Composer cards to cut out
Free printable composer cards for kids: 24 cards with a name, years, country, era, and one piece to hear. Use them for sorting, matching, and timeline games.
These are 24 cards, eight to a page. Each card has one composer: the name, the years, the country, the era, and one piece to hear first. Print on card stock and cut along the dashed lines.
Five games to play
Line up. Deal five cards. The child puts them in order by birth year. Check the order against the printed timeline.
Sort by era. Make four piles: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern.
Who wrote it? Play one of the pieces. The child finds the card.
Map it. Lay the cards on a map of Europe and North America by country.
Higher or lower. Turn over one card. Guess if the next composer was born earlier or later, then turn it over.
Only the sheet below prints. It fits letter and A4 paper. For a clean page, turn off headers and footers in the print window.
Baroque era
Antonio Vivaldi
1678 to 1741 · Italy
Hear: Spring, from The Four Seasons
People called him the Red Priest because he was a priest with red hair.
Baroque era
Johann Sebastian Bach
1685 to 1750 · Germany
Hear: Prelude, from Cello Suite No. 1
He had 20 children, and several of them became composers too.
Baroque era
George Frideric Handel
1685 to 1759 · Germany and England
Hear: Hallelujah, from Messiah
His Water Music was first played on a boat on the River Thames for a king.
Classical era
Joseph Haydn
1732 to 1809 · Austria
Hear: Symphony No. 94, Surprise, second movement
His Surprise Symphony has one sudden loud chord in the middle of a quiet tune.
Classical era
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1756 to 1791 · Austria
Hear: Variations on Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman
He wrote his first pieces when he was about five years old.
Classical era
Ludwig van Beethoven
1770 to 1827 · Germany
Hear: Symphony No. 5, first movement
He lost most of his hearing and kept writing music.
Romantic era
Franz Schubert
1797 to 1828 · Austria
Hear: The Trout
He wrote more than 600 songs.
Romantic era
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
1805 to 1847 · Germany
Hear: Das Jahr (The Year)
She wrote more than 400 pieces. Most were not published while she lived.
Composer cards, page 1 of 3kidsclassicalmusic.com
Romantic era
Felix Mendelssohn
1809 to 1847 · Germany
Hear: Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream
He wrote his overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream when he was 17.
Romantic era
Frédéric Chopin
1810 to 1849 · Poland
Hear: Minute Waltz
Almost all of his music is for the piano.
Romantic era
Clara Schumann
1819 to 1896 · Germany
Hear: Three Romances for violin and piano
She played concerts for more than 60 years.
Romantic era
Johannes Brahms
1833 to 1897 · Germany
Hear: Lullaby
His Lullaby is one of the best-known cradle songs in the world.
Romantic era
Camille Saint-Saëns
1835 to 1921 · France
Hear: The Swan, from Carnival of the Animals
He wrote Carnival of the Animals as a joke for his friends.
Romantic era
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840 to 1893 · Russia
Hear: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
He wrote three famous ballets: Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker.
Romantic era
Antonín Dvořák
1841 to 1904 · Czech Republic
Hear: Humoresque No. 7
He loved trains and went to the station in Prague to watch them.
Romantic era
Edvard Grieg
1843 to 1907 · Norway
Hear: In the Hall of the Mountain King
He wrote music for a play about Peer Gynt, a boy who meets trolls.
Composer cards, page 2 of 3kidsclassicalmusic.com
Modern era
Claude Debussy
1862 to 1918 · France
Hear: Clair de lune
He wrote a set of piano pieces called Children's Corner for his young daughter.
Modern era
Gustav Holst
1874 to 1934 · England
Hear: Jupiter, from The Planets
He wrote The Planets, with one piece for each of seven planets.
Modern era
Maurice Ravel
1875 to 1937 · France
Hear: Boléro
In Boléro, one tune repeats again and again while the orchestra grows louder.
Modern era
Igor Stravinsky
1882 to 1971 · Russia, France, and the United States
Hear: Infernal Dance, from The Firebird
At the first show of The Rite of Spring, the crowd grew so loud that the dancers could hardly hear the music.
Modern era
Florence Price
1887 to 1953 · United States
Hear: Juba Dance, from Symphony No. 1
In 1933 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played her Symphony No. 1. She was the first Black woman to have a symphony played by a major American orchestra.
Modern era
Sergei Prokofiev
1891 to 1953 · Russia
Hear: Peter and the Wolf
In Peter and the Wolf, each character has its own instrument.
Modern era
Aaron Copland
1900 to 1990 · United States
Hear: Hoe-Down, from Rodeo
He used cowboy songs and folk tunes in his ballets.
Modern era
Benjamin Britten
1913 to 1976 · England
Hear: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
He wrote The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra to show each instrument family in turn.
Composer cards, page 3 of 3kidsclassicalmusic.com
Goes well with
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One page for each of 24 composers: quick facts, a short story, three pieces to hear, and room to write.
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