Important French composers include Pérotin, Machaut, Du Fay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Lully, Charpentier, Couperin, Rameau, Leclair, Grétry, Méhul, Auber, Berlioz, Alkan, Gounod, Offenbach, Franck, Lalo, Saint-Saëns, Delibes, Bizet, Chabrier, Massenet, Widor, Fauré, d'Indy, Chausson, Debussy, Dukas, Vierne, Duruflé, Satie, Roussel, Hahn, Ravel, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Auric, Messiaen, Françaix, Dupré, Dutilleux, Xenakis, Boulez, Guillou, Grisey, and Murail.
[2] Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music.
In the late sixteenth-century, composers attempted to recreate Greek drama using a style called monody.
Later in the eighteenth century, the Classical style dominated, with the main forms being sonatas, symphonies, and string quartets.
During this era, French composers such as Debussy and Ravel developed a style called Impressionism, which emphasized tone "colours", and which used chords purely for their sound (as opposed to for their harmonic role).
The French composer Boulez abandoned the entire tonal (key-centered) tradition of Western music with a style called Serialism.