# A logical thought on composer ranks



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Art Rock gave a forum survey to everyone some moons ago, and these were the results.

I have a logical thought (in fact more of a question for Art Rock) on this regarding those who believe (or simply speculate over) there being a mathematical objectivity behind the best music and best composers. If you don't believe that this kind of pure objectivity may exist, then simply don't mind this thread. We're not making a big deal over this topic, it simply comes up into question.

If in your unique vision of music, you still feel bad that the forum has bad taste: _don't._ This topic isn't too serious, and is not meant for everybody.

Out of all the 60-something individuals who filled in the survey for submission, if you pick the individual's list who is the very _closest_ to the overall result, this individual has now become kind of famous in my logical exercise (because I won't be asking for anyone _new_ to create their own faux list to attribute similarity to the forum.)

No, the real individual in question might resemble an objectively fair brain that brings in question some power of musical discernment they have, or perhaps they're someone lucky? traditional? How can we say? But maybe there's some power of slightly higher objectivity in understanding what makes humanity tick musically, and what you will indeed find is this list is fairly similar yet different to the forum result in many regards: This individual might totally omit x composer for a sensible reason. They might rate y composer completely lower, and they might have a great knowledge-base to rate z composer much higher, etc. Maybe they (or one of the other similars) are highly opinionated with opinions I'd like to give a superficial award to.

Thus my thesis and question to ArtRock is...

(A) If by mathematical principle, we believe there is a musical objectivity, that some music inherently sounds better, is structured better, than others 
(B) If you did give us the list of the individual who best-fits the overall forum
Then 
(C) Would it be worth it to take just a momentary peek into the following _possibility_. A grain of salt exercise we don't need to bother our heads over, or complain. But merely wonder:


The survey result has tabulated many outliers (individuals who don't fit the norm of this human peak of excellence, as is their individual right) and this variance is reflected in the results (hypothesize it is. That the popular vote _mimics_ objectivity but there is a lower understanding within the results that over/underrates various composers to many degrees.)

The submitted list of this special individual, by merit of being from only one consciousness not sixty, and (maybe, likely) having its own coherent thought process that produces a unique result from the link above, is actually a greater means to reach, question, and understand objectivity (again, hypothesize it is. For example, imagine that his/her Top 10 is exactly identical to the survey, except it totally omits Mahler onto 12th place, for instance. Or what if Wagner is 4th and Mahler is 3rd!? It would be interesting to see this list.)

In taking this postulation with a grain of salt, if such list can be identified by Art Rock and the user asked if they would be open to answer questions about who they chose, that

This could be an interesting experiment and make us wonder if this individual's list actually has much more basis in objectivity than a survey. Again, it's "what if" it is so? It's just a psychological experiment in music, to ask some questions.
Thoughts? This doesn't have to be an annoying forum trend that never ends. But right now people are still interested to ask questions for science. Maybe this 'famous' person would _like_ to participate or help. If my explanation is clear enough, I'd love to hear some thoughts.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

I might be this famous person, or at least a good contender. My list was unranked, but 24 of my top 30 were in the list's top 30, and 27 in the top 40 (my lowest placing was 62).


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

See, Ethereality? Brahms was a great melodist :lol:


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The list is an objective measure (but a poor one because the participating sample was self-selecting from a group belonging to one forum) of people's subjective preferences. It is not in the slightest an objective list of greatness or worth but is an objective measure of what participating people preferred at one particular point of time!


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I like this idea - well, to be more correct, I think the idea's ludicrous, but I _like_ it.

But surely the big problem is that the people who claim that there's such a thing as an objective list are the ones most likely to complain that a list such as Art Rock's is "wrong". And so the person closest to the list must also, by this logic, be wrong.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I have no idea what you are saying aside from there may be "science" or math behind composer rankings. If so I don't think that case has been verified scientifically.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Thank you for your responses.



larold said:


> I have no idea what you are saying aside from there may be "science" or math behind composer rankings. If so I don't think that case has been verified scientifically.


Part of science is repeatability. When the same 3 composers make a Top 3, the same 7 make the 10, and the same 14 make the 20, most scientists would argue we have a good starting hypothesis to test mathematical or biological (human) measures of objectivity.



Enthusiast said:


> The list is an objective measure (but a poor one because the participating sample was self-selecting from a group belonging to one forum) of people's subjective preferences. It is not in the slightest an objective list of greatness or worth but is an objective measure of what participating people preferred at one particular point of time!


