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Alan Hovhaness, one of the most prolific composers of the twentieth century, left behind a legacy of hundreds of works, including more than 60 symphonies, numerous choral works, ballets, and operas, and all manner of chamber music. Hovhaness, born of Scottish and Armenian descent in 1911, took an early interest in composition, and by the age of 13 had composed two operas. After studies at the New England Conservatory with Frederick Converse, Hovhaness made a favorable impression with his first acknowledged symphony, Exile, when it was performed by the BBC Symphony in London in 1939. The works of Hovhaness' early period both reflect the influence of Renaissance music and utilize the harmonies of the late nineteenth century. During the 1930s the composer developed an interest in Indian music, which became one of the most pervasive influences upon his own works from that time on. In 1942 he received a scholarship to the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, where he attended composition seminars led by Aaron Copland (assisted by Leonard Bernstein). The experience, unfortunately, was less than positive, since both Copland and Bernstein were highly critical of Hovhaness' music. The ridicule he experienced led Hovhaness to leave Tanglewood early. Discouraged, he destroyed many of his early works. Serendipitously, though, the composer's return to Boston was followed by a meeting with the Greek painter and psychic Herman DiGiovanno, who convinced him to study the music of his Armenian ancestry. Further immersion in Armenian church music led Hovhaness to the works of Komitas Vartabed, a priest and composer who died in 1936 and whom Hovhaness described as the "Armenian Bartók." Hovhaness' discovery of Armenian music had a direct effect upon his own works, which became more rhythmically and contrapuntally active and began to reflect the improvisatory nature of Armenian church melodies.

During the 1940s Hovhaness furthered his study of the Armenian culture, playing organ at an Armenian church and learning the Armenian language, and took a further interest in the Eastern philosophies. The growing success of his music in the 1950s led to several important grants and commissions; a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1951 allowed him to move to New York. After composing Ardent Song (1954), a ballet score for Martha Graham, Hovhaness toured the Far East. Still shunned by the mainstream musical establishment of the time, he continued to receive recognition from without, including Guggenheim Fellowships in 1953, 1954, and 1958. A commission from the Houston Symphony, the Symphony No. 2 ("Mysterious Mountain"; 1955) provided Hovhaness his first popular success. The work was auspiciously premiered by Leopold Stokowski, and the redoubtable Fritz Reiner made a highly regarded recording of it with the Chicago Symphony.

After receiving a Fulbright Fellowship in 1959, Hovhaness again toured the East and was the first Western composer invited to participate in the music festival in Madras, India. He was also received warmly in Japan, where he made television appearances and conducted his music with the Tokyo Symphony. During a return to Asia in 1962 on a Rockefeller Grant, Hovhaness studied the ancient court music of Japan and Korea.

The aural result of the composer's immersion in Eastern culture is a musical language invested with a sense of mysticism and spirituality. Among his voluminous catalogue, Hovhaness' colorful orchestral works have maintained the greatest popularity among audiences; notable examples include the Symphony No. 17 ("Symphony for Metal Orchestra"; 1963); And God Created Great Whales (1970), which incorporates recordings of actual whale "songs," and the Symphony No. 50 ("Mount St. Helen's"; 1982).

Rudolf Werthen is a well-known Belgian violinist and conductor, founder and director of the chamber orchestra I Fiamminghi.

As a violinist, he is considered an heir to the Belgian violin school, exemplified by the great virtuoso Eugéne Ÿsaye. His career began rapidly in 1971 when he won two major violin competitions, the first Kreisler Competition and the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition, the most prestigious of all violin awards. Following these victories, the Belgian Government named him Virtuoso of the Belgian Government, a position previously held by the late Arthur Grumiaux.

In 1982, he began his conducting career by substituting for maestro Klaus Tennsted when the German conductor became indisposed while touring Europe with the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra.

In 1984, he co-founded I Fiamminghi as a string orchestra and has led it ever since. The orchestra concentrates on Romantic era and later repertory, and is especially known for his championing of the music of the post-serial era of such composers as Kancheli, Hovhaness, Vasks, and Pärt. Its Romantic era interpretations (from the times of Beethoven and Schubert to that of Mahler) are noted for Werthen's practice of researching scores and performance materials for authenticity and in using the playing techniques current when the particular composition was written.

I Fiamminghi was immediately successful, and during its first decade recorded for the SOF, RGIP, and Koch and BMG labels. In 1994, Werthen and I Fiamminghi signed an exclusive contract with the American label Telarc.

