Vote

Bruce Springsteen!!

No doubt about it—Lennon-McCartney.

Tom Waits

Lennon-McCartney

John Williams

Ryuichi Sakamoto rules!

Samuel Barber or Paul Hindemith. Anyone who thinks that people who only write down words are composers don't know what a composer is, in the musical sense. That person is just a poet. It's much more difficult, in my 4th-year music-major opinion, to sit down at a desk and write actual notes: quarters, eighths, whole notes, whatever. So those two have my vote for best of the 20th century.

Gustav Mahler—No one before or since wrote such challenging music. It makes you think AND feel.

Ron Mael, SPARKS

G GERSHWIN

It's impossible for there to be a "Greatest" composer in this century, just as it was impossible in the last century. However, my list would include Copland, Thomson, Moross, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Arnold, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Korngold, Rozsa, Herrmann, Waxman, and Goldsmith.

To me, "favorite composer" would mean someone who wrote fun and/or interesting and/or extremely pleasurable music, with grandiloquent historical significance optional. So many fine 20th-century composers from whom to choose. Funny you should mention Aaron Copland . . . he's the one! Close behind would be Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lennon-McCartney, and Jimi Hendrix.

Buddy Holly

Theres just too many

Todd Matchikiza

Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Bob Dylan, who has had significant impact on popular music in the last 50 years, and on lyrics in particular.

Sergei Prokofiev

Stravinsky

Freddie Mercury

Jimmy Page

Aaron Copland, because his music, for me, captures the essense of America.

Ives for classical music, Robert Johnson for blues.

My favorite 20th Century is the one to whose music I'm listening, because I'm in the mood for it, at the time.

Brian Wilson

Dmitri Shostakovich. No one else better illustrates in music the tragic 20th century.

Frank Zappa

McCartney

The man whose songs really Move me is Willie Dixon.