Sunshine Reger 3,568 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 The December 2019 issue of the BBC Classical Music Magazine features a poll of 174 leading composers of today about who the 5 greatest composers of all time were. I'm told that John Williams selected Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Brahms. The results of the tally are otherwise quite wacky - Chopin on the 20th spot received only 6 votes, and Rachmaninoff on the 50th got just 3. Stravinsky on the other hand... 1. Bach 2. Stravinsky 3. Beethoven 4. Mozart 5. Debussy 6. Ligeti 7. Mahler 8. Wagner 9. Ravel 10. Monteverdi 11. Britten 12. Sibelius 13. Messiaen 14. Bartók 15. Shostakovich 16. Haydn 17. Saariaho 18. Brahms 19. Reich 20. Chopin 21. Vaughan Williams 22. Schoenberg 23. Gesualdo 24. Janáček 25. Schubert 26. Gershwin 27. Glass 28. Ives 29. Prokofiev 30. Lutoslawski 31. Cage 32. Tchaikovsky 33. Berg 34. Feldman 35. Varèse 36. Webern 37. Byrd 38. R.Strauss 39. Verdi 40. Elgar 41. Birtwistle 42. Knussen 43. Sondheim 44. Stockhausen 45. Satie 46. Tallis 47. Hildegard von Bingen 48. Boulez 49. Schumann 50. Rachmaninov Remco 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom 4,933 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 Boy, you are using the word "selected" in the most amphibolous way possible. St0rMl0rD and mrbellamy 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Disco Stu 15,500 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 I thought everyone breathed a sigh of relief when they were finally allowed to admit how much they'd always hated Boulez. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunshine Reger 3,568 Posted November 4, 2019 Author Share Posted November 4, 2019 . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom 4,933 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 6 minutes ago, Modest Expectations said: Still higher than Haendel, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brueckner, Berlioz, and Dvorak for example... (they are gone) What was I supposed to do? Kill Mufasa? John Williams selects his top five composers of all time. St0rMl0rD 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Naïve Old Fart 10,194 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 What? No Holst? No Walton? No Kodaly? No Strauss: J? No Adams? #44: I can hardly hear myself think, above his rackets! #41: Really? Come on. What the hell's going on, around here? Who the hell are you people?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dutton 7,166 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 No Bizet or Berlioz? There goes my Star Trek reference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joni Wiljami 1,207 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 174 "leading composers" 🤭🤭🤭 What would they know? And I hate lists. I would ask the musicians!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oomoog the Ecstatic 314 Posted November 4, 2019 Share Posted November 4, 2019 Do yourselves a favor and click here: 2 hours ago, Modest Expectations said: Chopin on the 20th spot received only 6 votes, 9 votes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unlucky Bastard 8,414 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 Margin of error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
publicist 4,647 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 Happy for the top spots for Ravel and Debussy. Bayesian 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 10 hours ago, hornist said: 174 "leading composers" 🤭🤭🤭 What would they know? And I hate lists. I would ask the musicians!! Are you implying that composers aren't musicians? 12 hours ago, Modest Expectations said: 6. Ligeti Surprised he came this high up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rough cut 1,739 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 Fun experiment. But this list is wack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thor 8,035 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 35 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said: Ligeti Surprised he came this high up. I think it makes sense. He's one of the most towering musical figures of the 20th century, and very influential also in terms of a lot of contemporary film music. We can't only have 'dusty' old composers on the list. On that note, I'm glad to see a few LIVING composers on the list as well. Pärt, Adams or Penderecki would also have been good contenders here. Remco 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 4 minutes ago, Thor said: Pärt, Adams or Penderecki would also have been good contenders here. Yes, they would have made more sense to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remco 687 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 1 hour ago, Thor said: I think it makes sense. He's one of the most towering musical figures of the 20th century, and very influential also in terms of a lot of contemporary film music. We can't only have 'dusty' old composers on the list. On that note, I'm glad to see a few LIVING composers on the list as well. Pärt, Adams or Penderecki would also have been good contenders here. Also, his work is much more appreciated by listeners and performers than compared to, say, Stockhausen or Boulez. Which is no small feat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Skywalker 1,925 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 17 hours ago, Modest Expectations said: 35. Varèse So that's the guy who composed some sarabandes....and all these years I thought varèse was a place...as in "russian waltz" or "German opera" LOL https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varese Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils 35 Posted November 5, 2019 Share Posted November 5, 2019 Hmm, am I the only one here who hasn't heard about Saariaho, Birtwistle or Knussen? But I guess these are guys worth checking out, then... