Carl Van Vechten · Public domain

A pianist whose technique — built on relaxed weight and economy of motion rather than force — reshaped how the instrument was taught, passed down through pupils like Heinrich Neuhaus. Ferruccio Busoni credited only Godowsky and himself with adding anything genuinely new to keyboard writing since Liszt. His 53 Studies on Chopin's Études, reworking the originals into new contrapuntal and technical problems, remain his best-known compositions, alongside the Java Suite drawn from his travels in Southeast Asia.