While this was a _global internet survey_ on an English board, it's actually difficult to discern where it ranks in greatness compared to other lists when they all fit the principle of human taste. The top 3 composers are so because _human taste_ dictates it. My speculation is that when you take the few individuals who best-fit any data, you move towards the more objective critic-like spectrum that omits more errors/outliers, however since this is a hypothesis the only thing we could do is provide the data we actually have (the best-fit user) and be open minded to it being false, or true, and leave it at that. An experiment is only an experiment and it requires having data. We can't say it's invalid until we compare it to other data.



BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> I might be this famous person, or at least a good contender. My list was unranked, but 24 of my top 30 were in the list's top 30, and 27 in the top 40 (my lowest placing was 62).


Thank you for stepping up, that's kind of you. My one wonder is that there's a bit of math proving a ranked submission will have more similarities to the forum list, because there are more features to compare. I imagine your list is pretty high up there. Those who submitted a non-ranked list have not harmed the data in any way, but have helped equally as everyone else.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Ethereality said:


> Part of science is repeatability. When the same 3 composers make a Top 3, the same 7 make the 10, and the same 14 make the 20, most scientists would argue we have a good starting hypothesis to test mathematical or biological (human) measures of objectivity..


this is not objectivity. Objectivity is about something objective, and human opinions are no objective. Human opinions are subject to fashions. At some point, 99% of people believed that Earth is flat. Was is an objective fact because of it? Of course not. So yes, we can objectively count people with a certain opinion, but that does not say much about the truthfulness of their opinions.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

I disagree that objectivity isn't about measuring human traits and their similarities; Enthusiast is correct about this one thing. Evolution and biology form certain expected patterns, and music is a pattern within biology that can be measured. Neuroscience is incomplete, this is why we run tests and gather data. This thread, as I mentioned, might not be the best place to discuss this however. You're free to start another discussion about it in a different thread.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Nereffid said:


> I like this idea - well, to be more correct, I think the idea's ludicrous, but I _like_ it.


I like the way you think about it. Though abstraction of thought often has a logical basis even if it's incomplete. My logical basis is:

A survey can test for objective standards of beauty, but the results inherently conflict. ie. one group thinks x composer is great, while another believes x composer certainly isn't. A best-fit individual however can give us insight into how objective results might not conflict at all. That's _possible_ insight, that's a hypothesis to be simply _open_ to. There's no reason to ignore testing for it.

Anyway, it's completely up to you guys at this point if you'd like to see this list.



Fabulin said:


> See, Ethereality? Brahms was a great melodist :lol:


Brahms was a great statistic!


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

"If by mathematical principle, we believe there is a musical objectivity, that some music inherently sounds better, is structured better, than others"

I believe in the latter but not the former. There is no music that can objectively sound better, but there is that is structured better to a certain degree. There is no doubt Bartok's music is as well structured as anyone's, but he doesn't sound as good to most listeners. Should his music be considered less if he explores something different than traditional harmony, and less listeners like his music than Schubert?

There was a time when I first explored Classical that I was completely agreeing with the consensus views. But over time, music became dead with that sort of hierarchical view, and I think it's misleading. It's really not much more than a popularity contest.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

How about this equation ... "logical thought" + "composer rankings" = "oxymoron"


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Incidentally, the idea that some music inherently sounds better does not take into account cultural background. What might sound better to someone from western Europe will have little relationship to someone from (e.g.) SE Asia.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

This is a thread not questioning the validity of rankings, but the statistical premise within them: *The merit of an individual understanding of widest agreeability (within a data set,) the "famous person," whose rating of music is best fit for people. *As stated, *the OP essentially takes no sides on the matter of these rankings being valid or not* because this matter addresses no basis to the _theoretical_ topic specialized within this thread. We can in fact all agree that rankings are widely agreeable, that the Top 10 are not actually the _worst_ composers. If you disagree, *it has been expressed this isn't the place to debate the issue of the validity of rankings*, as expressed here and here. Instead, please feel free to reference a separate thread discussion for opinions on it


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I am actually saying that I don't believe there is any validity, or even correct understanding of the uses of the terminology, in the premise, merit, etc., etc., and it is perfectly valid for me to express that view. If you object so strongly to my 'equation', then I suggest that you ask the mods to change the title of the thread, at least remove 'logical' from it.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Thank you for contributing. I think there's a difference between assumed truth (your opinion that there is no objectivity VS my opinion) and discussing logic within a premise. People like ranked lists because they like the premise. There's not much you or I can do about it, even if the premise is false. Now, I feel I can defeat your argument but don't want to in this thread  as this thread has no bearing on the specific argument you brought up. I find these arguments to be old and off- topic.

