1. Claude Debussy - revolt against German Romanticism; use of alternate scale forms
2. Maurice Ravel - (as above); more daring with dissonance; a great orchestrator
3. Erik Satie - the "prophet" of simplicity; began movement away from pretentiousness and sentimentality
4. Paul Hindemith - put into practice the teaching of progressive theories of music education
5. Igor Stravinsky - reacted against Post-Romantic chromaticism; his innovation of polytonality; his willingness to grow and change as a composer
6. Béla Bártok - incorporation of folk tunes/modes; his innovation of polymodality
7. Arnold Schoenberg - atonal-expressionism - no distinction between consonance and dissonance; his 12-tone method
8. Anton Webern - extreme brevity/compression/economy; unusual instrumentation
9. Alban Berg - humanized the abstract procedures of the 12-tone technique
10. John Cage - prepared piano; explorations with silence; indeterminacy; unconventional philosophy of art and music
11. Edgar Varése - emphasis on rhythm and percussion; sound masses; divergence from melody and harmony
12. Karlheinz Stockhausen - total serialization; electronics; spatial modulation
13. Nadia Boulanger - influenced many composers as a composition teacher
14. Pierre Boulez - his activities as a conductor allowed him to promote contemporary music
15. Philip Glass - an early minimalist; additive rhythm process; innovations in music for the stage
16. Steve Reich - innovation of "phase shifting"
17. Aaron Copland - reemphasis on traditional musical vocabulary; composing in the "American vernacular"; incorporating subjects and styles that were strictly American
18. Benjamin Britten - a dynamic force in contemporary opera
19. Leonard Bernstein - contributions to the American theater; advocate of an "American opera" style; use of multiple meters for theatrical dance
20. George Gershwin - incorporation of jazz into other mediums (orchestral,
opera)