# How much time do you spend with composers?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

If you were to apportion your listening time by composer, who gets a lot? Who gets a little?

Please list your most-listened-to composers by the percentage of your time they claim. Your final total would be 100%, but probably you won't get there in your list. Can you get to 75% or more?


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Next month for me it will be 90% Morton Feldman, 10% jazz music.


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

I really cant give any percentages, but over the past week it's probably been something like this:
1. Bach
2. Liszt
3. Schoenberg
4. Rachmaninoff
5. Schnittke
6. Beethoven
7. Ligeti
8. Mozart
9. Schubert
10. Franck


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

This week for sure it has been 75% Mozart, 10% Bach, and the rest with Gubaidulina and various composers featured on TinyChat.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

I can already see every post that follows say something along the lines of _This is Always Changing, But..._, or _Well, here is my previous month_.

So, instead, being specific: I will set aside 25% of my listening to new / unknown music, while the other 75% is stuff I already know. Within that 75%, from years past to the years moving forward, my division would break down into something like:

Mahler, Dvorak ~28%
Ives, Elgar ~22%
Brahms, Debussy ~14
Ravel, Prokofiev ~10%
VW, Mendelssohn ~8%
DSCH, Mozart ~7%
Quartets by EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING ~10%
Everything else I know ~1%

There, specifics. Even if arbitrary. Though, in reality, yeah, I actually listen to, like, a dozen composers, generally... A little revealing.


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## Dave Whitmore (Oct 3, 2014)

It's hard to say a percentage but I'll give it a go.

I probably spend 50 percent of my time listening to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

Maybe 15 percent listening to Mozart.

25 percent listening to Brahms, Dovorak and I've started listening to more Mahler.

Maybe 10 percent is spent seeking out new composers and new music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My own time is allotted to the fixed stars, the planets, and the occasional comet. Lately:

30% Beethoven
20% Shostakovich
10% Haydn
10% Bach
5% Adams
5% Rouse and other such
3% Sculthorpe
2% Brahms
2% Schumann
2% Stravinsky
1% Ligeti
10% here and there...


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

This month it was (roughly):
30% Schubert
15% Messiaen
10% Ligeti
10% Beethoven
5% Gubaidulina
5% Stravinsky
5% Schumann
5% Schoenberg
5% Debussy
10% Others


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

80-90% is music that I've not heard before, the rest is predictable stuff that I'd be held in contempt for if I told You! :angel:

/ptr


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I tend to mix music that is new to me with CD's I already have, probably 50/50. Split per composer does not make sense, as I am typically picking a few composers per month to focus on wrt my re-listening to my CD collection. This month those are de Falla, Hindemith and Nielsen.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

My listening time is currently quite equally divided between Schönberg, Poulenc and Debussy.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

J.S. Bach 93%

Prokofiev 7%


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Varies wildly. I'll have periods of listening almost exclusively to one, other periods of musical ADD. The last few months have been the latter, part of what made me join this forum. The last week alone has included Perotin, D. Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Boulez, Ligeti, Reich, Gubaidulina, Wuorinen...the listening I do during these periods is probably shallower than when I get really into one composer, but also more exciting in a way.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

That is virtually impossible to say. Almost certainly I spend more time listening to Bach than anyone else... and Mozart is a close second. But with the number of recordings/composers at my disposal between by CD collection, YouTube, and Spotify I can't say any composers add up to much more than 1 or 2% of my total listening time... and this doesn't even account for my non-classical listening.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

For the past few years:

Bach - 50%
The rest - 50%


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Be careful what you ask.

I found this an interesting question, so I did a little experiment. Most of my listening is random play with a small amount of guidance using the skip button when a piece is just too inappropriate. So assuming it's truly random and the chances of each composer getting played is based on the number of tracks available, I get the way-too-much-info list below. Composers with under 10 tracks were lumped together. Of course they will make up the bulk of the listening, but the rest do add up to way over 75 %.

