If you've ever looked online for a list of the greatest classical composers, you've no doubt found more than you bargained for, and may be puzzled by the lack of agreement on who the top-10, 20, 50 or 100 were. Some names occur frequently, but never in quite the same order, and some appear on only one list, but never again on another list. This is to be expected as the appreciation of music is highly subjective, and the criteria used by rankers of different backgrounds and tastes are diverse. Even for the very top composer, list makers are about equally divided between J. S. Bach, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
The list presented in this post is not a new list. It is not my own list. It is not a critical or scholarly list. It is a
consensus list - a compilation an averaging of existing lists. It was derived from 21 top composer lists of varied length, some ranked, some unranked, published in books or on websites. (See the accompanying
References Page for the sources of this data.) None of the 21 lists are scholarly. Scholars generally refrain from ranking – though some are lists from composers or musicians. Some additional lists have been posted online since I began this project, but none that I have seen would change the outcome of the consensus ranking.
The consensus was calculated from the frequency of appearance, as well as the ranking, of composers among the 21 lists. Seven lists include 100 composers, and the composers were first sorted, regardless of ranking, into groups based on how many of these lists they appear in. Fifty-six composers occur in all seven lists - a fairly substantial agreement on at least in the upper half of the list. Another 12 composers are found in six of the seven lists, another 13 in five lists, and so on. So the consensus starts off strong, but gradually diminishes as you go down the list, and there is virtually no consensus as to who the final five composers in the top-100 should be.
For the 56 composers found in all top-100 lists, it was possible to further break them down using ranking data from the 18 lists that ranked at least the top 10 or 20 composers. The result was 28 composers who were ranked frequently among the top 20 (Tier 1). These can be considered the core of the greatest composers.
The remaining composers who appear in all 7 of the top-100 lists, but rarely ranked among the top 20, constitute our second and third tiers, depending on their ranking in Phil Goulding’s list of top-50 (A2), and their placement in the tiers of Gary Smook’s unranked top-100 list (A3).
I have favored Goulding’s and Smook’s lists in making some decisions about inclusion and/or ranking. Though (or perhaps because) neither of them is a musical professional, their lists were well-researched, based on rational criteria, and relatively unbiased. Each provides brief biographies and suggested pieces for listening, and can serve as sources for further reading and listening. Their lists can be considered relatively conservative, as they emphasize composers whose music has been most frequently played, recorded, and broadcast over the past century or so.
Some list-makers include composers many of us have never heard of, suggesting that these are composers we should listen to, for one reason or another. Such tips are invaluable and appreciated, but since each appears only once or twice among the 21 lists, they are lost in the consensus analysis. They will, however, reappear in later lists.
The top-100 consensus list is a bare-bones list, without biographical blurbs or listening suggestions. There is plenty of that in the cited references, music appreciation texts, and elsewhere online. It is not my intention to dwell on these top composers, but only to establish a baseline from which to venture further into the realm of overlooked, underrated, and lesser-known composers of the “second 100” and beyond – the main subject of this series of posts. For those lesser known composers, I will provide some brief biographical data and links to recorded performances available on the internet.
So without further ado, here is the top-100 consensus list:
Tier 1. The top 28 composers, who appear frequently among the top 20 in ranked lists. The pair of numbers in parentheses represent the number of times (out of 18) each composer appeared among the top 10, and number of times (out of 10) in the 11-20 ranks of the longer lists, respectively. The numbers in the second column are the average ranking of the composers in the 18 lists. Note that Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart are the only three composers found in everyone’s top-10. The last four composers in this tier did not appear in anyone’s top-10, but were quite frequent between 11 and 20 in the longer lists.
1. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) (18,0) 1.68
2. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) (18,0) 1.72
3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) (18,0) 2.4
4. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) (14,2) 5.9
5. Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) (14,1) 8
6. Claude Debussy (1862-1918) (11,4) 8.9
7. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) (11,3) 7.7
8. Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) (10,4) 9.9
9. Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) (9,2) 8.9
10. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) (9,2) 8.6
11. Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) (8,6) 11.4
12. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) (6,7) 10.1
13. Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) (6,4) 9.5
14. Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) (4,6) 10.2
15. Robert Schumann (1810-1856) (3,4) 12.2
16. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) (2,1) 19.6
17. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) (2,1) 17.2
18. Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) (1,7) 15.7
19. Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) (1,4) 10.7
20. Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) (1,4) 16.5
21. Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) (1,3) 17.8
22. Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) (1,2) 18.3
23. Bela Bartok (1881-1945) (1,2) 18.2
24. Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) (1,2) 20.8
25. Franz Liszt (1811-1886) (0,7) 15.5
26. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) (0,6) 16
27. Richard Strauss (1864-1949) (0,5) 18.4
28. Sergei Prokofiev (1801-1953) (0,3) 18.7
Tier 2. Composers found in all seven top-100 lists, who appear in Smook’s Tier 4 (A3) and Goulding’s top-50 (A2), but with insufficient data for formal ranking. They are listed according to Goulding’s ranking:
29. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
30. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 1525-1594)
31. Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)
32. George Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
33. Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)
34. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
35. Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
36. Christoph Gluck (1714-1787)
37. Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
38. Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)
39. Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
40. Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)
41. Ralph Vaughn-Williams (1872-1958)
42. Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)
43. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
44. Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
45. Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Tier 3. Composers occurring in all seven top-100 lists, but absent from Goulding’s list, listed alphabetically (46-57):
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788)
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Alban Berg (1885-1935)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
William Byrd (?-1623)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Arcangelo Corelli( (1653-1713)
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)
Tier 4. Composers found in six of the seven top-100 lists, including some remainders from Goulding and Smook’s Tier 4: (58-69, alphabetical):
Francois Couperin (1668-1733) (#49 in Goulding)
Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) (#43 in Goulding)
Cesar Franck (1822-1890) (#36 in Goulding)
Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857)
Charles Gounod (1818-1893)
Jules Massenet (1842-1912)
Olivier Messaien (1908-1992)
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Erik Satie (1866-1925)
Johann Strauss Jr (1825-1899) (#46 in Goulding)
Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)
Tier 5. Composers found in five of the seven top-100 lists (70-83, alphabetical)
Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805)
Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)
Josquin DesPrez (?-1521)
Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1612)
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Paul Hindemith (1895-1953) (#33 in Goulding)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Orlando di Lassus (1532-1594)
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864)
Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
Tier 6. Composers found in four of the seven top-100 lists (84-89, alphabetical). Note the odd mix of ancient and 20th century composers:
Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179)
Max Bruch (1838-1920)
Guillaume DuFay (?1397-1474)
Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)
Carl Nielsen (1865-1931)
Tomas Luis Victoria (1548-1611)
Anton von Webern (1883-1945)
Tier 7. Composers occurring in Smook and two other top-100 lists (90-95, alphabetical)
Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990)
Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936)
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) (#48 in Goulding)
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)
Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)
The Gray area. The following composers have checkered appearances among the original lists. They are included either in (1) three top-100 lists but not in Smook, in (2) Smook plus one other list, or (3) only in Smook. If one disagrees with my bias towards Smook’s list, the first four could be added to the list, leaving us still one short. As they are relatively poorly known, however, I prefer to include them in the second 100 list.
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) (3)
Leonin (fl. 1135s–1201) (3)
Perotin (fl ca 1200) (3)
Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672) (3)
Frederick Delius (1862-1934) (Smook + 1)
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) (Smook +1)
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) (Smook +1)
Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840) (Smook +1)
Villa-Lobos, Heitor (1887-1959) (Smook +1)
Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782) (Smook only)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) (Smook only)
Max Reger (1873-1916) (Smook only)
Louis Spohr (1784-1859) (Smook only)
Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) (Smook only)
Leo Delibes (1836-1891) (Smook only)
The decreasing consensus as we go down the list, particularly any semblance of consensus in the last five, suggests that there is no such thing as 100 top composers. 100 is a nice even number, but each lister seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel just to fill it out.
Note, though, that this “bottom of the barrel” still consists of outstanding composers, just too many that are nearly equal. The elite top-100 barrel in fact is sitting atop an even larger barrel of excellent, but largely unranked composers. You will surely recognize the following masterpieces by composers who did not make the top-100 (repeated here from "About this Blog," if you missed it) - and they did write other great music as well! They are just a few of the stars of the second-100 greatest composers.
Neither the top-100 nor the second-100 lists include any composers active primarily in the second half of the 20th century or later. These “contemporary” composers are very important and worthy of our attention, but we don't yet know which of them will stand the test of time in the sense of the earlier great composers. I will provide a list of them separately, with listening samples.
The bulk of the top-100 list consists of composers working largely between 1700 and 1950, those who produced most of the crowd-pleasing music that is often referred to as the “standard repertoire. But several listers have made a point of including composers, who though seldom heard today, made important contributions to the development of Western music, i.e. for their historical influence. These contrasting criteria, make for some strange bedfellows on the list, and will be discussed further in the upcoming post, Schoenberg vs Tchaikovsky.
Some of you may have also noted that there is only one female composer in the entire consensus list. I will defer comment on the reasons for their absence until I get to the second-100, which includes many remarkable women.
Next Chapter
No comments:
Post a Comment