The dramatic duo of Victorian London, playwright Sir William Schwenck Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, turned a theatrical corner with the creation of their wildly successful comic operas. For more than 20 years, the pair created a host of now-classic light operas, such as "HMS Pinafore" (1

Dramatic, Lyrical, Musical theater, Overflowing, Pathos, Playful

A generation mourned the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, but the mania surrounding his suicide threatened to eclipse the truncated but notable career of his band, Nirvana. Raw, angry, and phenomenally loud, Nirvana was formed in 1987 by guitarist/vocalist Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic, two disillu

Angry, Dark, Grunge, Pathos, Profane, Rebel

Michael Nyman is, in many ways, the prototypical overachieving baby boomer. Born in London at the very beginning of the boom, his first days were spent under a constant threat of German invasion. As a teenager, he studied music and composition at the Royal Academy of Music and at King's College under

Dramatic, Lush, Moody, Pathos

Shostakovich is often, in musical circles, called the greatest composer of the twentieth century. Yet the quality of his music is so uneven that, while a third of it is the brain-bombing work of a divine genius, another third is almost worthless, and another third scares young violinists into abandon

20th-century music, Catastrophe, Lyrical, Melancholy, Moody, Pathos, Visceral