composer
Americannoun
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a person who composes music
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a person or machine that composes anything, esp type for printing
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of composer
Explanation
A composer is an artist who writes music to be played or performed by musicians. A classical composer might work by writing out musical notation and trying things out on the piano. If you're a composer, you most likely write classical, jazz, music for film, or another type of primarily instrumental music, without lyrics. A writer of popular or rock music is more likely to be called a "songwriter." A composer might compose symphonies as a profession, or write short tunes as a hobby. In Old French, composer means "put together, arrange, or write," from com-, "with," and poser, "to place."
Vocabulary lists containing composer
Music - Introductory
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Academy Awards, List 3
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Music - Middle School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
As such, he was given a measure of financial stability, and the prolific composer turned out five more symphonies over the next dozen years.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026
Sohm is a longtime fan of Boyer’s music, and in 2023 he reached out to the composer about teaming up for the country’s 250th.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2026
After racking up interest from readers, she was contacted by actor Rhys Jennings who, alongside Olivier Award–winning composer Darren Clark, created a musical.
From BBC ● Oct. 25, 2026
The German composer adapts several Scottish folk songs in a work for orchestra and violin that beautifully evokes a place and its people.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026
Tchaikovsky, though, was the first Russian composer to achieve meaningful fame outside Russia.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
He used the piano much as baroque composers employed the harpsichord, as a sort of spine to bind the musical action together, and the instrument is found in all but one of the six symphonies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026
To achieve that, she commissioned additional music from film trailer composers, including Hans Zimmer's company Bleeding Fingers.
From BBC ● Oct. 18, 2026
Rockstar posted a new trailer online for "GTA VI" featuring a song from "original score composers Justice", who are best known for their work during the late "French Touch" electro wave of the early 2000s.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
The new incentive is aimed at bringing back jobs for the industry’s editors, sound mixers, composers and visual effects artists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026
This monumental new piece announced to the next generation of composers that the symphony was now to have an epic dimension.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