If no one else at this time would like to see this individual's list and ask questions to them, no worries. Then I will return later.



Ethereality said:


> This is a thread not questioning the validity of rankings, but the statistical premise within them: *The merit of an individual understanding of widest agreeability (within a data set,) the "famous person," whose rating of music is best fit for people. *As stated, *the OP essentially takes no sides on the matter of these rankings being valid or not* because this matter addresses no basis to the _theoretical_ topic specialized within this thread. We can in fact all agree that rankings are widely agreeable, that the Top 10 are not actually the _worst_ composers. If you disagree, *it has been expressed this isn't the place to debate the issue of the validity of rankings*, as expressed here and here. Instead, please feel free to reference a separate thread discussion for opinions on it


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I just remembered there's an Isaac Asimov story from the 1950s called "Franchise", in which one man is chosen as Voter of the Year because he's been deemed the person currently most representative of the American people. The supercomputer asks him a series of questions, and from his answers extrapolates the results for every election in the country...



Ethereality said:


> If no one else at this time would like to see this individual's list and ask questions to them, no worries. Then I will return later.


I'm curious as to how close any individual list would actually come to the final ranking. Going from my own experience with composer polls, I'd guess there'll always be significant differences.
But the value of questioning them? As someone whose list was very different from the final ranking, and at the risk of offending the individual in question, won't they by definition have a very mainstream taste in music, which to many of us will seem rather bland? Maybe the reason they have such average taste is that they've only heard the best-known composers - in which case, can we experiment on them by obliging them to listen to all the other composers who were nominated, and see what they think?!


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## mark6144 (Apr 6, 2019)

Sounds like a job for Artificial Intelligence...


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Nereffid said:


> I just remembered there's an Isaac Asimov story from the 1950s called "Franchise", in which one man is chosen as Voter of the Year because he's been deemed the person currently most representative of the American people. The supercomputer asks him a series of questions, and from his answers extrapolates the results for every election in the country...
> 
> I'm curious as to how close any individual list would actually come to the final ranking. Going from my own experience with composer polls, I'd guess there'll always be significant differences.
> But the value of questioning them? As someone whose list was very different from the final ranking, and at the risk of offending the individual in question, *won't they by definition have a very mainstream taste in music, which to many of us will seem rather bland? Maybe the reason they have such average taste is that they've only heard the best-known composers* - in which case, can we experiment on them by obliging them to listen to all the other composers who were nominated, and see what they think?!


One might suppose that only those that have equally sampled all the music that's ever been composed are qualified to vote.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Ethereality said:


> *I disagree that objectivity isn't about measuring human traits and their similarities; Enthusiast is correct about this one thing. *Evolution and biology form certain expected patterns, and music is a pattern within biology that can be measured. Neuroscience is incomplete, this is why we run tests and gather data. This thread, as I mentioned, might not be the best place to discuss this however. You're free to start another discussion about it in a different thread.


I don't think any part of my post has been shown to be wrong! Nor did I talk about whether measuring human traits could be "objective".

What I said was that the sample was not in any way representative (except, obviously, of the people who participated) and that the data collected concerned their preferences - views that some people change almost daily. I wasn't rubbishing the exercise - just trying to clarify what it can and cannot be taken to mean.

The subject of expected patterns in biology and evolution is indeed complex. It is a subject that leads to a lot of rubbish being spoken as far as the endeavour of assigning value to art. There may also be the odd insight of some value but I can't think of one right now.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Ethereality said:


> A survey can test for objective standards of beauty, but the results inherently conflict. ie. *one group thinks x composer is great, while another believes x composer certainly isn't. *A best-fit individual however can give us insight into how objective results might not conflict at all. That's _possible_ insight, that's a hypothesis to be simply _open_ to. There's no reason to ignore testing for it.


The first half of your first sentence is true but I think what matters is what objectivity can be achieved in or through a forum like this. I feel that "very little" is the answer, largely because sampling cannot be meaningfully done.

The rest of that sentence (the part I have bolded) is strange. Surely if you have selected groups that differ greatly in the thing you are measuring then you have not found a sample of possible respondents for reliably arriving an an objective result?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I'm sorry, Ethereality, as I read through the thread I keep finding more of your posts that I want to engage with.



