List: American musical theatre composers

by likeorhate

•  George Gershwin

  George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known. He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works, including more than a dozen Broadway shows, in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin.

  

  26.0%
  

  30.0%
  

  44.0%
  
•  Jerome Kern

  Jerome Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of popular music. He wrote around 700 songs, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", "Long Ago (and Far Away)" and "Who?", a 6-week number 1 hit for George Olsen & his Orchestra in 1925. His career spanned dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films from 1902 until his death.

  

  36.0%
  

  20.0%
  

  44.0%
  
•  Jule Styne

  Jule Styne (December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.

  

  50.0%
  

  25.0%
  

  25.0%
  
•  Mel Brooks

  Melvin "Mel" Kaminsky (born June 28, 1926), better known by his stage name Mel Brooks, is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor, and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony award.

  

  22.2%
  

  33.3%
  

  44.4%
  
•  Philip Glass

  Philip Morris Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American music composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public. Although his music is often, though controversially, described as minimalist, he distances himself from this label, describing himself instead as a composer of "music with repetitive structures.

  

  53.3%
  

  26.7%
  

  20.0%
  
•  Stephen Sondheim

  Stephen Joshua Sondheim (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards (eight, more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. He has been described as "the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theatre.

  

  40.7%
  

  22.2%
  

  37.0%
  
•  Leonard Bernstein

  Leonard Bernstein was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. He was probably best known to the public as the longtime music director of the New York Philharmonic, for conducting concerts by many of the world's leading orchestras, and for writing the music for West Side Story, Candide, Wonderful Town, and On the Town.

  

  11.1%
  

  55.6%
  

  33.3%
  
•  Irving Berlin

  Irving Berlin (May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in history. His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous. The song sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Russia, which also "flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania.

  

  20.0%
  

  40.0%
  

  40.0%
  
•  Kurt Weill

  Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950), was a German, and in his later years American, composer active from the 1920s until his death. He was a leading composer for the stage. He also wrote a number of works for the concert hall.

  

  20.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  80.0%
  
•  Richard Rodgers

  Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 – December 30, 1979) was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant impact on popular music down to the present day, and have an enduring broad appeal.

  

  42.9%
  

  28.6%
  

  28.6%
  
•  Cole Porter

  Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. His works include the musical comedies Kiss Me, Kate, Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady and Anything Goes, as well as songs like "Night and Day," "I Get a Kick out of You," "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin. " He was noted for his sophisticated, bawdy lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms. He was one of the greatest contributors to the Great American Songbook.

  

  47.8%
  

  39.1%
  

  13.0%
  
•  Mary Rodgers

  Mary Rodgers (born January 11, 1931) is an American composer of musicals and an author of children's books. She is the daughter of composer Richard Rodgers. She attended the private girls' school Brearley School in New York City and majored in music at Wellesley.

  

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  100.0%
  
•  Frederick Loewe

  Frederick Loewe (born June 10, 1901, Vienna, Austria-Hungary – February 14, 1988, Palm Springs, California) was a Tony Award-winning Austrian-American composer. He collaborated with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on the long running Broadway musicals My Fair Lady and Camelot, with book and lyrics by Lerner, both of which were made into films.

  

  12.5%
  

  37.5%
  

  50.0%
  
•  Jerry Herman

  Jerry Herman (born July 10, 1931) is an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for La Cage aux Folles and Hello, Dolly!. In 2009, Herman received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.

  

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  100.0%
  

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•  Eubie Blake

  James Hubert Blake (February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983) was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as, "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find A Way", "Memories of You", and "I'm Just Wild About Harry".

  

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  100.0%
  
•  John Sebastian

  John Benson Sebastian, Jr. is an American songwriter and harmonica player. He is best known as a founder of The Lovin' Spoonful, a band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. His tie-dyed denim jacket is prominently displayed there.

  

  50.0%
  

  50.0%
  

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•  Frank Loesser

  Frank Henry Loesser (June 29, 1910 – July 26, 1969) was an American songwriter who wrote the scores to the Broadway hits Guys And Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, among others. He won separate Tony Awards for the music and lyrics in both shows, as well as sharing the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the latter.

  

  75.0%
  

  25.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Burt Bacharach

  Burt F. Bacharach is an American pianist, composer and music producer. He is known for his pop hits from the early 1960s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David, many of which were produced for and recorded by Dionne Warwick. As of 2006, Bacharach had written 70 Top 40 hits in the US, and 52 Top 40 hits in the UK.

  

  0.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  100.0%
  
•  John Kander

  John Harold Kander (born March 18, 1927) is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.

  

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•  Lew Brown

  Lew Brown (December 10, 1893 – February 5, 1958) was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States. Brown was born as Louis Brownstein in Odessa, Russian Empire. His family emigrated to the United States in 1898 and settled in The Bronx of New York City. Brown wrote lyrics for many of the top Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the day, including Albert Von Tilzer, Con Conrad, and Harold Arlen.

  

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•  Elmer Bernstein

  Elmer Bernstein (April 4, 1922–August 18, 2004) was an American film score composer known for The Ten Commandments, The Man with the Golden Arm, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, Meatballs, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ghostbusters, and Airplane!.

  

  66.7%
  

  33.3%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Jim Steinman

  James Richard "Jim" Steinman (born November 1, 1947) is an American record producer, composer and lyricist, responsible for several hit songs. He has also worked as an arranger, pianist, and singer. His work has included songs in the adult contemporary, rock and roll, dance, pop, musical theater, and film score genres. His work includes such albums as Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell and ', and producing albums for Bonnie Tyler.

  

  50.0%
  

  50.0%
  

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•  Adam Guettel

  Adam Guettel (born December 16, 1964) is an American musical theater composer and lyricist. He is best known for the musical The Light in the Piazza, for which he won two Tony Awards and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations.

  

  33.3%
  

  66.7%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Jonathan Larson

  Jonathan Larson (February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996) was an American composer and playwright noted for the serious social issues of multiculturalism, addiction, homophobia, and AIDS explored in his work. Typical examples of his use of these themes are found in his works, Rent and tick, tick... BOOM!. He received two posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the musical Rent.

  

  50.0%
  

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  50.0%
  
•  Maury Yeston

  Maury Yeston (born October 23, 1945) is an American composer, lyricist, educator and musicologist. He is best known for writing the music and lyrics to Broadway musicals, including Nine in 1982, and Titanic in 1997, both of which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine. Yeston also wrote a significant amount of the music and most of the lyrics to the Tony-nominated musical Grand Hotel in 1989, which was nominated for best score.

  

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