Bela Bartok (Hungary)

Béla Bartók (March 25, 1881-September 26, 1945), the greatest Hungarian composer, was one of the most significant musicians of the twentieth century. He shared with his friend Zoltán Kodály, another leading Hungarian composer, a passion for ethnomusicology. His music was invigorated by the themes, modes, and rhythmic patterns of the Hungarian and other folk music traditions he studied, which he synthesized with influences from his contemporaries into his own distinctive style.

In 1904, while staying in the Slovakian countryside in order to practice and compose, Bartók overheard Lidi Dósa, a Székely Hungarian woman from Transylvania, sing the song Piros alma ("Red Apple"). He then interviewed her to find out what other songs she knew. This encounter was the beginning of Bartók's lifetime fascination with folk music. Two years later Bartók was introduced to Kodály, who soon became his closest friend. Kodály had already begun to collect recordings of Hungarian folk music using an Edison cylinder. Bartók began his collecting in Hungary's Békés County in 1906.

Unlike Kodály, Bartók also became interested in other folk traditions, studying the folk music of Romanians, Slovakians, Serbs, Croatians, Bulgarians, Turks, and North Africans as well as Hungarians. In 1906, while visiting Algeria, Bartók had a vision of how he might begin to order scattered folk tunes of the world. This, as he recalled, ended any desire on his part for the kind of career others had projected for him, as "the future master of the most charming salon music." Afterwards, the main task of his life was to collect, analyze, and catalogue major portions of the world's folk music. Recordings

Rene Clausen (US)

René Clausen's has served as conductor of The Concordia Choir of Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota since 1986. Additionally, he is the artistic director of the award-winning Concordia Christmas Concerts, which are frequently featured by PBS stations throughout the nation.

René Clausen is a well-known composer. His compositional style is varied and eclectic, ranging from works appropriate for high school and church choirs to more technically-demanding compositions for college and professional choirs. Interested in composing for various media, Clausen's compositional interests include works for the stage, solo voice, film and video composition, choral/orchestral compositions and arrangements, as well as works for orchestra and wind ensemble. He regularly composes on a commission basis, and is a frequent guest conductor and composer-in-residence on a national basis. All of René Clausen's choral compositions and arrangements are published exclusively through Mark Foster Music Company (a division of Shawnee Press) in The René Clausen Choral Series.

In addition to choral conducting, Dr. Clausen is becoming increasingly well-known as a guest conductor of the major choral/ orchestral literature, in addition to orchestral conducting. At Carnegie Hall he has guest conducted the Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem, Mozart Requiem and Mass in C minor, together with the New York premiere of three of his own works, Gloria (in three movements), Whispers of Heavenly Death, with text by Walt Whitman, and Communion, with text by George Macdonald. Other major choral/orchestral works he has conducted include the Poulenc Gloria, Vaughan Williams Hodie, Beethoven Mass in C Major and Choral Fantasy, and Fauré Requiem. Recordings

William Dawson (US)

A graduate of the Horner Institute of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Music, William Levi Dawson later studied at the Chicago Musical College with professor Felix Borowski, and then at the American Conservatory of Music where he received his masters degree. Early in his career he served as a trombonist both with the Redpath Chautauqua and the Chicago Civic Symphony Orchestra. His teaching career began in the Kansas City public school system, which was later followed by a tenure with the Tuskegee Institute from 1931–1956. During this period, it was he who appointed a large number of faculty members that later became well known for their work in the field. Additionally, Dawson also developed the choir, the Tuskegee Institute Choir, into an internationally renowned ensemble; they were invited to sing at New York City's Radio City Music Hall in 1932 for a week of six daily performances.

As a composer, Dawson began at a young age, and it was early on in his compositional career that his Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano was performed by the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra. Besides chamber music, he is also known for his contributions to both orchestral and choral literature. His best known works are arrangements and variations on spirituals; his Negro Folk Symphony of 1934 garnered a great deal of attention at its' world premier, under the direction of Leopold Stokowski with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The symphony was later revised in 1952 with greater African rhythms inspired by the composers trip to West Africa. The composition was - the composer conveye - an attempt to convey the missing elements that were lost when Africans came into bondage outside of their homeland. In creating this work, Dawson was influenced by the nationalistic views of Dvorˇák. Widely performed, his most popular spirituals include Jesus Walked the Lonesome Valley, Talk about a Child That Do Love Jesus and King Jesus Is a-Listening. Recordings

Jester Hairston (US)

Jester Hairston was born on July 9 in 1901. He was an African-American choral composer and actor. The grandson of slaves from the Hairston plantation at Belew's Creek, North Carolina, Jester Hairston often had to suffer the indignities of Hollywood racism. A Cum Laude graduate from Tufts University, with a major in music, he also studied music at the famed Julliard School. He spent thirteen years as assistant conductor of the Hall Johnson Negro Choir where he often arranged and conducted choirs for Broadway.