Ethereality said:


> Part of science is repeatability. When the same 3 composers make a Top 3, the same 7 make the 10, and the same 14 make the 20, most scientists would argue we have a good starting hypothesis to test mathematical or biological (human) measures of objectivity.


If the same results come up again and again they do certainly seem to mean something reliable. Why do more surveys, then? The next step is to look into the extent to which these results are dependent on culture and education and time (tastes change over decades).



Ethereality said:


> While this was a _global internet survey_ on an English board, it's actually difficult to discern where it ranks in greatness compared to other lists when they all fit the principle of human taste.


I'm not sure what you mean here but the board cannot yield a sample of respondents who can be taken to represent a wider group unless it can be shown that they do. And if they do is this only for the top 3 or the top 10? It is further down such lists that disagreement is most likely. Further, the sample who participated (some members of this forum) were self-selecting and are very unlikely to be representative of those members who did not participate.



Ethereality said:


> The top 3 composers are so because _human taste_ dictates it. My speculation is that when you take the few individuals who best-fit any data, you move towards the more objective critic-like spectrum that omits more errors/outliers, however since this is a hypothesis the only thing we could do is provide the data we actually have (the best-fit user) and be open minded to it being false, or true, and leave it at that. An experiment is only an experiment and it requires having data. We can't say it's invalid until we compare it to other data.


It is true that when the same results are found again and again they begin to look like a reliable (objective) measure of views held by the group. But the group is not, of course, representative of humans (or "human taste"). It is a small sub-group of that - those who enjoy western classical music. Of course, in 10 or 20 years time the same group may have different views.

I do think the sort of critical consensus you talk about is the nearest we can get to an objective measure of the value of different composers, although I suspect its reliability breaks down as we move towards evaluating more recent composers or start to look at the less popular ones. I don't think we can do much about this here except what we are doing - which is getting snapshots of what some members are valuing. So long as we don't make spurious scientific claims about the results this is just good honest fun.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Ethereality said:


> I like the way you think about it. Though abstraction of thought often has a logical basis even if it's incomplete. My logical basis is:
> 
> A survey can test for objective standards of beauty.....


I'm afraid I lost my listing of the objective standards of beauty. I was wondering if you could go ahead and post what those standards are so that we all can be on the same page. However, I warn you up front: any such list that does not contain the words "Isabel Leonard" will automatically be considered suspect.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Enthusiast said:


> I don't think any part of my post has been shown to be wrong! Nor did I talk about whether measuring human traits could be "objective".
> 
> What I said was that the sample was not in any way representative (except, obviously, of the people who participated) and that the data collected concerned their preferences - views that some people change almost daily. I wasn't rubbishing the exercise - just trying to clarify what it can and cannot be taken to mean.
> 
> The subject of expected patterns in biology and evolution is indeed complex. It is a subject that leads to a lot of rubbish being spoken as far as the endeavour of assigning value to art. There may also be the odd insight of some value but I can't think of one right now.


Thanks for responding so intelligently. My only caveat about what you said is regarding individual tastes changing (progressively.) However what we observe from group averages demonstrate that these tastes overall aren't moving as progressively as it seems at all, that each poll every year from 'classical communities' around the world and the internet is essentially predictable. Aside from the point of new composers being evaluated, point well taken, as far as _Classical objectively converging with the tastes of all of humanity,_ this is the very method I'm supposing in my OP that's the whole premise. Why I said it's not a matter of list validity, it's testing this method within the small scope I'm proposing: if you poll humanity instead let's suppose and then take the best fit individuals, ignore the muddied attempts to change the subject, or perhaps my poor job at cautioning it 5 times:

