Stats about classical composers

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

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:

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

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!

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

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.

Sgisela 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.

There was a time not that long ago when every program would start with a Scarlatti sonata or something else Baroque. Just from my experience going to Spivey Hall in Atlanta, programs used to be more varied, with something from every period. Now they tend to have a theme - like all Schubert, or all the Chopin Etudes, or all late Beethoven and so forth.

Another thing to bear in mind with the Carnegie Hall database is that it goes back to the 1890s. That is still late Romantic. They weren't playing Debussy or Ravel in 1890. Scarlatti wasn't rediscovered until mid 20th century. Rachmaninoff started playing his own music there between the world wars. So by looking at the entire history things might be a bit skewed. A more ambitious person than myself (I am enjoying my retirement, thank you) could really do some interesting research by looking at how programs have changed over the years. Enough material there for a PhD in musicology. Or a book for music nerds...

Sam

Pallas
I’m interested in this. Do you have any ideas where to look for an answer? I started studying classical piano so I have the skill to play film scores, advanced versions of American standards, and ragtime among other things. I understand that “classical” is both an umbrella term and a specific genre, and much film score music is often called “neoclassical,” but in my admittedly uninformed way I’ve been pretty focused on transferable skills, and if it’s complexity that assigns genre, lots of non-classical is plenty complex, sophisticated stuff just looking at scores. If this should be a separate topic, please say, otherwise, I might post a page from a book I just got of ragtime written during the 1970s revival to see what you advanced pianists might say about its flavor (is it classical, why or why not?)

At the University I attended (and probably all schools in the US), ragtime was accepted for required recitals as a modern piece. At least Scott Joplin was. This was at the undergraduate level. Might be too easy for graduate level recitals. And this was a typical regional US university, not a conservatory or a prestigious school.

Pallas
"Modern" is an umbrella term that covers a vast variety of musical styles. I don't really agree on putting all 20th century music in one bucket. Each style has specific challenges.

Ragtime is harmonically very "classical" but the main difficulty is the rhythm, especially the typical ragged syncopation.

Film music is relatively straightforward (once you reach a certain level) because it often has a more transparent texture and lots of repeating patterns, much like the classical era but with more modern harmonies.

Pop is harmonically simple (although unlike rag it uses modern harmonies) but has a lot of rhythmic difficulties. There is rarely a pop tune that doesn't syncopate. Almost all pop is on the off beat (2 and 4) and that is usually emphasized strongly in the LH while the melody is syncopated.

Jazz is hard. Harmonically, melodically, rhythmically. And there's the whole improvisation thing too. Maybe I'll figure it out one day...

I love the way this discussion has shifted to what counts as classical...

Re being born in the US, how about Billy Joel? And no, I don't mean his pop music, I mean his solo, classical piano music.

I think this is it:

OTOH, there's this, I Gironi, by Einaudi, which I always think of as having a very "popular music" feel, not pop music, but modern contemporary solo piano that I would call more "popular" than "classical." I think it's the chord progressions for me. Give a listen and tell me what you think:

In fact imslp doesnot have all the composers of classical music. It has only only those for which we have works in a written form. But numerous composers either never published anything or their work was lost. So the 30000 can be considered as a minimum. Of course many of them are minor composers. And the question of what can be considered as classical is also to be factored.

Pallas Bolcom won the pulitzer prize for his music and was a composition professor at the University of Washington. But even better, Marc Andre Hamelin recorded all of his rags. So they are a part of the "classical" repertoire. But so is his atonal music, like the etudes. Here is his non-tonal rag - all the elements of ragtime, but not tonal: