Weber was the son of a town musician and theatrical impresario. He was taught as a boy by Michael Haydn in Salzburg, then by court organist, Kalcher, in Munich (1798-1800).

By 1800 he had already composed an opera, a mass, and piano works. He went to Vienna in 1803 as pupil of Vogler, through whose influence he became Kapellmeister at the Breslau municipal theatre from 1804-6. He worked in Karlsruhe from 1806-7, where he wrote two symphonies. He held a court secretarial post in Stuttgart between 1807-10, where he was encouraged by Kapellmeister, Danzi. He travelled to Munich 1811, where his pianoforte improvisations were acclaimed. He was appointed director of the Prague Opera and worked there from 1813-16. Weber became Court Kapellmeister in Dresden in 1817. He went to London in 1826, staying with Sir George Smart in Great Portland St., supervising rehearsals at Covent Garden and he died from tuberculosis 7 weeks later in Smart's house.

Der Freischültz (‘The Marksman’) one of the most popular of all German operas was produced initially in Berlin to tumultuous acclaim in 1821 and in four London theatres, Edinburgh, and Philadelphia in 1824 followed by Dublin and New York in 1825. The plot is of German folk lore and the natural world. Some aspects of Weber's instrumentation in "Der Freischutz" are revolutionary. For example, the solo roles given to the four horn players at the opening of the Overture were the first of their kind. He combined muted and open strings, and used a large number of brass instruments and a chorus. The clarinets have an unusually important role.

In the rigid official musical establishment of Paris in the latter half of the 19th century Gabriel Fauré won acceptance with difficulty.

He was a pupil of Camille Saint-Saens at the Louis Niedermeyer School. He played the organ in various Parisian churches for many years and eventually became chief organist and choirmaster at La Madeleine.

In 1897 he became a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included Boulanger, Ravel and Enescu. He was appointed director of the Conservatoire in 1905.
Faure composed his famous and seductive Pavane at Le Vesinet in the summer of 1887 for the conductor Jules Danbe, who planned to include it in his concert series.

However, Danbe's theatre burned down, and the work was first heard in its original, orchestral form (without chorus) in Paris at the Concerts Lamoureux the following year, where it achieved a resounding success The composer later added an optional choir to sing pastiche 18th-century verses telling of pastoral love; the sparing use of the voices only goes to underline the piece's delicate, airy scoring.

Poulenc was taught piano by his mother. At fifteen he studied with Ricardo Viñes, who encouraged his ambition to compose and introduced him to Satie, Casella, Auric, and
others.

In 1920 he studied harmony for three years with Koechlin, but never studied counterpoint or orchestration. His knowledge of form was instinctive. In 1920, a music critic, Henri Collet, selected 6 of Les Nouveaux Jeunes and called them Les Six, Poulenc being among them.

He rediscovered his Roman Catholic faith after the death of a close friend, Dennis Brain, in a car crash. This together with the poetry of Paul Eluard, made him altogether a more serious and mature man and gave him the impetus to compose the organ concerto in 1938. Throughout, it has many changing moods from the gothic opening (influenced by Bach) through the rhythmic middle section to its finale. This is highly original in its treatment of the solo instrument. His music, eclectic yet strongly personal in style, is essentially diatonic and melodious, embroidered with 20th-century. dissonances It has wit, elegance, depth of feeling, and a bitter-sweetness which derives from the mixture in his personality of gaiety and manic depression. Poulenc also wrote piano and harpsicord concerto. In 1946 he said: ‘I have no system for writing music, thank God! (by system I mean “contrivances”)’.

Delibes was trained at the Paris Conservatoire, where he achieved no particular distinction yet, so great an admirer of Delibes was Tchaikovsky, that he declared his own Swan Lakeballet music to be “poor stuff”. Delibes was the first to raise the standard of ballet music from the low level to which it had sunk. He had been the pupil of the composer Adolphe Adam, (the composer of the ballet Giselle), who secured him a job at the Théâtre Lyrique at the age of 17: this immediately spurred him to compose fifteen operettas in as many years.

In 1870 he composed the comic ballet Coppélia, whose wealth of melody and delicately coloured orchestration made it an instant popular favourite.

The ballet Coppélia, based on a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann of old Dr. Coppelius and his doll Coppélia, who seems to come to life was staged at the Opéra in 1870. Delibes excelled as a composer of operetta, his career culminating in equally successful operas of a more serious kind.