Stats about classical composers

WieWaldi

Some just told me, there were about 2500 classical composers.
250 of them composed the music that is played today.
36 composed 75% of that.
16 composed 50%.
10 composed 40%.
3 composed 20%, namely Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. And Mozart died young, if he lived longer, this number could probably rise up to 30%.

Is there a punch line? No. I just wanted not to be alone with this information.

BartK

WieWaldi Some just told me, there were about 2500 classical composers.
250 of them composed the music that is played today.
36 composed 75% of that.
16 composed 50%.
10 composed 40%.
3 composed 20%, namely Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. And Mozart died young, if he lived longer, this number could probably rise up to 30%.

These numbers look suspiciously round and convenient. I wouldn't be surprised if they were totally made up. I think just the amount of film music composed for full orchestra greatly surpasses all of Mozart's work.

Anyway, there are several problems with the statement above:

How do you count the total numbers to come up with stats? Pieces? Hours of music? Pages?
What does "played today" mean? By professionals in concerts? By amateurs? How do you know?
Which music do you count as "classical"? Do film scores count?

I think the statement as it is is pretty meanigless and I wouldn't give it too much credit.

sweelinck

WieWaldi

Some just told me, there were about 2500 classical composers. 250 of them composed the music that is >played today.
36 composed 75% of that.
16 composed 50%.
10 composed 40%.
3 composed 20%, namely Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. And Mozart died young, if he lived longer, this number could probably rise up to 30%.

Are these percentages the percentage the of pieces still performed today, or percentages of performances of some piece by the composer?

Sam

Years ago, when I was at University, I did a research project using data from the Carnegie Hall recital database. Not at home right now, maybe I can look up a chart later. But when you look at just piano recitals, Chopin is way out in the lead, followed by Beethoven., then all the rest.

Sam

Stub

Sam But when you look at just piano recitals, Chopin is way out in the lead,

I guess that shouldn't be surprising, since (a) Chopin was a good composer and (b) he was a very piano-centric composer. I would have thought that Bach, as a composer for keyboard music, would have been up there in the recital rankings.

Sam

OK, here are the top 100 I came up with from the Carnegie recital database. Any mistakes are mine, of course! THis is just solo piano recitals. And you have to bear in mind that there are probably several factos influencing what gets played in recitals at Carnegie Hall. What the performers want to learn, what the management thinks will sell tickets, and so forth.

