richter often intends, rather than for listening on a standalone basis. Richter's official website is https://www.maxrichtermusic.com.
Joseph Clyde Schwantner is often mentioned as one of the greatest living American composers, having won numerous awards and grants, including the highly prestigious Pulitzer Prize. His work, which spans from the later decades of the last century to the present day, is eclectic but could perhaps best be described as a form of "contemporary classical." However, it is substantially more lively and colorful than much of that genre. Schwantner excels at orchestral color, largely provided by the use of many and varied percussion instruments along with numerous percussionists, and typically in carefully controlled combination with strings and wind instruments, to create a succession of interesting timbres. His extensive use of twelve-tone serialism precludes having much easily discernible melody, but, like so many or most contemporary composers, his emphasis is instead on producing a kaleidoscope of beautiful timbres and strong rhythms. More about Schwantner can be found on his website at https://www.josephschwantner.com.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir's music is often characterized by its very subtle and slow moving nature, some comparing it to the glaciers of her native Iceland. Indeed, much of her inspiration comes from the natural world, ranging from the slow and almost imperceptible motion of vast, seemingly featureless glacial ice fields all the way down to the formation of microscopic ice crystals. This inspiration, together with her expert orchestration, including the use of microtones and the subtle shading of textures, imbues her work a unique form of beauty that can be rewarding for those patient enough to listen carefully and let their imaginations soar. Having lived in California, New York, and now near London apparently has not appreciably diminished the role of the frozen north in her psyche and her music. One of her most recent compositions is Metacosmos, a single-movement symphonic poem for a large orchestra, first performed by the New York Philharmonic in 2018, which evidences her continued interest in and ability to evoke impressions of vast expanses of space and time. Thorvaldsdottir's official website is http://www.annathorvalds.com.
John Towner Williams is one of the all-time greatest composers of music for the cinema, with more than one hundred film scores to his credit, including for some of the biggest hits, such as the Star Wars series, Jaws, Close Encounters, the Indiana Jones series, and Schindler's List. This music could be described as a form of neo-romanticism, influenced by the late 19th century's large-scale orchestral works, especially Wagner, including his concept of leitmotif. Unlike much cinematic music, it is designed not as mainly just background music, but rather to enhance the action and the emotions and to actually become an integral part of the movie itself. In contrast to most of today's music, Williams's cinema scores are characterized by beautiful, unforgettable melodies and exhibit his unrivaled mastery of compositional techniques. Although some critics point out that much of it may be lacking in originality as far as style is concerned and that the melodies, although original, lack the development and finesse of the great nineteenth century Romantic works, it is important to keep in mind that creating opera or concert music is not the goal of Williams's film scores.
Williams's versatility is further demonstrated by his very substantial volume of dedicated concert composition, including 15 concerti, more than 20 other orchestral works, and eight chamber pieces. His style for this music is very different than that of his cinema scores, most notably lacking the beautiful, sweeping melodies, and thus is closer to that of most other contemporary concert music. This might, or might not, be a factor in the fact that it has come nowhere close to achieving a great popularity among concert music audiences comparable to his cinema music. In fact, some have suggested that it would be even more obscure were it not for the resounding success of his film scores. One of his best received non-cinema works is his 1986 Liberty Fanfare, which was played for arriving guests at the Capitol for President Obama's second inauguration. Williams's unofficial website is https://johnwilliams.org.