Charles Griffes, American pianist and composer (born 1884)

Charles Tomlinson Griffes was an American composer for piano, chamber ensembles and voice. His initial works are influenced by German Romanticism, but after he relinquished the German style, his later works make him the most famous American representative of musical Impressionism, along with Charles Martin Loeffler. He was fascinated by the exotic, mysterious sound of the French Impressionists, and was compositionally much influenced by them while he was in Europe. He also studied the work of contemporary Russian composers such as Scriabin, whose influence is also apparent in his use of synthetic scales.