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 7, 2019 Share Posted November 7, 2019 I've heard their names, but can't remember any musical works by them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joni Wiljami 1,207 Posted November 7, 2019 Share Posted November 7, 2019 Saariaho is from Finland, living now in France, composing modern music in a buncker. Brobably hasn't seen the sun in the last 4 years. I do not like her music. Remco 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loert 2,594 Posted November 8, 2019 Share Posted November 8, 2019 I am not surprised at all that Stravinsky is so high up, there's something larger-than-life about the way he is perceived by professional musicians. However, the fact that Liszt isn't even on the list is hugely disappointing. But I suspect it's something to do with the statistical nature of the poll. For example, perhaps Dvorak would be in many people's top 10 but very little top 5s, so he doesn't end up on the final list, whereas many people might skew all of their top 5s to modern composers, hence why we see someone like Knussen above Rachmaninov... Remco and Sunshine Reger 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remco 687 Posted November 10, 2019 Share Posted November 10, 2019 I’m not sure if I’ll ever get all the Stravinsky adoration. Until I turn into a musicologist or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karelm 2,943 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 JW predicted Brahms as also amongst the best? Was he in the top five of the poll? There are virtually no composers who would consider him in their top 5. He is Dvorak good. Very good but not top of everyone's list. If you asked composers who their favorites were, the same names keep showing up and Brahms is not one of them. He is an audience favorite, not a composer favorite. Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, Mahler, Sibelius (more advanced composers) keep showing up! I don't think I've ever met a composer who thought Brahms was one of the greatest...one who inspired them to become a composer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunshine Reger 3,568 Posted November 11, 2019 Author Share Posted November 11, 2019 . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 3 minutes ago, Modest Expectations said: I have also seen Brahms rated very to extremely high (by listeners). But he never inspired me either. This does not inspire you? Crazy! 10 hours ago, Remco said: I’m not sure if I’ll ever get all the Stravinsky adoration. Until I turn into a musicologist or something. Well, have you heard anything else than The Firebird and The Rite of Spring? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunshine Reger 3,568 Posted November 11, 2019 Author Share Posted November 11, 2019 . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 You wouldn't know before you've read one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Score 772 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 It's a statistical mistake to ask to vote 5 composers, and then make a list of 50. If composer X were at place number 6 in the list of all voters, he would not show up at all in such a list, while it should definitely be at place n.6. In fact, the list kind-of makes sense close to the top spots, and then progressively becomes total nonsense scrolling down. Jurassic Shark and Loert 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remco 687 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 5 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said: Well, have you heard anything else than The Firebird and The Rite of Spring? Yes I have and I’m not crazy about it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 What about The Firebird finale? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remco 687 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 That’s fantastic of course, but what do you mean? Aside from the famous 3 ballets there’s just not much that interests me. Yet composers and musicologists see him as god it seems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ymenard 54 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 Tchaikovsky 32nd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 36 minutes ago, Remco said: That’s fantastic of course, but what do you mean? Aside from the famous 3 ballets there’s just not much that interests me. Yet composers and musicologists see him as god it seems. His symphonies are good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oomoog the Ecstatic 314 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 16 hours ago, Score said: It's a statistical mistake to ask to vote 5 composers, and then make a list of 50. Nah. It only makes sense to ask for peoples' favorites in any list: People give much more personal weight/accuracy towards just their favorites, and Top 10-20 would be way too much to expect composers to quantify, as most composers don't even think about Top 10 or have that information handy or care about it. It would be inaccurate to poll that information. Most people know for sure their personal favorites and that's it. It would be silly to assume a composer in someone's 6 7 8 spots would not be represented, because lots of people already chose that composer for their top 5: Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, some may go with Mozart or Beethoven as their #6, all good choices for modern composers, and they are all definitely here on this list. To recommend polling for 6, 7, 8 spots, is only recommending that you want it less accurate, asking for unknowns that composers haven't clearly thought about. Making a Top 50 out of top 5s is perfectly fine as a demographic, showing which composers were nominated more. As much as everyone has a criticism towards this list, by logic everyone in the world disagrees with any list because it's not their own list, so there's no argument here. Just because you find a few people who sometimes agree with you about your criticisms, doesn't mean you're objectively right. In reality this list is fine, for the purpose it accomplishes: showing all the highest recommendations of professional composers. Everyone, including the polled composers, is going to personally disagree with the list because it's not their own personal list, it doesn't mean it's flawed. Sunshine Reger 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Score 