Rank Composer Total Works Percentage
1 Frederic Chopin 8490 22.95 Plot List
2 Ludwig van Beethoven 2699 7.30 Plot List
3 Franz Liszt 2454 6.63 Plot List
4 Johann Sebastian Bach 1900 5.14 Plot List
5 Claude Debussy 1840 4.97 Plot List
6 Robert Schumann 1606 4.34 Plot List
7 Franz Schubert 1262 3.41 Plot List
8 Sergei Rachmaninoff 1190 3.22 Plot List
9 Johannes Brahms 1184 3.20 Plot List
10 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 874 2.36 Plot List
11 Alexander Scriabin 752 2.03 Plot List
12 Domenico Scarlatti 746 2.02 Plot List
13 Maurice Ravel 746 2.02 Plot List
14 Sergey Prokofiev 626 1.69 Plot List
15 Felix Mendelssohn 417 1.13 Plot List
16 Joseph Haydn 343 0.93 Plot List
17 Isaac Albéniz 294 0.79 Plot List
18 Béla Bartók 264 0.71 Plot List
19 Enrique Granados 191 0.52 Plot List
20 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 161 0.44 Plot List
21 Modest Mussorgsky 147 0.40 Plot List
22 Igor Stravinsky 145 0.39 Plot List
23 Dmitry Shostakovich 145 0.39 Plot List
24 Edvard Grieg 135 0.36 Plot List
25 Manuel de Falla 134 0.36 Plot List
26 Olivier Messiaen 124 0.34 Plot List
27 George Gershwin 124 0.34 Plot List
28 Heitor Villa-Lobos 113 0.31 Plot List
29 Jean-Philippe Rameau 110 0.30 Plot List
30 Anton Rubinstein 109 0.29 Plot List
31 César Franck 109 0.29 Plot List
32 Gabriel Fauré 109 0.29 Plot List
33 Alberto Ginastera 104 0.28 Plot List
34 Francis Poulenc 92 0.25 Plot List
35 Richard Wagner 90 0.24 Plot List
36 Carl Maria von Weber 87 0.24 Plot List
37 Ignacy Jan Paderewski 85 0.23 Plot List
38 Samuel Barber 81 0.22 Plot List
39 George Frideric Handel 79 0.21 Plot List
40 Aaron Copland 72 0.19 Plot List
41 Ernesto Lecuona 71 0.19 Plot List
42 Leo Janácek 70 0.19 Plot List
43 Nikolay Karlovich Medtner 69 0.19 Plot List
44 Arnold Schoenberg 68 0.18 Plot List
45 Karol Szymanowski 67 0.18 Plot List
46 Frederic Mompou 67 0.18 Plot List
47 Josef Hofmann 67 0.18 Plot List
48 Antonio Soler 65 0.18 Plot List
49 Charles Ives 65 0.18 Plot List
50 Charles T. Griffes 63 0.17 Plot List
51 Mily Balakirev 62 0.17 Plot List
52 Leopold Godowsky 61 0.16 Plot List
53 Gyorgy Ligeti 59 0.16 Plot List
54 Erno Dohnányi 59 0.16 Plot List
55 Johann Strauss Jr. 57 0.15 Plot List
56 Scott Joplin 57 0.15 Plot List
57 Moritz Moszkowski 55 0.15 Plot List
58 Giuseppe Verdi 54 0.15 Plot List
59 Astor Piazzolla 53 0.14 Plot List
60 Louis Moreau Gottschalk 53 0.14 Plot List
61 François Couperin 53 0.14 Plot List
62 Camille Saint-Saëns 51 0.14 Plot List
63 Edward MacDowell 51 0.14 Plot List
64 Erik Satie 50 0.14 Plot List
65 Gyorgy Kurtag 50 0.14 Plot List
66 Christoph Willibald Gluck 47 0.13 Plot List
67 Dmitry Kabalevsky 41 0.11 Plot List
68 Ferruccio Busoni 40 0.11 Plot List
69 Anonymous 40 0.11 Plot List
70 Bedrich Smetana 38 0.10 Plot List
71 Alban Berg 37 0.10 Plot List
72 Charles-Valentin Alkan 37 0.10 Plot List
73 Fritz Kreisler 35 0.09 Plot List
74 Muzio Clementi 34 0.09 Plot List
75 Joaquín Turina 33 0.09 Plot List
76 Toru Takemitsu 33 0.09 Plot List
77 Elliott Carter 33 0.09 Plot List
78 Paul Hindemith 32 0.09 Plot List
79 Jean Sibelius 31 0.08 Plot List
80 Anatoly Lyadov 30 0.08 Plot List
81 Charles Gounod 30 0.08 Plot List
82 Cécile Chaminade 30 0.08 Plot List
83 Philip Glass 27 0.07 Plot List
84 Moriz Rosenthal 26 0.07 Plot List
85 Darius Milhaud 26 0.07 Plot List
86 Percy Grainger 26 0.07 Plot List
87 Domenico Cimarosa 26 0.07 Plot List
88 Henry Cowell 25 0.07 Plot List
89 Emmanuel Chabrier 25 0.07 Plot List
90 Virgil Thomson 24 0.06 Plot List
91 Folk Song 24 0.06 Plot List
92 Pierre Boulez 24 0.06 Plot List
93 Zygmunt Stojowski 22 0.06 Plot List
94 Frederic Rzewski 22 0.06 Plot List
95 Yiruma 21 0.06 Plot List
96 Frank Martin 21 0.06 Plot List
97 Theodor Leschetizky 21 0.06 Plot List
98 Aram Khachaturian 21 0.06 Plot List
99 Mikhail Glinka 21 0.06 Plot List
100 Ernest Bloch 21 0.06 Plot List

TheBoringPianist

Sam OK, here are the top 100 I came up with from the Carnegie recital database.

A friend of mine put together a dataviz for performances by the NY Phil. Beethoven wins there, with Mozart, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms rounding out the top 5.

Stub Of the top twenty you show in the graph, I've played at least one piece by 13 out of the 20 composers.

18/20! (missing Albéniz, Bartók) Only around 30/100 overall, although I guess I've been learning a lot of stuff outside the top 100

Sgisela

Sam that’s an interesting list, Sam. There are definitely some where I’m surprised by the order. There are a few composers on your list whose orchestral writing I really enjoy, but I’m not familiar with their piano music. So I am now going to have to look them up!

sweelinck

Sam

I counted that I've played at least one keyboard work by 13 "classical" composers not on the list.