So if you are curious:

*COMPOSERS - % CHANCE OF PLAY*
Composers with 
less than 10 tracks-13.67147794

Bach, J S - 8.558650132
Beethoven - 6.586704615
Haydn - 6.505387274
Mendelssohn - 2.937588941
Mozart - 2.8562716
Brahms - 2.419190892
Grieg - 2.21589754
Handel - 2.21589754
Telemann - 2.032933523
Vivaldi - 2.022768855
Schubert - 1.951616182
Prokofiev - 1.36206546
Rameau - 1.199430779
Debussy - 1.158772108
Scarlatti, D. - 1.128278105
Shostakovish - 1.118113438
Sibelius - 1.046960764
Schumann - 1.026631429
Chopin - 0.996137426
Tchaikovsky - 0.935149421
Dvorak - 0.884326083
Rachmaninov - 0.803008742
Misc. Early music (including Anonymous) - 0.772514739
Ligeti - 0.772514739
Stravinsky - 0.762350071
Faure - 0.660703395
Poulenc - 0.660703395
Roussel - 0.620044725
Nielsen - 0.589550722
Martinu - 0.548892051
Bartok - 0.528562716
Holst - 0.528562716
Liszt - 0.528562716
Mahler - 0.498068713
Britten - 0.487904046
Bruch - 0.487904046
Saint-Saens - 0.487904046
Schoenberg - 0.487904046
Hermann - 0.46757471
Elgar - 0.447245375
Monteverdi - 0.416751372
Bruckner - 0.396422037
[I am truncating the list here at Bruckner- it went on for an embarrassing length, ending in Varese with 0.101646676% chance of play.]

Now there are surprises here, not the least of which is I don't even know who some of these composers are (or were before i shortened the list). And how did Varese wind up on the list and not Boulez? Bizarre.

But none of this has anything to do with what I like. It's more to do with how prolific the composers, how short their tracks are (so Bruckner and Mahler get slighted) and what kinds of great boxed set deals I happen to buy, as is the case with Haydn and Grieg. I would never really place Bach above Beethoven for instance, though I think the list is pretty accurate in that I might listen to more Bach.

I am very surprised at how high Mendelssohn ranks. I am tepid to Mendelssohn at best. Must be is Songs Without Words skewing it.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Wagner - 95%
Lutosławski - 5%


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Weston said:


> Be careful what you ask.
> 
> I found this an interesting question, so I did a little experiment. Most of my listening is random play with a small amount of guidance using the skip button when a piece is just too inappropriate. So assuming it's truly random and the chances of each composer getting played is based on the number of tracks available, I get the way-too-much-info list below. Composers with under 10 tracks were lumped together. Of course they will make up the bulk of the listening, but the rest do add up to way over 75 %.
> 
> ...


Maybe you can multiply those values for the average length of each one's tracks. It might be a more meaningful ranking


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

95.67%: Alma Deutscher 
The rest: John Cage


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Prokofiev - 25
Messiaen - 5
Hindemith - 5
Sibelius - 5
Bartok - 5
Barber - 5
Adams - 5
Shostakovich - 5
Bach - 5
Mozart - 5
Schubert - 5
Dvorak - 5
Brahms - 5
Other Living Composers - 15


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## pierrot (Mar 26, 2012)

As random as possible.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

I go through phases. The only constants are J.S. Bach and _a lot_ of the avant garde composers. Then again, I've been listening to a lot of 'early' music lately.


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## Guest (Feb 18, 2015)

My listening so far in 2015:

Beethoven 10.0%
Mozart 4.0%
Bach 3.6%
Brahms 3.3%
Villa-Lobos 3.0%
Tchaikovsky 2.5%
Chopin 1.9%
Schubert 1.9%
Sibelius 1.9%
Ravel 1.9%
Rachmaninov 1.6%
Schumann 1.5%
Rimsky-Korsakov 1.4%
Strauss R 1.4%

That adds up to 40%.

Other composers with 2+ hours of listening: Albeniz Bartok Berlioz Bolcom Copland Debussy Delius Dohnanyi Dukas Dvorak Enescu Granados Grieg Ippolitov-Ivanov Kodaly Liszt Martinu Mendelsohn Nielsen Poulenc Prokofiev Roussel Saint-Saens Scriabin Shostakovich Strauss J Jr Stravinsky Taneyev Telemann Tveitt Verdi Vieuxtemps Wagner Walton and Weber.

I'm surprised to see the big four (and all the big names really) so high up in my list -- usually I listen to somewhat less popular composers.

But I'm working through my collection and that's what came up.

At least Villa-Lobos made a respectable showing!!


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

I never spend any time with composers. They always want to borrow money.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

I looked at my numbers for the last month with help from last.fm.