Werthen's success with I Fiamminghi led to his being appointed music director of the Flanders Opera in 1988, and his tenure has been especially praised for productions of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Verdi's Macbeth, Rossini's La Cenerentola, Wagner's Flying Dutchman, and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle.

In 1992, the Flemish government appointed him and I Fiamminghi as "Cultural Ambassador of Flanders," citing "the quality and international reputation of the orchestra." Also in 1992, Werthen enlarged I Fiamminghi to a full orchestra by adding winds and percussion.

Werthen is also a member of the faculty of the Royal Music Conservatory of Ghent, where he has taught since in 1975. He also devotes a significant part of his time to efforts on behalf of those who are disabled or in poverty, and in ecological concerns.

Arvo Pärt is a contemporary Estonian composer of choral, chamber, and orchestral music, and the inventor of the compositional technique known as Tintinnabula. He faced opposition early in his career for both his faith and his exploration of modernist compositional concepts, but became one of the most performed composers during his lifetime. He was born in 1935 in Paide, Estonia and he was an only child. When he was three years old, he moved with his mother to Rakvere, where he attended the Rakvere Music School from 1945 to 1953. It was at this time that he studied with Ille Martin and he composed his first works, which were unfortunately lost. After he graduated in 1954, he enrolled at the Tallinn Music School but was called into service with the Soviet Army. He played the oboe, percussion, and piano in the military band, but he was discharged in the fall of 1956 because of poor health, and he resumed his education. Upon his return, he received instruction from Veljo Tormis, followed by studies with Heino Eller at the Tallinn Conservatory from 1957 to 1963. He developed long-lasting friendships with both instructors, and in 1963 he dedicated his Symphony No. 1 to Eller. Beginning around 1958, Pärt supported himself by composing theatrical works for the Estonian State Puppet Theater and scores for films and documentaries, and he worked as a recording engineer for Estonian Radio until 1967. He became interested in composers from the Renaissance such as Machaut, Desprez, and Obrecht, and these influences can be heard in Credo from 1968 and Symphony No. 3 from 1971. Credo also contained several other compositional concepts like serialized rhythm, tone clusters, and 12-tone technique. This caused an outrage among the nationalist Soviet Composers’ Union, which viewed his music as the hostile acceptance and integration of foreign (Western) influence. Additionally, the sacred theme of Christianity upset the anti-religious Soviet-Estonian government and the work was banned from performance for many years. In the early '70s he became dissatisfied with his methods for composition, and he took some time to reflect and redefine himself as a composer. He returned to composing in 1976 and created the concept of tintinnabula, which remains a key component to his style as a composer. In 1977 he continued developing tintinnabula, and he composed some of his most performed works, including Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, Fratres, and Tabula rasa. After his absurdly ironic acceptance speech at the 11th Congress of the Estonian SSR Composers’ Union in 1979, he was dismissed from the organization, and Estonian authorities suggested that he leave the country. He moved with his family to Vienna in 1980 and they settled in West Berlin in 1981. Over the next ten years, he established partnerships with ECM Records and the publisher Universal Edition, and he composed several large-scale works including Stabat Mater and Te Deum. He also began important collaborations with The Hilliard Ensemble and conductor Tõnu Kaljuste, which led to many recordings including the albums Arbos, Passio, and Te Deum. Pärt’s membership to the Estonian Composers’ Union was reinstated in 2005, and in 2007 the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir won a Grammy award for the album Arvo Pärt: Da Pacem. Pärt moved back to Estonia in 2010, and he established the Arvo Pärt Centre, which manages and curates his personal archive and offers educational programs. The 2012 release Arvo Pärt: Adam’s Lament conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste won a Grammy for Best Choral Performance in 2014. Many artists have recorded his music in the 2020s including Arabella Steinbacher, Tomasz Wabnic and the Morphing Chamber Orchestra, and Pedro Piquero on the 2023 release Pärt: Lamentate. ~ RJ Lambert

American composer John Corigliano (b. 1938) has summed up his artistic aims thus: "It has been fashionable of late for the artist to be misunderstood. I think it is the job of the composer to reach out to his audience with every means at his disposal.... Communication of his most important ideas should be the primary goal." Throughout the development of his career, Corigliano's "primary goal" of communication with the audience has remained ever in his sight. In an atmosphere in which audience responses to new music so often range from indifferent to adversarial, Corigliano takes a place among the few "serious" contemporary composers whose appeal has ranged beyond the new-music crowd to reach listeners steeped in more traditional, time-tested fare.

