48 Light music composers

Leroy Anderson was an American composer of short, light concert pieces, of which many were introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. John Williams described him as "one of the great American masters of light orchestral music."

Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold was an English composer. His works feature music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music for brass band and wind band. His style is tonal and rejoices in lively rhythms, brilliant orchestration, and an unabashed tunefulness. He wrote extensively for the theatre, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet, as well as two operas and a musical. He also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Oscar.

Arndt Bause was a German composer of popular songs.

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012.

Auguste van Biene was a Dutch composer, cellist and actor. He became best known for his composition The Broken Melody, performed by the composer as part of a musical play of the same name.

Stanley Black OBE was an English bandleader, composer, conductor, arranger and pianist. He wrote and arranged many film scores and recorded prolifically for the Decca label. Beginning with jazz collaborations with American musicians such as Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter during the 1930s, he moved into arranging and recording in the Latin American music style and also won awards for his classical conducting.

Jim Brickman is an American songwriter and pianist of pop music, plus a radio show host. Brickman has earned six Music recording sales certification, Gold and Platinum albums. He is known for his solo piano compositions, pop-style instrumentals, and vocal collaborations with artists such as Lady Antebellum, Johnny Mathis, Michael W. Smith, Martina McBride, Megan Hilty, Donny Osmond, Delta Goodrem, Olivia Newton-John and many others. He has earned two Grammy nominations for his albums Peace (2003) for Best Instrumental, and Faith (2009) for Best New Age Album; an SESAC "Songwriter of the Year" award; a Canadian Country Music Award for Best Vocal/Instrumental Collaboration; and a Dove Award presented by the Gospel Music Association.

Félix Marie Henri Tilkin, better known by his pen name Ivan Caryll, was a Belgian composer of operettas and Edwardian musical comedies in the English language. He composed some forty musical comedies and operettas.

Carmen Cavallaro was an American pianist. He established himself as one of the most accomplished and admired light music pianists of his generation.

Eric Francis Harrison Coates was an English composer of light music and, early in his career, a leading violist.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer and conductor.

John Robert Coles was a British composer, arranger, and conductor of light music best known for his composition Tyrolean Tango. Coles often composed under the pen-name 'Paul Stewart' and 'Paul Vincent'.

Isaak Osipovich Dunayevsky was a Soviet film composer and conductor of the 1930s and 1940s, who achieved huge success in music for operetta and film comedies, frequently working with the film director Grigori Aleksandrov. He is considered one of the greatest Soviet composers of all time. Many of his songs are very well known and held in high regard in Russia and the former Soviet Union.

David Arthur Fanshawe was an English composer and self-styled explorer with a fervent interest in world music. His best-known composition is the 1972 choral work African Sanctus.

Eric William Fenby OBE was an English composer, conductor, pianist, organist and teacher who is best known for being Frederick Delius's amanuensis from 1928 to 1934. He helped Delius realise a number of works that would not otherwise have been forthcoming.

Adalgiso Ferraris was an Italian-born British composer and pianist. Ferraris' arrangements and compositions were based on classical and popular genres, with a particular flavour of gypsy, Hungarian and Russian traditionals. Among his best known songs are the romantic Russian song "Dark Eyes", "Calinerie", "Souvenir d'Ukraine", "the Russian Pedlar", "Two guitars" and "A Balalaika"

Herman Finck was a British composer and conductor of Dutch extraction.

Percy Eastman Fletcher was a British composer of classical music, born in Derby. He worked as musical director at London theatres including the Drury Lane Theatre and, from 1915 onward, His Majesty's Theatre. Besides, he wrote ballads, works for chorus, and suites for light orchestra, organ voluntaries for church use, as well as pieces commissioned for brass band competitions, including the tone poem Labour and Love used by the Irwell Springs Band to win the 1913 National Championships. This piece is often regarded as a significant moment in the development of the modern brass band movement and repertoire. It was followed by 'An Epic Symphony', used as the test piece for the Championship Section of the National Championships in 1926.

John Herbert Foulds was an English composer of classical music. He was largely self-taught as a composer, and belongs to the figures of the English Musical Renaissance.

Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera. Some of his light operas, especially Merrie England, are still performed.

Gareth Glyn, born Gareth Glynne Davies, is a Welsh composer and radio broadcaster.

Ronald Alfred Goodwin was an English composer and conductor known for his film music. He scored over 70 films in a career lasting over fifty years. His most famous works included Where Eagles Dare, Battle of Britain, 633 Squadron the Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple films, and Frenzy.

