The phrase "a time when composers" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a specific period in history or a particular moment when composers were active or influential.
Example: "There was a time when composers like Mozart and Beethoven shaped the course of classical music."
Alternatives: "an era in which composers" or "a period when composers".
At a time when composers were frantically trying out new systems and languages, Feldman choseto follow his intuition.
In the absence of recordings, the only concrete evidence lies in the repertory he sang, written at a time when composers literally tailored opera arias to singers.
The harpsichord's tight sprays were a keen reminder of a time when composers could still feel themselves embraced in a great commonwealth of music going back to the 18th century and beyond.
It was the first symphony by an American woman composer to gain public attention, written at a time when American composers of either gender were a relative rarity on the international scene.
At a time when French composers were looking to escape the shadows of Wagner's epic Romanticism, the French composer's stripped-back mechanical sound, inspired by the humble barrel organ, offered a radically simple approach.
Mr. Bates began with Edward MacDowell's "Keltic" Sonata (1901), a relic from a time when American composers embraced German Romanticism in all its bombastic grandeur.
At a time when few composers devote themselves to overtly patriotic works, Mr. Litkei, who came to the United States from Hungary in 1948, made it his specialty.
At a time when younger composers were emphasizing the melodic potential of a solo line — the signature of the early Baroque — Gesualdo revelled in the venerable art of polyphony, in which each voice has equal importance.
At a time when contemporary composers were generally perceived, however unfairly, as elitist purveyors of aggressively discordant and forbiddingly complex music, Mr. Glass offered music that was jubilantly consonant and purposefully simple.
Bernstein's Serenade was also from 1954 and from a time when the composer was undergoing his own political trials, fearful of being called up by Congress' notorious House Un-Activities CommitteeCommittee for his left-wing sympathies.
There was a time when musical-theater composers, impressed by the mega-success of Mr. Lloyd Webber, strove for pumped-up operatic grandeur.
