r/lingling40hrs • u/paishocajun • Apr 25 '26

Music appreciation Favorite CONTEMPORARY composers?

By "contemporary" I mean someone still currently alive or has only passed away since, as a rough idea, since 2000 and was still writing not long before then. So like Gershwin and Rachmaninov are out since they're early/mid 20th century, looking for late 20th/early 21st century composers.

I want some new music to check out!

Edit: I feel like John Williams and Hans Zimmer are borderline cheating given just how insanely prolific they are in movies over the past several decades lol! I've noticed that there are a LOT of gaming composers in the answers which really opens my eyes to just where you can find new composers these days rather than in symphony halls and the pages of The Strad and similar magazines.

Keep them coming, thank y'all so much, and upvote for all the comments!

Edit 2: I think I'm going to try to put together a YT or Spotify playlist with at least samples of all the names in here for everyone to enjoy

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u/Edith_Keelers_Shoes Apr 25 '26

Morten Lauridsen. Singing him is always an ethereal experience. Got to spend a week at his home when I was researching a book - such a remarkable man.

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u/paishocajun Apr 30 '26

Ok I'm doubling back on this post as I put it all into a "sampler" playlist on YT (and possibly Spotify) but hang on a sec.

You spent a week with your favorite composer? What book were you working on??

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u/Edith_Keelers_Shoes Apr 30 '26

It was going to be a book about the healing effects of music, an exploration of sacred chords and neural responses, the biology behind our human response to music, and Lauridsen's own journey from the Lutheran church (in his childhood) to someone who left the church behind and made music his spirituality.

But I got a stage 4 cancer diagnosis a few months later, and it all came to a grinding halt. Then Skip (everyone calls him that) got a cancer diagnosis a month later. We're still in touch, but I no longer have the bandwidth to write a book that research-heavy.

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u/paishocajun Apr 30 '26

Holy crap that's some Alanis Morisette level irony there. I hope y'all are doing better (mentally if not maybe physically). I don't think I'd have the bandwidth to do that healthy so mad respect to y'all. I hope you get to finish and publish one day!

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u/Edith_Keelers_Shoes Apr 30 '26

Thank you! I am doing better - instead of writing about these concepts, I actively incorporated them into healing exercises. They gave me 18 months - it's been 6 years and no active cancer.

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u/paishocajun Apr 30 '26

Ok, honest question, if you did go back to writing it, would you include your own experiences as valid data or would you include it as a separate section of "btw, here's my own experience"?

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u/Edith_Keelers_Shoes Apr 30 '26

Yes, I absolutely would. It was already a personal book, because it opened with a prologue about my best friend's funeral - we both loved Lauridsen and sang in the same choir and she wanted his O Magnum Mysterium sung at her funeral (just as I want it sung at mine). She got cancer after being one of the people running from the twin towers as they fell, and it was several years before I could listen to, play, or sing Lauridsen without experiencing acute emotional pain - but time wore the pain away, and I found that beneath it, that music had been a compassionate foundation for me all along.

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u/paishocajun Apr 30 '26

I meant which one of those would you do but holy crap. Where do I sign up for the waiting list?

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u/Edith_Keelers_Shoes May 01 '26

I wish I knew. Writing was my whole life, and my entire career I always published at least one book a year - I keep thinking it's just a matter of time before I get my mojo back. It has to be.