Mikhail Glinka lived from 1804 until 1857. He was greatly influenced by Russian folk music. Glinka's operas mark the beginning of musical nationalism in Russia and he became known as "The Father of Russian Music".

Christopher Willibald Gluck, 1714 to 1787, was a pioneer reformer of opera. In his operas all the music served the drama, rather than interrupting the action so that singers could only display their voices.

Leopold Godowsky lived from 1870 until 1938. He was born in what was then Poland and was one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his time, taking American citizenship in 1891. As a composer, he wrote demanding music for the piano, with arrangements and studies that offer considerable technical challenge. His Waltz Masks and music for two pianists give a sample of his style.

Karl Goldmark lived from 1830 until 1915. Hungarian by birth, Karl Goldmark made his principal career in Vienna, after earlier years during which he earned his living as a violinist in theatre orchestras and as a teacher. Largely self-taught as a composer, he had his first success with his String Quartet, Op. 8, in 1860. He joined in the establishment of a Wagner Society in Vienna and gradually assumed a position of great importance in the musical life of the city.

Goldmark's opera Die Königin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba) enjoyed considerable popularity also in Italy, its musical idiom influenced to some extent by the music of the synagogue with which the composer was familiar from his childhood. Other operas were less successful, although his opera based on Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale exemplified a form of stage work more familiar from Humperdinck. Orchestral Music In addition to two symphonies and two violin concertos, Goldmark wrote a series of concert overtures and the popular Rustic Wedding Symphony.

Goldmark wrote a series of works for conventional chamber ensembles, duos, trios, quartets and quintets, the later compositions showing signs of other contemporary influences, within the prescribed forms.

Boris Goldovsky was born in 1908 born in Moscow, Russia. He is a pianist, conductor and opera producer who was trained in Germany. He soloed on piano with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 13. In 1930 he came to the U.S.A. to concertize and teach but by the end of the decade he had diverted his talents and energies to producing operas. He ran the opera program at Tanglewood from 1942 until 1962, founded the New England Opera in 1946 and the Goldovsky Opera Institute in 1963. Both the New England Opera and the Goldovsky Opera Institute are Boston-based. In 1977 he became head of the opera department at the Curtis Institute. He was well known to a broad public as a commentator for the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts but to several generations of American opera singers he was known for promoting opera in English and for demanding that singers be truly able to act their roles.

Benny Goodman was essentially the pioneer of swing. The jazz clarinetist and bandleader re-wrote the book on jazz music by speeding up the tempo and placing accents and emphasis on notes between the beats, earning him the nickname "the King of Swing". Not only was he a world-class clarinetist, responsible for reviving the popularity of the instrument, but also an excellent arranger and composer. He was one of the first bandleaders to break the color barrier by hiring black musicians.

Benny was born Benny David Goodman in 1909. He was raised in the poverty of a Jewish ghetto in Chicago, growing up with the sounds of New Orleans jazz greats like King Oliver, Freddie Keppard, and Louis Armstrong in his home. Benny began playing the clarinet at the age of twelve, and formed his first band at the age of sixteen, "The Benny Goodman Trio", which became one of the very first interracial jazz ensembles. He went on to play with many groups, including "Doc Cook and His Dreamland Orchestra".

However, by 1934, it was time for a change. That year, he put together his own big band. Using the compositions and arrangements of fellow swing pioneer Fletcher Henderson, he almost single-handedly gave birth to the "swing era" of the thirties and forties. He would go on to spread his music to all corners of the globe, travelling to places such as the Soviet Union, Europe, and the Far East, playing both jazz and classical music along the way.

Aside from his success in music, Goodman was also a superstar personality, if not to his co-workers, to the American public, receiving roles in films, and radio and television programs. He also made the clarinet one of the most popular instruments to play after it had been nearly absent in music since ragtime. Goodman died in 1986.

François-Joseph Gossec lived from 1734 until 1829.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was America's first prodigy. At 6 he played the violin, when he was 12, the piano and always performed his own compositions. He was also America's first idol - women rushed onstage to fight over the white gloves he always wore onstage), the first American international star and the first composer to use Latin-American rhythms in his compositions.

Gottschalk died in 1869.

Pope Gregory lived from 590 until 604 and he improved greatly on Bishop Ambrose's chants. Gregorian chants became very popular during his lifetime and are being sold on CD today.

Edvard Hagerup Grieg lived between 1843 and 1907. He is considered to be a romantic composer.

Grieg was a staunch patriot and one of the first of Norway's composers to write truly national Norwegian music. He set Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt to music as well as many other Norwegian plays, poems, folk songs and dances.

Grieg became known as the "Chopin of the North" thanks to his typically Scandinavian Piano Concerto. He was only 25 when this Concerto was composed in 1868.

Ferde Grofé (Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé) was a composer/arranger who was born in New York City in 1892. He died in 1972. An arranger for Paul Whiteman's "symphonic jazz" orchestra, Grofé orchestrated Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and composed orchestral suites expressing American locales, notably the Grand Canyon Suite (1931). The modern-style orchestra based upon saxophones rather than strings is attributed to him.

Pietro Giovanni Guarneri