772 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 11 hours ago, Borodin said: Nah. It only makes sense to ask for peoples' favorites in any list: People give much more personal weight/accuracy towards just their favorites, and Top 10-20 would be way too much to expect composers to quantify, as most composers don't even think about Top 10 or have that information handy or care about it. It would be inaccurate to poll that information. Most people know for sure their personal favorites and that's it. It would be silly to assume a composer in someone's 6 7 8 spots would not be represented, because lots of people already chose that composer for their top 5: Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, some may go with Mozart or Beethoven as their #6, all good choices for modern composers, and they are all definitely here on this list. To recommend polling for 6, 7, 8 spots, is only recommending that you want it less accurate, asking for unknowns that composers haven't clearly thought about. Making a Top 50 out of top 5s is perfectly fine as a demographic, showing which composers were nominated more. As much as everyone has a criticism towards this list, by logic everyone in the world disagrees with any list because it's not their own list, so there's no argument here. Just because you find a few people who sometimes agree with you about your criticisms, doesn't mean you're objectively right. In reality this list is fine, for the purpose it accomplishes: showing all the highest recommendations of professional composers. Everyone, including the polled composers, is going to personally disagree with the list because it's not their own personal list, it doesn't mean it's flawed. It is a totally flawed concept, instead, because they are asking a question ("What are your favourite 5 composers?") and using the results to answer a very different question ("What are your favourite 50 composers?" - at least, this is what is implied by the very fact that they compiled a top-50 list). If they had asked "What are your favourite 10 composers?" instead, and made a top-50 list out of the result (which would have been similarly wrong anyway), the results would surely have been different. This is because composers that almost no one would put in their top 5 (and therefore, are totally absent from the above list) would likely show up in most top-10 lists, and so get enough votes to appear there. In other words, if you analyze the answers to a poll in a way that is not consistent with the posed question, the results cannot be robust. They progressively lose meaning the more you deviate from the posed question, i.e., the more you go below the first positions. The absence of pivotal composers such as Puccini and Liszt from the list above, should say enough. As a disclaimer, I don't really care about this and other similar lists, as they have zero influence on my opinions about music. I just wanted to point out that it is one of the many flawed ways in which data are presented nowadays. It's a bit worrying when similar mistakes are made on more important topics. Holko 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
publicist 4,647 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 5 Ways Writers Use Misleading Graphs To Manipulate You: https://venngage.com/blog/misleading-graphs/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 It's mostly about the general population, journalists including, having a very low mathematical understanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oomoog the Ecstatic 314 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 11 hours ago, Score said: It is a totally flawed concept, instead, because they are asking a question ("What are your favourite 5 composers?") and using the results to answer a very different question ("What are your favourite 50 composers?" - at least, this is what is implied by the very fact that they compiled a top-50 list). If they had asked "What are your favourite 10 composers?" instead, and made a top-50 list out of the result (which would have been similarly wrong anyway), the results would surely have been different. This is because composers that almost no one would put in their top 5 (and therefore, are totally absent from the above list) would likely show up in their top-10 lists, and so get enough votes to appear there. In other words, if you analyze the answers to a poll in a way that is not consistent with the posed question, the results cannot be robust. They progressively lose meaning the more you deviate from the posed question, i.e., the more you go below the first positions. The absence of pivotal composers such as Puccini and Liszt from the list above, should say enough. As a disclaimer, I don't really care about this and other similar lists, as they have zero influence on my opinions about music. I just wanted to point out that it is one of the many flawed ways in which data are presented nowadays. It's a bit worrying when similar mistakes are made on more important topics. Like I said, polling for Top 10 or 20 is pointless, because that information is (a) unknown to composers, even if they can come up with a mainstream answer it would not be accurate to them personally, (b) their favorite 3-5 composers has way more personal weight, making the result actually something accurate. You're asking for a more nonsensical list than before, with simply more societal weight in the results. Nothing to do with their personal analysis and taste. To say "most lists have Tchaikovsky or Liszt higher" wouldn't be a claim about these composers' opinions. Most lists don't have John Williams as #51, where as this one does. I don't see how you can make a claim like the bold there, it seems like just a farfetched assumption: plenty of people have those 6, 7, 8 place composers in their top 5, I don't see how you can claim otherwise: It fits the logic of diversification, it fits the article results if you view the results, someone's 6 will definitely be another's 4, someone's 7 will be another's 3. You would have to have proof against this logic of diversification, as a special case. The initial cut-off has to be reasonable. 