GMG's Top 10 Composers

[Brahmsian]

Although, Ray, I guess I exceeded the "few words or phrase(s)" ; )

Oh, OK, I remember now.  Thanks, Karl.  This is actually something I still have to do for my own picks on this thread.  Homework I'll get to later.

[Chaszz]

Who are the composers in boldface? Are they the ones chosen by the NY Times?

[Scarpia]

Who are the composers in boldface? Are they the ones chosen by the NY Times?

They are the ones you voted for.

[Que]

I missed: Dufay, Machaut, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Froberger, Charpentier and F. Couperin.. 

Oh, and - how could I forget - Josquin Desprez.

Q

[karlhenning]

As a composer, I must chide myself, too: How could I forget that music stopped at 1800? ; )

[DavidW]

As a composer, I must chide myself, too: How could I forget that music stopped at 1800? ; )

If your life was a Shyamalan movie, it would be because you are dead and you forgot... Salieri.

[Grazioso]

"Ok, Henning, nothing fancy for the first movement; we're going with a standard sonata-allegro..."

[karlhenning]

"But, 'standard sonata-allegro' is an illusion . . . ."

[Grazioso]

"But, 'standard sonata-allegro' is an illusion . . . ."

"Is not, is not, is NOT!!!"

[Chaszz]

They are the ones you voted for.

Oh. Interesting feature.

And I was thinking what good sense the Times critic had to pick the same ones as me.

[milk]

I love keyboard music and hardly listen to anything else. How would your list change if you were listing your top ten in terms of keyboard music? Do you think that someone who excludes a category - for example someone who doesn't like opera - would necessarily have a very different list? As a keyboard music enthusiast, I wanted to add C.P.E. Bach to the list. Maybe I'm nuts!

[madaboutmahler]

Johan Sebastian Bach 66 (7.4%) Samuel Barber 5 (0.6%) Bela Bartok 16 (1.8%) Ludwig van Beethoven 75 (8.4%) Alban Berg 7 (0.8%) Hector Berlioz 9 (1%) Leonard Bernstein 0 (0%) Johannes Brahms 61 (6.8%) Benjamin Britten 4 (0.4%) Anton Bruckner 26 (2.9%) Frederic Chopin 30 (3.4%) Aaron Copland 1 (0.1%) Claude Debussy 29 (3.3%) Antonin Dvorak 24 (2.7%) Gabriel Faure 8 (0.9%) George Gershwin 1 (0.1%) Frederic Handel 15 (1.7%) Franz Joseph Haydn 30 (3.4%) Charles Ives 6 (0.7%) Gyorgy Ligeti 12 (1.3%) Franz Liszt 8 (0.9%) Gustav Mahler 45 (5%) Felix Mendelssohn 9 (1%) Olivier Messiean 6 (0.7%) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 63 (7.1%) Francis Poulenc 3 (0.3%) Sergei Prokofiev 23 (2.6%) Giacomo Puccini 3 (0.3%) Sergei Rachmaninov 16 (1.8%) Maurice Ravel 17 (1.9%) Gioacchino Rossini 3 (0.3%) Domenico Scarlatti 4 (0.4%) Arnold Schoenberg 12 (1.3%) Franz Schubert 44 (4.9%) Robert Schumann 23 (2.6%) Dmitri Shostakovich 31 (3.5%) Jean Sibelius 26 (2.9%) Richard Strauss 18 (2%) Igor Stravinsky 31 (3.5%) Peter Tchaikovsky 31 (3.5%) Giuseppe Verdi 9 (1%) Antonio Vivaldi 5 (0.6%) Richard Wagner 37 (4.1%)

Well, from this list, my top 10 would be (in alphabetical order)
Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Shostakovich, R.Strauss and Tchaikovsky.

Shame that some of my favourites were not here, but oh well!

[Lisztianwagner]

Mine would be:
Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Mahler, Mozart, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, R. Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner.

What a pity I had to leave out many other composers I love, Bruckner, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Ravel, Schoenberg, Debussy, Dvorak, etc....

Ilaria

[North Star]

Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Ravel, Schubert, Sibelius, Stravinsky
No room for Chopin, Dvorak, Liszt, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Tchaikovsky

[Geo Dude]

Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovich, Wagner.

That said, I felt pretty guilty about leaving out Sibelius and Stravinsky.

Also, some thoughts based on some earlier comments in the thread:  I don't listen to much Haydn or Mozart but included both in the list because I recognize their importance, and Brahms would, in fact, be in my top five if we were doing a top five list.

[mc ukrneal]

We've had 30 more votes since our last tally (now at 90 votes), and there have been some changes (percentage of GMG voters that voted for composer in parentheses)...
1. Beethoven:          81 (90%)
2. Bach:                  72 (80%)
3. Mozart:               67 (74%)
4. Brahms:              65 (72%)
5. Schubert:            51 (57%)
6. Mahler:               49 (54%)
7. Wagner:              41 (46%)
8-tie. Haydn:           34 (38%)
8-tie. Shostakovich: 34 (38%)
10. Stravinsky:        33 (37%)

Nipping at their heels with 32 votes (36%) are Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Debussy. Interestingly, the largest gap is between #4 and #5. And is it no wonder we never agree on much looking at these results!

Here is the voting result from the NYT (I cannot calculate the % as I don't see the total that voted). Instead, I put the original writer's top 10 in parentheses:
1. Beethoven     (Bach)
2. Bach             (Beethoven)
3. Mozart          (Mozart)
4. Brahms         (Schubert)
5. Tchaikovsky  (Debussy)
6. Chopin          (Stravinsky)
7. Schubert       (Brahms)
8. Haydn           (Verdi)
9. Wagner         (Wagner)
10. Debussy      (Bartok)

The votes on the left were followed by: Handel, Mahler, Vivaldi, and Verdi. The biggest decline here is between #3 and #4, where Brahms has only 60% of Mozart's votes (a much steeper drop than between our #4 and #5.

[Roberto]

I would vote for Webern also but he is not on the list.