Will the best-fit of a population (given that this best-fit has enough of their own knowledge) show removal of outliers of contention, in other words, do best-fit in knowledge humans actually have more appreciation of Classical music and the composers Bach, Beethoven, Mozart? Do they (not Classical listeners but the best-fit) mimick (not individuals but) the average of humanity in a way that is not _representative_, but instead most-agreeable. *The reality is, *analyses have been done to show exactly that there is no 'representative' opinion that encompasses humanity but instead, the *best*-fit individuals of humanity in learning will highlight the most ignored aspects of the ignorant: *great artists of critical agreement*. It is why normal people and critics alike come to the conclusion of proper eliteness in Classical, the very logic the thread is titled regarding. It is shown through experience and analysis that in the most agreeable scholars, outliers diminish and the same great artists are brought to praise. What can be hypothesized and _tested_ about it first before we assume it's a popular fallacy or a data-scarce impossibility, and that objectivity has really gone undetected? Every successive day since the births of the Great 3, this muddied subjectivity people speak of, it's is seeming less and less so, so as we ask our most agreeable representatives, can we run tests of their knowledge and see if they're more intelligent than the average? We _can_ in this thread if people will remove their boundaries for a moment about 'not knowing' what intelligence or objectivity might look like. It is something to at least wonder about, we can ask questions of our taste representatives to test their knowledge. Do people understand better? Is the real thread hypothesis making sense? or should we keep tossing pointless words without looking at the data? As long as we have this data, we don't need to jump to conclusions about it, but instead test if the premise holds up in some spheres.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

^^^^^^^^^

I can't even begin to unpack the above, nor do I have a desire to, so I must say farewell to this thread with the comment below:


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> The list is an objective measure (but a poor one because the participating sample was self-selecting from a group belonging to one forum) of people's subjective preferences. *It is not in the slightest an objective list of greatness or worth* but is an objective measure of what participating people preferred at one particular point of time!


022 Anton Bruckner (598 points, 30 mentions)
023 Richard Strauss (501 points, 28 mentions)
024 Franz Liszt (496 points, 24 mentions)

...not to mention Wagner's 11th place. You are to the point, my dearest.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Dimace said:


> 022 Anton Bruckner (598 points, 30 mentions)
> 023 Richard Strauss (501 points, 28 mentions)
> 024 Franz Liszt (496 points, 24 mentions)
> 
> ...not to mention Wagner's 11th place. You are to the point, my dearest.


I feel this is off the topic since it has no bearing on the argument. Not understanding the topic principally issues a misunderstanding towards the argument.



Room2201974 said:


> I can't even begin to unpack the above, nor do I have a desire to,


The above is (solely) the pack.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I personally don't believe any objective measure of artistic quality can be achieved without resorting to tautology ("the greater work contains more 'greatness'.") Nor can you find a representative enough population to help you define -- except for being representative of the population that gave you the particular answers that you are trying to match. (If you find X people who aver that Dostoevsky is greater than Tolstoy, you can find another X people who say the same thing, but that tells you nothing about the relative greatness of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.) As Stephen Jay Gould wrote once about measuring people's intelligence, there is no measure by which you can line up like artistic works, left to right, in order of their absolute greatness.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

MarkW said:


> I personally don't believe any objective measure of artistic quality can be achieved without resorting to tautology ("the greater work contains more 'greatness'.") Nor can you find a representative enough population to help you define -- except for being representative of the population that gave you the particular answers that you are trying to match. (If you find X people who aver that Dostoevsky is greater than Tolstoy, you can find another X people who say the same thing, but that tells you nothing about the relative greatness of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.) As Stephen Jay Gould wrote once about measuring people's intelligence, there is no measure by which you can line up like artistic works, left to right, in order of their absolute greatness.


and so there is no 'big three'.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

I don't understand what an 'objective' measure of greatness could conceivably measure, other than merely being a popularity contest. That is, "I listen to X a lot, so I clearly consider him a great composer".

