Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué (January 17, 1928 – August 17, 1973) was a French composer. Barraqué was born in Puteaux. He studied in Paris with Jean Langlais and Olivier Messiaen and, through Messiaen, became interested in serialism.

Birtwistle was born in Accrington in Lancashire and in 1952 entered the Royal Manchester College of Music in Manchester on a clarinet scholarship. While there he met fellow composers Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, who, together with pianist John Ogdon and conductor Elgar Howarth, formed the New Music Manchester group, dedicated to the performances of serial and other modern works.

Cage was an early composer of what he called "chance music"—referred to by others as aleatoric music—where some elements are left to be decided by chance; he is also well known for his non-standard use of musical instruments and his pioneering exploration of electronic music

George Crumb (born October 24, 1929) is an American composer of modern and avant garde music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres and extended technique. Examples include spoken flute (one speaks while blowing into the instrument) and glass marbles poured onto an open piano.

Henri Dutilleux (born January 22, 1916 in Angers, France) is one of the most important French composers of the second half of the 20th century, producing work in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Albert Roussel, but in a style distinctly his own.

Ferneyhough became closely associated with the so-called New Complexity school of composition, characterised by its extension of the modernist tendency towards formalisation (particularly as in integral serialism).

He was born in Berlin, the son of Walter Goehr. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (1952-55) where he met Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, John Ogdon and Elgar Howarth. Together they formed New Music Manchester, a group dedicated to performances of contemporary music.

Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol, in the Tatar Republic. In her youth she would spend much time praying in the fields near her home that she may one day become a composer. She studied composition and piano at the Kazan Conservatory, graduating in 1954.

György Kurtág was born on 19th February 1926 at Lugoj in Romania, not far from the birthplace of fellow Hungarian György Ligeti. Both young composers hoped to study with Bartók in Budapest in 1945, but Bartók died in America and Kurtág went on to study piano, composition and chamber music with other teachers at the Budapest Academy.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948) is a highly successful English composer of musical theatre, the elder brother of Julian Lloyd Webber.

Sir James Paul McCartney MBE is an iconic Grammy Award-winning English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who first gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles.

Michael Laurence Nyman (born March 23, 1944, London) is a British composer of Minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, perhaps best known for the many scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway.

Penderecki's early works show the influence of Anton Webern and Pierre Boulez. Penderecki's international recognition began in 1959 at the Warsaw Autumn Festival with the premieres of the works Strophen, Psalms of David, and Emanations, but the piece that truly brought him to international attention was Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.

Wolfgang Rihm (b. March 13, 1952) is a German composer from Karlsruhe. He finished both his school and his studies in music theory and composition in 1972, two years before the premiere of his early work Morphonie at the 1974 Donaueschingen Festival launched his career as a prominent figure in the European new music scene.

Aulis Sallinen (born April 9, 1935) is a Finnish contemporary classical music composer. He writes in a modern, though tonal and not experimental music style. He studied at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Joonas Kokkonen.

Peter Sculthorpe (born April 29, 1929) is a noted Australian composer from Launceston, Tasmania. He is known primarily for his orchestral and chamber music, such as Kakadu (1988) and Earth Cry (1992), which evoke the sounds and feeling of the Australian bushland and outback. He has also written several string quartets, using unusual timbre effects, and works for piano.

Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22, 1928) is a German composer, and one of the most important and controversial composers of the 20th century. He is best known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music and controlled chance in serial composition.

Tavener attended Highgate School (where a fellow pupil was John Rutter) and later studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where his tutors included Sir Lennox Berkeley. He first came to prominence in 1968 with his dramatic cantata The Whale, based on the Old Testament story of Jonah. It was premièred at the London Sinfonietta's début concert and later recorded by Apple Records.

Wolpe was born in Berlin. He attended the Berlin Conservatory from the age of fourteen, attended the Berlin Hochschule für Musik 1920-1921. He studied composition under Franz Schreker and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni. He also studied at the Bauhaus and met some of the dadaists, setting Kurt Schwitters' poem Anna Blume to music.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann (March 20, 1918 - August 10, 1970 ; full name Bernhard Alois Zimmermann) was a post-WWII West German composer. He is perhaps best known for his opera Die Soldaten which is regarded as one of the most important operas of the 20th century. As a result of his individual style, it is hard to label his music as avant-garde, serial or postmodern.