The only composers over 1%:

Carlo Gesualdo - 3.1%
Ludwig van Beethoven - 2.0%
Igor Stravinsky - 1.9%
Wolfgang Mozart - 1.8%
Arcangelo Corelli - 1.8%
Johannes Brahms - 1.7%
Richard Wagner - 1.4%
Sofia Gubaidulina - 1.2%
Gioacchino Rossini - 1.2%
Mamoru Fujieda - 1.2%
Hector Villa-Lobos - 1.2%

21 other composers over 0.5%: David Maslanka, Tan Dun, Philip Glass, Franz Schubert, Jose Mauricio Nunes Garcia, Bela Bartok, Thomas Ades, Lou Harrison, Brett Dean, Carl Alfredo Piatti, Vagn Holmboe, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Antonin Dvorak, David Lang, Ernst Von Dohnanyi, Gloria Coates, Johann Adolf Hasse, Edward Tubin, Zenobia Powell Perry, Li Hong Sheng, and Tania Leon.

Combining all of the above makes 32%.

Then there's 5 non-classical artists over 1%
The Mountain Goats - 4.3%
Tori Amos - 3.1%
Grandaddy - 1.3%
Sleater-Kinney - 1.1%
Modest Mouse - 1.0%

and 11 more over 0.5%: The Cure, Makthaverskan, The Decemberists, Screaming Females, Swearin', U2, Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, California X, Perfect *****, and Run the Jewels.

The total is now 51% from 48 artists. The other thousand plays are from several hundred other artists, a good amount of them classical though I have no idea how to estimate.

This is also just a snapshot. The top 5 composers are because I was/am specifically listening through some of their work. The Mountain Goats and Tori Amos are that high because my wife and I decided to listen to a bunch of albums in a setting.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

This year I think I have apportioned my listening roughly
25% to the ongoing composers of the month
25% to what I already have in my collection with no particular bias to any composer
50% to exploring via Spotify new versions or works of favourites, HIP, and recommendations from the current listening thread


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## bharbeke (Mar 4, 2013)

My approach is to cycle through my list of composers arranged from Baroque-present, listening to pieces or recordings of theirs that are new to me. If I compiled a list, it would just be famous composers through history at 0-5%, depending on the period of time being examined.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

This really needs a time frame. 

I might have a week where it's 50%+ Beethoven, but stretch it out to a year, and no one is as high as 10%.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

On my own time, *lately* it has been something like:

Mozart
Dvorak
Muffat(Georg)
Haydn
Brahms
CPE Bach
Schumann
Berlioz
Scriabin

But things like this really cycle and change.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

GreenMamba said:


> This really needs a time frame.


Agreed; that's why I used the last few years. The time frame of a week or month doesn't really tell much.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Today- mostly Wagner, for some reason. And in German, too! Also songs by Goublier, JB Faure, Massenet, and others.

Normally I choose the singer I want to listen to and don't really notice who the composer is.  But I imagine those getting the most play would be Verdi, Gounod, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti and Massenet.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

If the composer was the 23 year old Clara Schumann, I would devote 100% of my time to and with her between the hours of 9PM and 12 AM on a Saturday night. It could potentially turn out to be glorious!


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## GKC (Jun 2, 2011)

hpowders said:


> J.S. Bach 93%
> 
> Prokofiev 7%


Wow. Those percentages pretty constant over time?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

GKC said:


> Wow. Those percentages pretty constant over time?


Yeah. The Bach sometimes goes to 100% though. I'm addicted to solo keyboard Bach, but I also love Prokofiev.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I went full nerd and calculated it out (in terms of time). In the past year and two weeks, I've listened to: 

8.00% - Beethoven 
7.69% - Bach
3.55% - Mozart
3.21% - Haydn 
3.06% - Brahms 
2.63% - Wagner
2.23% - Chopin 
2.12% - Monteverdi
1.94% - Schubert
1.60% - Schoenberg
1.46% - Mahler
1.44% - Prokofiev
0.89% - Handel
0.85% - Bruckner
0.82% - Bartok
0.78% - Shostakovich 
0.75% - Albeniz
0.75% - Hildegard
0.73% - Mendelssohn
0.72% - Tchaikovsky
0.71% - Sibelius
0.67% - Stravinsky
0.67% - Schumann
0.65% - Fauré
0.60% - Biber
0.58% - Rachmaninoff
0.55% - Verdi
0.51% - Respighi
0.50% - Palestrina
0.50% - Delius

That means those 30 composers have been just over 51% of my listening, and the top 5 were 25%!