Interesting that Poulenc and Milhaud are the only members of Les Six who are represented on the list.

Sam

And for those that like a visual, here is a chart of the top 20. This is just solo piano recitals at Carnegie Hall. Any mistakes are mine!

Stub

Sam, that makes a nice list of composers who wrote music for the piano. Of the top twenty you show in the graph, I've played at least one piece by 13 out of the 20 composers. When I look at the next twenty, the number drops off drastically--to zero! I guess I need to get busy!

Animisha

Cécile Chaminade at 82 seems to be the only woman on the list! Unless she was anonymous and wrote a folk song, of course.
But I wonder if there is any other area in life in which women are so underrepresented. I hope not.

Animisha

BartK just the amount of film music composed for full orchestra greatly surpasses all of Mozart's work.

Is film music classical music?
Oh! We can start a new discussion! 😅

WieWaldi

BartK These numbers look suspiciously round and convenient. I wouldn't be surprised if they were totally made up.

If the numbers are true, I am sure they had been rounded to be convenient. But I have no clue if the numbers are true.
And I have absolutely no idea where those numbers came from. I just know a German "motivation coach" named Vera Birkenbihl stated them. And this info was just 1 minute long clip, maybe used to strengthen another point of her, she was referring in one of her 1-hour speeches. Unfortunately, I can't ask her because she is dead.
So if you think those numbers were totally made up, it is a fair point!

Animisha BartK just the amount of film music composed for full orchestra greatly surpasses all of Mozart's work.

Is film music classical music?
Oh! We can start a new discussion! 😅

Oh yes, this is worth another thread. Only thing I know there is classical music, involving Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic period. (Funny thing is, one period of Classical music is named "Classical", just like alligators are crocodiles, and then there are true crocodiles, also belonging to crocodiles.)

I always wondered what categories film music (Orchestra film music like John Williams), Einaudi, Yiruma, Ffrench, Tiersen and the like belong to. I am sure is you ask people without musical background, many of them would say it is Classical, just because of the instruments used.

BartK

Animisha Is film music classical music?
Oh! We can start a new discussion! 😅

Yeah, why not? If not then what criteria do you use to disqualify someone like John Williams, who is a classically trained composer and who writes music that is just as interesting as any late romantic symphony? If you decide that "classical" is from a certain date range then you're deciding up front to limit the number of composers to your chosen set, which is cheating don't you think?

Also, I'd like to point out that Mozart operas are pretty much the musicals of the 18th century. People went to see them like we watch movies today and the music played pretty much the same role as movie scores today.

ranjit

While I agree with the name recognition aspect, I think audiences react quite positively to accessible pieces by many of these composers. For example, I think Couperin is underrated and that the public would generally like his music.

Sophia

BartK If you decide that "classical" is from a certain date range

Agreed! Classical can be a lot of things... you can even say it's the music from a few centuries ago:

Animisha

WieWaldi Funny thing is, one period of Classical music is named "Classical",

It leads to so many misunderstandings. Just like the name Romantic. One always needs to explain, from the Romantic Era, otherwise people may think you mean songs like "I will always love you" and "My heart will go on". Not that there is anything wrong with those songs - not at al! Just not what I mean.

WieWaldi

sweelinck pieces still performed today

Sidokar

There are significantly more than 2500 classical composers. Imslp has nearly 30000 and it is not complete as the number grows every year.

Sam

Sgisela that’s an interesting list, Sam. There are definitely some where I’m surprised by the order. There are a few composers on your list whose orchestral writing I really enjoy, but I’m not familiar with their piano music. So I am now going to have to look them up!

One thing to bear in mind about my lists is that once you get below Mendelssohn or Haydn everybody gets lost in the noise. So the fact that one composer is 20th and another is 40th means very little.

Since I am an old guy, I still tend to use actual books to do research, and the best book to research piano repertoire is still Maurice Hinson's "Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire". He has passed on now, but the 4th edition has a new co-author. Want to find what some composer way down in the list wrote for piano?- its right there in Hinson's book.

Sam

Sgisela

Sam I was surprised to see Scarlatti and Scriabin as high on the list. I imagine that there are some peculiarities of Carnegie Hall that also contribute to what gets programmed.