20th-century classical composers

Cecilie Ore (born 19 July 1954) is a Norwegian composer.

Ragnhild Berstad (born in Oslo in 1956) is a Norwegian contemporary composer.

Jon Deak (born April 27, 1943) is an American composer, contrabassist and education specialist. He is a former Associate Principal Bassist of the New York Philharmonic, a position he held from 1973 to 2009 after joining the Philharmonic in 1969 under Leonard Bernstein, and a prominent contemporary composer of orchestral and chamber works. He currently serves as the Young Composers Advocate of the New York Philharmonic, where he founded the award-winning Very Young Composers Program in 1995.

Olav Anton Thommessen (born 16 May 1946) is a Norwegian contemporary composer who has been one of the foremost modernist composers in Norway since the 1970s. His main compositions include Et glassperlespill and Gjennom Prisme. He was a professor of composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music until retiring in 2014, and has also been an influential figure in music education and music organisations in Norway. Thommessen has played a significant role in aesthetic discourse in Norway and is known for his modernist and atonal stance. In later life he has become known for engaging in a critical public dialogue with his former student Marcus Paus about the future of art music, that has resulted in the opera monologue The Teacher Who Was Not To Be with a libretto by Thommessen; a 2015 debate between the two was described as "the biggest public debate about art music" in Norway since the 1970s.

Robert McBride (February 20, 1911 – July 1, 2007) was an American composer and instrumentalist.

Louis Beydts was a French composer, music critic and theatre director, born 29 June 1895 in Bordeaux and died on 15 August 1953 at Caudéran in Gironde.

Michele Esposito (29 September 1855 – 19 November 1929) was an Italian composer, conductor and pianist who spent most of his professional life in Dublin, Ireland.

Jack Hamilton Beeson (July 15, 1921 – June 6, 2010) was an American composer. He was known particularly for his operas, the best known of which are Lizzie Borden, Hello Out There!, and The Sweet Bye and Bye.

Wim Mertens (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈʋɪˈmɛrtə(n)s]; born 14 May 1953) is a Flemish Belgian composer, countertenor vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and musicologist.

David Rakowski (born June 13, 1958, St. Albans, Vermont) is an American composer and typeface designer. He studied under such composers as Robert Ceely, John Heiss, Milton Babbitt, Peter Westergaard, Paul Lansky, and Luciano Berio. In 2006, he was awarded the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's 2004–2006 Elise L. Stoeger Prize. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Music: in 1999 for Persistent Memory and in 2002 for his second symphony Ten of a Kind.He has released dozens of typefaces since the 1990s, mostly as freeware, which include both original designs and revivals (such as "Lemiesz" – a free version of Publicity Gothic, 1916 – and "Harting", a typewriter face in the "grunge" style.)