Philip Green, sometimes credited as 'Harry Philip Green or Phil Green, was a British film and television composer and conductor, and also an accordion player. He made his name in the 1930s playing in and conducting dance bands, performed with leading classical musicians, went on to score up to 150 films, wrote radio and television theme tunes and library music, and finally turned to church music at the end of his life in Ireland, a song from which proved so popular that it reached No 3 in the Irish charts in 1973.

Edward W. Hardy is an American composer, music director, violinist and violist. He is known as the composer, co-conceiver, music director, and violinist of the Off-Broadway show The Woodsman.

Bradley Joseph is an American composer, arranger, and producer of contemporary instrumental music. His compositions include works for orchestra, quartet, and solo piano, while his musical style ranges from "quietly pensive mood music to a rich orchestration of classical depth and breadth".

William Herbert Jude (1851-1922), usually credited as W.H. Jude, was an English composer and organist. Born in Westleton, Suffolk in September 1851, his parents later moved to Norfolk. He was a precocious child, and attended Wisbech Grammar School where records note that by age eight he was composing incidental music for school plays. He later attended Liverpool Organ School and Liverpool College of Music, also becoming college principal for a while.

Louis-Antoine Jullien was a French conductor and composer of light music.

Albert William Ketèlbey was an English composer, conductor and pianist, best known for his short pieces of light orchestral music. He was born in Birmingham and moved to London in 1889 to study at Trinity College of Music. After a brilliant studentship he did not pursue the classical career predicted for him, becoming musical director of the Vaudeville Theatre before gaining fame as a composer of light music and as a conductor of his own works.

Heinz Kiessling was a German musician, conductor, composer and music producer, known mainly from his work for popular films and television programs. Kiessling's "Temptation Sensation" is the theme song for the long-running American sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Eduard Künneke was a German composer notable for his operettas, operas, theatre music and some orchestral works.

Gordon Langford was an English composer, arranger and performer. He is well known for his brass band compositions and arrangements. He was also a composer of choral and orchestral music, winning an Ivor Novello award for best light music composition for his March from the Colour Suite in 1971.

Henry Nicola Mancini was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

Annunzio Paolo Mantovani, known mononymously as Mantovani, was an Anglo-Italian conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature.

Kento Masuda is an award-winning Japanese composer and recording artist. He is a member of The Recording Academy, and his work has been described as "one of this world's artistic treasures." As an exclusive player for KAWAI pianos, Masuda is the sole player of the one million dollar Crystal Grand Piano.

Lionel John Alexander Monckton was an English writer and composer of musical theatre. He became Britain's most popular composer of Edwardian musical comedy in the early years of the 20th century.

Angela Morley was an English composer and conductor who, as Wally Stott, became a familiar household name to BBC Radio listeners in the 1950s. She attributed her entry into composing and arranging largely to the influence and encouragement of the Canadian light music composer Robert Farnon. Morley transitioned in 1972 and thereafter lived openly as a transgender woman. Later in life, she lived in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Jan Pogány is a Polish classical composer, conductor and cellist. His music adopts the romantic style and is a symbiosis of the modern form of romantic harmony and lyrical melodic line.

Roger Cuthbert Quilter was an English composer, known particularly for his art songs.

Reginald Redman was a conductor and composer.

John Milford Rutter is an English composer, conductor, editor, arranger, and record producer, mainly of choral music.

Alberto Fernando Riccardo Semprini known by his stage name Alberto Semprini, or Semprini, was an English pianist, composer and conductor, known for his appearances on the BBC, mainly on radio.

Marc Shaiman is an American composer and lyricist for films, television, and theatre, best known for his collaborations with lyricist and director Scott Wittman. He wrote the music and co-wrote the lyrics for the Broadway musical version of the John Waters film Hairspray. He has won a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony, and been nominated for seven Oscars.

Johann Strauss II, also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger, the Son, was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century. Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include "The Blue Danube", "Kaiser-Walzer", "Tales from the Vienna Woods", and the "Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka". Among his operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron are the best known.

Donald Ibrahím Swann was a Welsh-born composer, musician, singer and entertainer. He was one half of Flanders and Swann, writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders.

Louis Urgel was the male name under which Louise Legru, née L'Henoret, published her musical compositions. She was one of the few French female composers of light music in the 1920s. Her Vieux Garçons! was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre de la Gaîte-Lyrique on February 21, 1931.

Émile Waldteufel was a French pianist, conductor and composer of dance and concert music.

Kai Warner was the stage name of Werner Last, a German bandleader and musician, and the brother of James Last and Robert Last.

Robert Wendel is an American composer of classical music.