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Figleaf said:


> Today- mostly Wagner, for some reason. And in German, too!


Who was the singer, then?

I have never calculated it precisely by percentage, but my big three are Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner, and they take up about half of my listening time. The rest take the other 50%.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Who was the singer, then?
> 
> I have never calculated it precisely by percentage, but my big three are Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner, and they take up about half of my listening time. The rest take the other 50%.


It was this remarkable CD of recordings made in Germany during the 1904 Bayreuth Festival:

http://naxosmusiclibrary.com/sharedfiles/booklets/SYP/booklet-SYMP1081.pdf

http://www.symposiumrecords.co.uk/catalogue/1081

I bought the CD many years ago to hear the great Hermann Winkelmann, who you will know as the first Parsifal. I really like his recordings in spite of the fact that they capture a rather aged voice. His Wagner records from this particular CD (Walther's Prize Song, Hoechstes Vertrauen from Lohengrin, the famous bit from Tannhaeuser) are ironically less good as performances than the non-Wagner selections, of which the best is 'Deserto Sulla Terra' from Trovatore. It's a beautiful, moving performance which ranks with those by Francesco Tamagno and Agustarello Affre: all those tenors' 'Deserto Sulla Terra's have a sort of nineteenth century family resemblance in spite of their different national styles and languages, being all slow in tempo and emotionally affecting, filled with melancholy. Nowadays it can be sung too quickly, in a throwaway fashion. Winkelmann reminds me of Francesco Marconi in the sweetness of his voice and a certain indefinably spiritual quality, as well as in the obvious wear on the instrument from singing heavy roles for years. I think Winkelmann's lovely voice is shown to its best advantage in the aria from Dalibor, although things seem to go a bit wrong about halfway through: his intonation is not always quite above suspicion, and the accompanist sounds like he has a personal grudge against the upright piano he's bashing away at. Anyway, after owning this CD for years I decided to see what else was on it besides Winkelmann, and I was very pleasantly surprised. It's all Wagner I think, apart from Slezak and Sedlmair I think in the (excellently performed) final duet from Aida. The highlight was- wait for it- a duet from Tristan und Isolde, 'O sink hernieder', beautifully sung by the phenomenal Sophie Sedlmair, who I don't think I'd ever listened to properly before yesterday, and one of either Erik Schmedes or Leo Slezak, I can't remember which. I wonder if I am feeling quite alright: it is unlike me to listen with pleasure to anything from that opera, as you know, let alone to forget to notice who the tenor was on the recording! It may have helped me that the duet was piano accompanied, which I'm sure is heresy (and was almost certainly a practical rather than artistic decision on the part of the sound recordists) but which reduces the problematic aural overload I can get from Wagner's orchestrations. Also on the CD are Clarence Whitehill, an excellent, firm voiced American bass baritone reminiscent of David Bispham; two interesting tenors who were also medical doctors, Alfred von Bary and Otto Briesemeister; a nice recording of the wood bird's song by Emilie Feuge; and the only singer who didn't particularly grab me, one Hans Breuer, and even he may improve on further acquaintance. A productive listening day, anyway! 

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Winkelmann


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

science said:


> 8.00% - Beethoven
> 7.69% - Bach
> 3.55% - Mozart
> 3.21% - Haydn
> ...


 Science: switch Beethoven and Bach around(and possibly Beethoven and Mozart, depending on the list) and your natural listening pattern would match exactly one notable "top composer" list(and perhaps some others) I have encountered. Maybe you have a natural knack for understanding what the "best" music is? I find this ironic, considering how adventurous and unbiased you always venture to be. Fascinating.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

clavichorder said:


> Science: switch Beethoven and Bach around(and possibly Beethoven and Mozart, depending on the list) and your natural listening pattern would match exactly numerous "top composer" lists I have encountered. Maybe you have a natural knack for understanding what the best music is? I find this ironic, considering how adventurous and unbiased you always venture to be. Fascinating.


I thought about explaining that I don't think the past year has been completely typical for me. I've been in a "back to basics" mode a lot of the time. I haven't listened to a lot of my favorite stuff, but I've been trying to bone up, especially on Beethoven's string quartets, which I always fail to appreciate. I listened to them 4 times last year, and the piano sonatas and symphonies each 3 times. I still don't feel I know them well enough, and I intend to do them all again within the next few weeks, time permitting.