The son of longtime New York Philharmonic concertmaster John Corigliano, Sr., Corigliano received his formal training at Columbia University and the Manhattan School of Music; his teachers included Otto Luening, Vittorio Giannini, and Paul Creston. Corigliano's father, with his from-the-trenches perspective on the world of classical music, at first discouraged John Jr. from pursuing a career in composition, all too aware of the difficulties that faced contemporary composers. However, after a stint as a music programmer for radio, Corigliano attracted international attention for his Sonata for Violin and Piano (1963), awarded the top prize at the 1964 Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.

From that point, he continued to evolve a musical language in which architecture, color, and overt drama are paramount. While his works are steeped in a Romantic aesthetic that makes liberal, unembarrassed use of tonality, Corigliano's inclusive sensibility has led him to also employ extended instrumental techniques, microtones, and elements of minimalism and serialism (sometimes in a parodistic context); more recently he has incorporated live electronics into his music. The orchestra is clearly Corigliano's native medium and the ensemble for which he has written his most compelling works. He has demonstrated an especial interest in the concerto; in his concerti for piano (1968), oboe (1975), clarinet (1977), flute (1981), and guitar (1993), Corigliano both approaches the relationship between soloist and orchestra from a fresh perspective and makes notably creative use of the instrumental resources at hand. The Symphony No. 1 (1990), written in response to the AIDS crisis, is remarkable for its effective alchemy of intensely personal associations and musical potency; in 1991, it was awarded the Grawemeyer Award, the most lucrative prize in the world of contemporary classical music.

On an occasional basis since the 1980s, Corigliano has lent his abilities to producing film music of exceptional interest. His score for Ken Russell's Altered States (1980) was nominated for an Academy Award; nearly two decades later, he took home the Oscar for his score to François Girard's The Red Violin (1998). Though Corigliano's catalogue of chamber music remains relatively slender, works such as the Grammy-winning String Quartet (1995) and Chiaroscuro (1997) for two pianos suggest an increasing interest in writing for smaller forces.

The composer's affinity for the voice is at once evident in numerous vocal and choral works like the "memory play in the form of an oratorio" Dylan Thomas Trilogy (1999) and the song cycle Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (2000). His most ambitious work to date, the opera The Ghosts of Versailles (1991), has earned worldwide plaudits and, in a rare instance among contemporary operas, has enjoyed repeated productions since its premiere.

Henryk Górecki was that rarity among contemporary composers: the originator of a full-fledged hit. A recording of his Symphony No. 3 by the London Sinfonietta with soprano Dawn Upshaw climbed to the top of the British pop charts in the early '90s. Górecki was among the Eastern European composers for whom contemporary stylistic trends (first serialism and then the various reactions against it) took on anti-authoritarian overtones, and who thus emerged in the forefront of late 20th century music; in his works, stylistic originality seemed a personal and political necessity.

Górecki was born in 1933 in the small town of Czernica in the Silesia region of Poland. He was trained as a primary-school teacher, and did not formally become a composer until the age of 22 when he enrolled at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice. He studied in Paris for a time and became acquainted with the leading edge of the Western avant-garde. The works of Webern, Stockhausen, and Messiaen were unavailable in Poland, suppressed by socialist-realist doctrines; but all of them, especially Messiaen, influenced Górecki's early music. Górecki became a professor at Katowice and went on to gain some official acceptance, ascending to the post of provost.

Górecki's music was always deeply rooted in Polish ideals, however, and it carried a sense of the emotional impact of the atrocities of the Second World War. He ran afoul of the authorities in the late '70s, resigning his post as provost to protest the government's refusal to permit Pope John Paul II to visit Katowice. He later composed music to honor an injured Solidarity labor union activist. What gave his protests additional weight was that he had rejected Western hyper-modernism and created a new musical language that more directly served his ideals. Górecki had first gained recognition with Scontri (1959), a work very much of the avant-garde in its treatment of sonority and texture as primary structural elements. In the 1960s, however, Górecki's music offered harbingers of the eclecticism that would dominate contemporary music by the century's end. Genesis shows minimalist qualities, while Three Pieces in the Old Style manipulates modal and whole tone ideas, and Lerchenmusik quotes Beethoven, to name a few examples.

Górecki became interested in the folk music of his native region and investigated Polish music of the Medieval and Renaissance eras. In 1976 he synthesized the new trends in his music with the Symphony No. 3, subtitled "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." Scored for soprano and orchestra, this hour-long piece contains three movements, quoting old religious and folk texts and incorporating folk tunes. It opens with a canon in the strings that builds gradually over a 12-minute span, with an effect comparable to that of Western minimalist composition but proceeding from different spiritual bases. (One of the animating principles of Górecki's work was a fervent Roman Catholicism.) The work was recorded several times, but it was the 1993 release that caught fire -- partly because it fit perfectly with the new and well-marketed trend toward "holy minimalism."