5. The results gained from that can be any number, they can go all the way to listing 250 if they want to because the initial measure was accurate. It's only obvious that the lower down on any survey you go, it will always be less accurate. I don't think anyone is arguing that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Shark 12,745 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 It's perfectly clear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Score 772 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 44 minutes ago, Borodin said: Like I said, polling for Top 10 or 20 is pointless, because that information is (a) unknown to composers, even if they can come up with a mainstream answer it would not be accurate to them personally, (b) their favorite 3-5 composers has way more personal weight, making the result actually something accurate. You're asking for a more nonsensical list than before, with simply more societal weight in the results. Nothing to do with their personal analysis and taste. To say "most lists have Tchaikovsky or Liszt higher" wouldn't be a claim about these composers' opinions. Most lists don't have John Williams as #51, where as this one does. I don't see how you can make a claim like the bold there, it seems like just a farfetched assumption: plenty of people have those 6, 7, 8 place composers in their top 5, I don't see how you can claim otherwise: It fits the logic of diversification, it fits the article results if you view the results, someone's 6 will definitely be another's 4, someone's 7 will be another's 3. You would have to have proof against this logic of diversification, as a special case. The initial cut-off has to be reasonable. 5. The results gained from that can be any number, they can go all the way to listing 250 if they want to because the initial measure was accurate. It's only obvious that the lower down on any survey you go, it will always be less accurate. I don't think anyone is arguing that. Hey, cool down, man. Were you the author of the survey? Anyway, as I said, I simply totally disagree with the way data are presented. And your assumption (a) sounds arbitrary to me (although I was making the top-10 example not to suggest a survey procedure, but just to say that a top-50 list based on that would have given different results and would have been questionable anyway). However, I don't care enough about this topic to enter a long debate about it. Enjoy the music! Jurassic Shark 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bayesian 1,417 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 I don't have the magazine issue to see what their methodology was, but @Borodin is correct that asking for a top 10 or 20 results in much more arbitrary lists than a top 5 (especially if the list has to be ranked). This is known by survey methodologists. As @publicist wryly noted above, there is a lot of obfuscation in statistics. Rather than a simple list of composer names, I bet the frequency distribution would be far more revealing because it will show the distance between one rank and the next, and that distance is often where the interesting story lies. For instance, if #1Bach and #2Stravinsky and #3Beethoven are each separated by one vote and then #4Mozart is separated from #3 by 20 votes, that's more significant than third consecutive one-vote difference. I also assume that composers were asked to name their top 5 choices without regard to rank; in other words, the BBC treated all five composers named by someone as equally "top." In his mind, JW might see Beethoven as slightly more important than Bach, but to the BBC methodology, the two composers are identical in value. If this is not the case, then we're missing information about how each of the five names from each respondent were weighted before being aggregated. This is probably how we can have Chopin at #20 with only 9 votes--all the votes are piled up on the higher-ranking composers. But that raises the question of how the bottom 30 composers in that list can be distributed among 8 degrees of freedom. Assuming no weighting, there would have to be a lot of shared ranks (e.g., five composers each getting 7 votes, eight getting 6 votes, that kind of thing). In such a case, like I said, a frequency distribution would be much more informative. Oomoog the Ecstatic 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oomoog the Ecstatic 314 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 I agree with you there about the importance of ranking nuance. Though I wonder if they might've believed asking for ranks would give too much societal pressure, ie. "What? you think x composer is better than Bach and Beethoven?" so the composer being polled would just put these two 1st as to not cause embarassment or overthink it, having this fake/societal fear of being viewed incompetent. Even better would be to make their ranks unknown/anonymous to the public, so they might stay true to their personal rankings. Non-rank didn't seem to make the list more true/interesting anyway, it still yields popular composers in the top: Bach, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Mozart. Many of us have a tendency to want to put the popular go-to choices higher than our own favorites, to sound "objective." I'm openly honest about my praise of Borodin and John Williams over other composers. That's why I'm on this forum, because music is subjective and based in evolutionary biology. If we wanted Beethoven's opinion on the best composer, he wouldn't say "Beethoven," so why would Williams do the same; it's up to every individual to decide their favorites. Hopefully others think a similar way about their favorites, making ranking preferable in gaining a better overall census. Even within John Williams, we can't all agree on the best pieces. Bayesian 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aenae 41 Posted April 5, 2021 Share Posted April 5, 2021 . Sunshine Reger 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce marshall 1,343 Posted April 5, 2021 Share Posted April 5, 2021 " where the white women at?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now