He first came to Hollywood in 1936 to conduct the choir work and spent fifteen years on radio and TV’s Amos 'n' Andy despite the fact that the other black characters were played by white actors. Hairston’s early acting roles included playing a “Witch Doctor” in the 1955 film, Tarzan's Hidden Jungle. TV fans perhaps best recognize Hairston as “Rolly Forbes” on the 1986 series Amen; his presence in Hollywood was often hidden on the other side of the camera. As one of the greatest choral music directors, Hairston composed or arranged more than 300 gospel spirituals in films such as Green Pastures and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. One of the first black actors in the Screen Actors Guild, among his notable works was the song “Amen” from the Sidney Poitier film, Lilies of the Field. Hairston died January 18, 2000, at the age of 98. Recordings

Moses Hogan (US)

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 13, 1957 Moses George Hogan was a pianist, conductor, and arranger of international renown. A graduate of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, he also studied at New York's Juillard School of Music and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Mr. Hogan's many accomplishments as a concert pianist included winning first place in the prestigious 28th annual Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition in New York. Hogan was appointed artist in residence at Dillard University in New Orleans in 1993 and served as artistic director of the internationally acclaimed Moses Hogan Chorale. The chorale evolved as an outgrowth of the New World ensemble organized by Hogan when he began his exploration of the choral music idiom in 1980. The chorale electrified audiences in the finest and most prestigious concert halls at home and abroad, ranging from Washington, DC's John F. Kennedy Center to the famed Sydney Opera House in Australia. The Chorale's high musical standards and unique repertoire consistently elicited praise from critics worldwide. Hogan was an exclusive arranger and composer for Hal Leonard Music Corporation. Recordings

Morten Lauridsen (US)

Morten Johannes Lauridsen, Composer-in-Residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994-2001 and Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than thirty years, occupies a permanent place in the standard vocal repertoire of the Twentieth Century. His seven vocal cycles -- Les Chansons des Roses (Rilke), Mid-Winter Songs (Graves), Cuatro Canciones (Lorca), A Winter Come (Moss), Madrigali: Six "FireSongs" on Renaissance Italian Poems, Nocturnes, and Lux Aeterna -- and his series of sacred a cappella motets (O Magnum Mysterium, Ave Maria, O Nata Lux, Ubi Caritas et Amor and Ave Dulcissima Maria) are featured regularly in concert by distinguished ensembles throughout the world. O Magnum Mysterium, Dirait-on (from Les Chansons des Roses) and O Nata Lux (from Lux Aeterna) have become the all-time best-selling choral octavos distributed by Theodore Presser, in business since 1783. In speaking of Lauridsen's sacred works in his book, Choral Music in the Twentieth Century, musicologist and conductor Nick Strimple describes Lauridsen as "the only American composer in history who can be called a mystic, (whose) probing, serene work contains an elusive and indefinable ingredient which leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered... From 1993 Lauridsen's music rapidly increased in international popularity, and by century's end he had eclipsed Randall Thompson as the most frequently performed American choral composer." Recordings

Arvo Part (Estonia)

Arvo Pärt was born in Paide, Estonia, a small town near Tallinn, the country's capital, on 11th September 1935. In 1944, Estonia saw the occupation of the Soviet Union, which would last for over 50 years, and would have a profound effect on his life and music. His musical studies began in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Secondary School, interrupted less than a year later while he fulfilled his National Service obligation as oboist and side-drummer in an army band. He returned to Middle School for a year before joining the Tallinn Conservatory in 1957, where his composition teacher was Professor Heino Eller. Pärt started work as a recording engineer with Estonian Radio, wrote music for the stage and received numerous commissions for film scores so that, by the time he graduated from the Conservatory in 1963, he could already be considered a professional composer. A year before leaving, he won first prize in the All-Union Young Composers' Competition for a children's cantata, Our Garden, and an oratorio, Stride of the World.

Living in the old Soviet Union, Pärt had little access to what was happening in contemporary Western music but, despite such isolation, the early 1960s in Estonia saw many new methods of composition being brought into use and Pärt was at the fore front. His Nekrolog was the first Estonian composition to employ serial technique. He continued with serialism through to the mid 60s in pieces such as the Symphonie No. 1, Symphonie No. 2 and Perpetuum Mobile, but ultimately tired of its rigours and moved on to experiment, in works such as Collage über BACH, with collage techniques.