In which case, why not try better measures of popularity than a survey of a self-selecting group of specialists? I've been "scrobbling" my music listening habits to Last.fm for 12 years, and plenty of others do too. So I took the liberty of taking the top 40 composers of your original list, counting how many listeners are recorded for each composer at Last.fm and re-ordering the list accordingly. The results are as follows:


```
Composer	             Original Ranking	 No. of Last.fm Listeners
-----------------------      ------------------  ------------------------
Ludwig van Beethoven	            1	                 1,893,035
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	            3	                 1,631,179
Johann Sebastian Bach	            2	                 1,576,570
Frederic Chopin	                   18	                 1,288,424
Antonio Vivaldi	                   31	                 1,173,075
Peter Illich Tchaikovsky	   12	                 1,033,348
Claude Debussy	                   10	                 1,011,473
Franz Schubert	                    6	                   914,871
Johannes Brahms	                    5	                   867,474
George Frideric Handel	           21	                   826,237
Franz Liszt	                   24	                   743,233
Antonín Dvořák	                   16	                   724,419
Felix Mendelssohn	           19	                   675,497
Sergei Rachmaninov	           26	                   667,953
Joseph Haydn	                   14	                   651,543
Richard Wagner	                   11	                   645,144
Maurice Ravel	                   15	                   629,052
Robert Schumann	                    9	                   613,116
Gabriel Fauré	                   28	                   544,803
Giuseppe Verdi	                   32	                   527,882
Sergei Prokofiev	           13	                   515,582
Dmitri Shostakovich	            7	                   514,020
Gustav Mahler	                    4	                   499,147
Edward Elgar	                   36	                   469,943
Igor Stravinsky	                   17	                   428,353
Jean Sibelius	                    8	                   424,757
Giacomo Puccini	                   33	                   389,766
Hector Berlioz	                   27	                   361,184
Richard Strauss	                   23	                   360,323
Ralph Vaughan Williams	           25	                   284,508
Béla Bartók	                   20	                   283,035
Anton Bruckner	                   22	                   233,817
Alexander Scriabin	           30	                   208,574
Olivier Messiaen	           37	                   208,006
Aaron Copland	                   38	                   205,537
Claudio Monteverdi	           34	                   200,396
Benjamin Britten	           39	                   189,237
Arnold Schönberg	           29	                   174,204
Leoš Janáček	                   35	                   113,125
Alban Berg	                   40	                    83,459
```
You still get a 'top three', though it's ordering is different. But there are substantial differences -which, to my subjective sense of what ought, objectively, to be true, bring satisfaction! I cannot fathom how Schumann can "objectively" be greater than Wagner, for example. Well, in the world of millions of actual listeners, he isn't. So there's a relief!

I am astonished that Chopin is as popular as he is; I am less surprised that Vivaldi leaps 26 places up the table, however.

Of course, I haven't counted how many _works_ by each composer are being listened to by Last.fm users. Conceivably, those 1.1 million Vivaldi listeners are all listening to the same concerto , whereas the Vaughan Williams listeners might be listening to 9 different symphonies, 5 different operas, assorted choral works and some film scores. Would that make Vaughan Williams the greater composer if so? How does the fact that Wagner and Britten set up entire music venues and festivals whilst fitting in a composing career, whereas Beethoven didn't, affect things I wonder?

Short version: I don't believe there is an objective measure of greatness. Anyone replying to the original survey was, in reality, merely taking a snapshot of their preferences at the time. Measure the listening habits of millions of other people in a different venue (an 'objective' measurement) and I think you actually get a better view of those listening preferences... but even that doesn't count as a measure of anything remotely approaching 'greatness', I think.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

dizwell said:


> In which case, why not try better measures of popularity than a survey of a self-selecting group of specialists?


https://bachtrack.com/files/73896-Classical music statistics 2017-EN.pdf


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Well, that's based on performances, not listenings (?!). If all that Brahms is being played to empty houses (as I objectively think is likely), it doesn't amount to much, despite its position in those bachtrack listings you cite. It could also be that first-rate pianists cost way too much for a profitable concert to support, so someone like Chopin won't stand a chance!

But it's another good pointer to what can be 'objective' about all this (i.e., not a lot!): presumably performers don't want to play to empty houses and therefore a measure of what they're up to gives a clue to what the punters will pay for. It's as valid a measure as anything else... meaning that we have at least three 'objective' ways of measuring the same thing... differently!

Joking aside, I think it's clear that however you measure it, you are likely to end up with Bach, Beethoven and Mozart in the Premier league, with a large first division full of the usual suspects after that.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Dimace said:


> 022 Anton Bruckner (598 points, 30 mentions)
> 023 Richard Strauss (501 points, 28 mentions)
> 024 Franz Liszt (496 points, 24 mentions)
> 
> ...not to mention Wagner's 11th place. You are to the point, my dearest.


Is your implication that if Wagner, (and Bruckner, Strauss and Liszt, all singled out by Enthusiast) were ranked higher, the list would be closer to "an objective list of greatness or worth"? Surely you see the internal contradiction and absurdity of such an idea? As I have said on this subject previously, the only thing that can be measured more or less objectively is popularity, not greatness or worth, and that is what is (more or less) being measured in the list you are dismissing.

Edit: Ironically, my own personal subjective favorite Romantic era composers, Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Dvorak, are all in the top 20 of the "objective" TC popularity poll! Wagner and Tchaikovsky, 11 and 12 on the list, would be no higher and perhaps lower on mine, not because they are not great composers, but because live staged productions, especially classical opera, play a lesser role in modern culture. That may also be what drags them down in the objective popularity rankings mentioned here.


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