Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. Schubert already died before his 32nd birthday, but was extremely prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music. Appreciation of his music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the late Classical and early Romantic eras and is one of the most frequently performed composers of the early nineteenth century.
It was in the genre of the Lied that Schubert made his most indelible mark. Prior to Schubert's influence, Lieder tended toward a strophic, syllabic treatment of text, evoking the folksong qualities engendered by the stirrings of Romantic nationalism. Schubert expanded the potentialities of the genre like no other composer before.

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) is one of most important tango composers of all time. Surprisingly, he spent a large part of his youth in New York. In 1937, Piazzolla returned to his mother country Argentina. There, he started to focus on a career as a classical pianist while in the evening he would play accordion in tango cabaret. From 1955, he worked on his own compositions and wove these two influences together to a new, refreshing sound: the 'tango neuvo'.

At the wedding of crown prince Willem-Alexander and Máxima Zorreguieta, Carl Kraayenhof made a spectacular impression with his performance of Adios Noniño. Piazzolla died in 1992.