20th Century & Forward (1900- )
No one style dominates 20th century music. A simple sampling finds several genres to choose from: Bartok and his Hungarian Ethnicity, Neoclassicism as seen in Shostakovich and Milhaud, Atonality from Schoenberg and his students, along with Minimalism from Steve Reich and Philip Glass. 20th century composers redefined the way society considered music. The most famous example of this can be heard (or not) in Cage's 4'33" . Many different sounds emerge from this list of composers, and each one has its own acquired taste. Some of these sounds may sound weird or unmusical, but that's what society said about Baroque music, and it has become fairly popular. This is a great era of music to explore and find personal preferences and new favorite composers.

John Adams (b. 1947)
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Alban Berg (1885-1935) Atonal
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
John Cage (1912-1993)
Elliot Carter (b. 1908)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Henry Cowell (1897-1965)
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Philip Glass (b. 1937) Minimalist
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) Neoclassic
Carl Orff (1895-1982)
Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933)
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) Neoclassic
Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Steve Reich (b. 1936) Minimalist
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) Atonal
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Neoclassic
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)
Anton Webern (1883-1945) Atonal
Kurt Weill (1900-1950) Opera
Ralph Vaughn Williams (1872-1958)

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Dates & background information courtesy of:
Grout, Donald and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. 6th ed. W.W Norton: New York, 2001.

Prepared by the Popular Materials Dept., 2005