Official judgement of Pärt's music veered between extremes, with certain works being praised and others, like the Credo of 1968, being banned. This would prove to be the last of his collage pieces and after its composition, Pärt chose to enter the first of several periods of contemplative silence, also using the time to study French and Franco-Flemish choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries: Machaut, Ockeghem, Obrecht, Josquin. At the very beginning of the 1970s, he wrote a few transitional compositions in the spirit of early European polyphony, like his Symphony No. 3 from 1971. Recordings

Sergey Rachmaninov (Russia)

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff , was a Russian-American composer, pianist, and conductor. ("Sergei Rachmaninoff" was the spelling the composer himself used while living in the West throughout the latter half of his life, including when he became a United States citizen. However, alternative transliterations of his name include Sergey or Serge, and Rachmaninov, Rachmaninow, Rakhmaninov or Rakhmaninoff.)

While his reputation as composer only came later in life, Rachmaninoff's skill as pianist was well-known and highly respected; he often performed his own works as soloist. He was one of the greatest pianists of his generation, having legendary technical facilities and rhythmic drive, and his large hands were able to cover a thirteenth interval on the piano. Many recordings were made by the Victor Talking Machine Company recording label of him performing his own music as well as works from the standard repertoire.

Rachmaninoff made his first tour of the United States as a pianist in 1909, an event for which he composed the Piano Concerto No. 3 (Op. 30, 1909). This successful tour made him a popular figure in America, and he emigrated to New York following the Russian Revolution of 1917. After his departure his music was banned in the Soviet Union for several years. His compositional output slowed to some degree, partly because he was required to spend much of his time performing to support his family, but mainly because of homesickness; he felt that when he left Russia, it was as if he had left behind his inspiration. Nevertheless, his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, today one of his best-known works, was written in Switzerland in 1934.

Rachmaninoff wrote two major choral works: the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom and the All-Night Vigil (also known as the Vespers). The Bells, a work for choir and orchestra, is based on the translated poetry of Edgar Allan Poe; its four-movement program signifies the circle of life: youth, marriage, maturity, and death. The All-Night Vigil and The Bells are widely considered to be some of his finest works. Recordings

John Tavener (England)

John Tavener first came to public attention in 1968 with the premiere of his oratorio The Whale at the inaugural concert of the London Sinfonietta. The Beatles subsequently recorded this on their Apple label. Although Tavener’s avant-garde style of the seventies contrasts with the contemplative beauty of his works for which he is best known, the seeds of the language he would later adopt were already in evidence. His early compositions, notably Thérèse (1973) commissioned by the Royal Opera House and A Gentle Spirit (1977) after the short story by Dostoyevsky, showed that spirituality and mysticism were to be his primary sources of inspiration.

His conversion to the Orthodox Church in 1977 resulted from his growing conviction that Eastern traditions retained a primordial essence that the west had lost. Works such as The Lamb (1982), and the large-scale choral work Resurrection (1989) date from this period. It was in 1989 that Tavener once again came firmly into the limelight, when the Proms premiere of The Protecting Veil introduced his music to a new audience. The opera Mary of Egypt, premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1992. The same year, a major documentary, ‘Glimpses of Paradise’ was broadcast on BBC2. His 50th birthday year was marked in 1994 by the BBC’s Ikons Festival, as well as another major Proms commission - The Apocalypse. In 1997, the performance of Song for Athene at the close of Princess Diana’s funeral showed that the profound effect of his music reached far beyond just the concert-going public. Recordings

Eric Whitacre (US)

An accomplished composer, conductor and lecturer, Eric Whitacre has quickly become one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation. Many of Whitacre's works have entered the standard choral and symphonic repertories and have become the subject of several recent scholarly works and doctoral dissertations. As a conductor, Whitacre has appeared with hundreds of professional and educational ensembles throughout the world. In the last ten years, he has conducted concerts of his choral and symphonic music in Japan, Australia, China, Singapore and much of Europe, as well as dozens of American universities and colleges where he regularly conducts seminars and lectures with young musicians. Most  recently, Whitacre  has  received acclaim for "Paradise Lost", a cutting edge musical combining trance, ambient and techno electronica with choral, cinematic,and operatic traditions. Winner of the ASCAP Harold Arlen award, this musical also gained Whitacre the prestigious Richard Rodgers Award for most promising musical theater composer. Whitacre earned a Master of Music degree at the Juilliard School, studying with Pulitzer Prize-and Oscar-winning composer John Corigliano. He has received composition awards from the Barlow International Composition Competition, the American Choral Directors Association and the American Composers Forum. The first recording of his music was hailed by The American Record Guide as one of the top ten classical albums of 1997. In 2001,he became the youngest recipient ever awarded the coveted Raymond C. Brock commission by the American Choral Directors Association. Recordings