Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organist of the Baroque period. His contemporaries admired him for his talent as a musician but thought his compositions were old-fashioned. A rediscovery of his work in the early 19th century led to the so-called Bach revival, in which he came to be seen as one of the greatest composers of all time. His most-celebrated compositions include Brandenburg Concertos, The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846–893, Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, BWV 1007–1012, Orchestral Suites, BWV 1066–1069, and Mass in B Minor, BWV 232.

Puccini - 1990 World Cup

3 Football Crazy Tenors singing the famous Aria by Giacomo Puccini.

An Austrian composer of the Classical period, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is widely recognized as one of the greatest composers of Western music. He is the only composer to write and excel in all of the musical genres of his time. Rumored to have had the ability to play music at age three and to write music at age five, Mozart began his career as a child prodigy. Notable compositions include The Marriage of Figaro, Elvira Madigan, and Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K 581.

The German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven is widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived. He expanded the Classical traditions of Joseph Haydn, one of his teachers, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and experimented with personal expression, a characteristic that influenced the Romantic composers who succeeded him. His life and career were marked by progressive deafness, yet the malady did not prevent him from composing some of his most important works during the last 10 years of his life when he was nearly unable to hear. Widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto, and quartet, Beethoven’s notable works include Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67, Moonlight Sonata, and Für Elise.

The French composer Claude Debussy is often regarded as the father of modern classical music. Debussy developed new and complex harmonies and musical structures that evoke comparisons to the art of his contemporary Impressionist and Symbolist painters and writers. His major works include Clair de lune, La Mer, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and the opera Pelléas et Mélisande.