Despite his growing success, Górecki continued to compose largely in response to inner creative dictates rather than according to any plan to increase his reputation. Much of his work in the 1980s and 1990s has been in the choral and chamber genres; the String Quartet No. 1, Op. 62 ("Already It Is Dusk"), was written for the Kronos Quartet, a successful U.S. ensemble devoted to new music, and further enhanced his reputation. The work used a Renaissance part-song as raw material, transforming it first into a dissonant but peaceful chorale and then into a folk-inflected dance. At the time of his death, in November 2010, he had just completed his Symphony No. 4 and was awaiting its premiere.

Not readily identifiable with any single school of composition, composer Peteris Vasks has an original voice that is engaged deeply with the historical epoch in which he lived. He is regarded as a major figure in Eastern European music of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Vasks was born on April 16, 1946, in Aizpute, Latvia. His father was a Baptist pastor. Early in his career, Vasks played the violin, which he studied at the Jazeps Vitols Latvian Academy of Music. He was also trained as a double bassist, studying at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre with Vitautas Sereikaan, and in the 1960s and '70s, he was active as an orchestral musician in Latvia. Vasks turned to composition, studying for a time in Lithuania and facing problems from Soviet authorities because of his family's religious faith. Early Vasks works include Cantabile (1979), Musica Dolorosa for string orchestra (1983), and Lauda for orchestra (1986). In some works from the first part of his career, Vasks followed composer Witold Lutoslawski in experimenting with aleatoric (chance) techniques. He also drew on Latvian folk sources as an inspiration, notably in the pastoral Concerto for cor anglais and orchestra of 1989.

Several works propelled Vasks to international prominence in the '90s. One was the Symphony No. 1 ("Voices") of 1990-1991, which set depictions of nature against a despairing cacophony and seemed to reflect Latvia's long struggle for independence. Another was the violin concerto "Distant Light" of 1996-1997, which was championed by violinist and conductor Gidon Kremer. Whatever its genre (he wrote large numbers of orchestral, choral, chamber, and keyboard works), Vasks' music had a distinctive spiritual quality. His often-transparent tonal language has led some to group him with other minimalist composers from the Baltic countries, but his expressive world is unique. Two of his string quartets, the String Quartet No. 4 (1999) and String Quartet No. 5 (2004), were composed for the immensely popular Kronos Quartet in the U.S. Vasks has served many residencies and been richly honored in the West as well as in Eastern Europe, and he has remained active into old age; violinist Sebastian Bohren issued a recording of his new Violin Concerto No. 2 in 2024. By that time, at least 100 of Vasks' works were available on recordings. ~ James Manheim

Composer Giya Kancheli emerged into international fame in the last years of the Soviet Union, and especially after its dissolution. Kancheli's eclectic style combined avant-garde elements with aspects of traditional music from the composer's native Georgia.

Giya Kancheli was born August 10, 1935, in Tbilisi, Georgia, in what was then the Transcaucasian Republic of the Soviet Union. His father was a doctor. Kancheli considered a career as a geologist before entering the Tbilisi Conservatory in 1959 and studying composition with Iona Tuskiya. After graduating, he supported himself as a freelance composer, a rarity in the Soviet Union. He wrote popular music and especially film music, a lucrative specialty in which he could also explore novel compositional ideas; he realized that film music came under less close official scrutiny than works intended for the concert hall. Kancheli wrote more than 35 film scores, for both Georgian and Russian studios. He also wrote incidental music and began to attract wider attention for his work for the Rustavili Theatre in Tbilisi. He collaborated with the director of that theater, Robert Sturua, on an opera, Music for the Living (1984). An early recording of Kancheli's concert music in the West was by conductor Yuri Temirkanov, leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in the fourth of Kancheli's seven symphonies. Around 1990, more Kancheli performances and recordings followed in the West, and in 1991, with Cold War-era restrictions dissolving, the composer left the Soviet Union for Berlin, living there with help from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Later, he settled in Antwerp, Belgium, to take a position as composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra; he remained active there as a composer and educator until the last months of his life. Kancheli became ill while visiting his native Tbilisi, dying in that city at the beginning of October 2019.

Violinist Gidon Kremer was one of his champions, and many of his works have been recorded for the ECM label. The Brilliant label issued a recording of Kancheli's extended violin-and-orchestra work Letters to Friends, with the Georgian Strings and violinist Andrea Cortesi, in 2019. ~ James Manheim