The only who is that high because of my own personal taste is Brahms. Pretty much any time that I feel like I just want to sit back with a drink and listen to something heartbreakingly beautiful, I turn to Brahms' chamber music.

And I can do that when my wife is home! When she's home, my listening is very limited, basically nothing that sounds like it was composed after about 1910. She tolerates later stuff, but I never when it's going to get on her nerves, and I'd rather just listen to stuff she enjoys because I have enough of that too.

But my wife hasn't been home today (Korean New Year), so it's been Martinu, Schoenberg, Webern, Xenakis, Lutoslawski, Cage, Adams, and Prokofiev for me today. Except for the Cage, it's all recordings that I hadn't listened to since last February!


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

I'm way too spread out to calculate this. I have a set of 8 new discs each month that alternate with a set of 24 old discs I listen through 4 times before retiring alternating with discs I check out of the library on a regular basis (about 5 a week).

I can say that the first disc in the first set is always from a composer I am trying to listen to in complete chronological order. The first three composers in this set are Amy Beach, Fanny Mendelssohn and Erich Korngold. But, that doesn't really mean anything.....


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Figleaf said:


> It was this remarkable CD of recordings made in Germany during the 1904 Bayreuth Festival:
> 
> http://naxosmusiclibrary.com/sharedfiles/booklets/SYP/booklet-SYMP1081.pdf
> 
> ...


That is very interesting, thank you! I knew about Hermann Winkelmann, but I had no idea his recordings are even available!


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

50% Haydn, then the other 50 between Beethoven, Schubert, Telemann, Brahms, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Dvorak, Bach, Handel and Mendelssohn.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Daily log:

Just spent 30 minutes and 15 seconds with Prokofiev.

Piano Concerto No. 3. Lang Lang. Berlin Phil/Rattle.

More time spent with composers to follow.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> That is very interesting, thank you! I knew about Hermann Winkelmann, but I had no idea his recordings are even available!


Two of his Berliners are also available here:

http://www.symposiumrecords.co.uk/catalogue/1318

They were recorded in 1900 and are in much worse sound than the G&Ts from four years later, which are very vivid. Too bad he recorded nothing from Parsifal. Winkelmann was quite a pioneer, as there weren't that many first class singers making commercial recordings in 1900. German Wikipedia says that he was born in 1847 and some sources give 1849, though the earlier date is maybe preferable since singers are more likely to have subtracted a couple of years from their age than added a couple! Either way, we are very fortunate that his voice was captured in the nick of time.


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## Bevo (Feb 22, 2015)

Very difficult question, but I'd probably guesstimate:
30% Tchaikovsky
22% Beethoven
18% Mozart
15% Haydn
5% Other Russian Composers
10% Everyone else


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## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

Well, I spent the last 5 days compiling everything that I listened to, and at this point, I'm really sick of doing that, so I'll just post my results for this past almost-week and stop trying to get a more accurate representation of my listening.

*Percentage - Time Spent - Composer (# of pieces)
*15.19% - 188 minutes - Gustav Mahler (2)
9.74% - 121 minutes - Ludwig van Beethoven (7)
7.92% - 98 minutes - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (7, thanks _trazom_)
4.50% - 56 minutes - Jean Sibelius (7)
4.42% - 55 minutes - Sergei Rachmaninoff (1)
3.82% - 47 minutes - Anton Bruckner (1)
3.72% - 46 minutes - Franz Schubert (3)
3.42% - 42 minutes - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (4)
2.96% - 37 minutes - Igor Stravinsky (5)
2.82% - 35 minutes - Tan Dun (1)
2.81% - 35 minutes - Aaron Jay Kernis (1)
2.69% - 33 minutes - Karl Hartmann (2)
2.01% - 25 minutes - Reinhold Gliere (1)

*Composers with under 2%, in order of time spent*: Ernest Bloch, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Franz Berwald, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Edvard Grieg, Bedrich Smetana, Benjamin Britten, Robert Schumann, Edouard Lalo, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Toru Takemitsu, Claude Debussy, Fryderyk Chopin, Alexander Tcherepnin, Johann Sebastian Bach, Dmitri Shostakovich, Johann Pachelbel, Walter Piston, Roy Harris, Edgar Varese, William Walton, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Antonin Dvorak, Arthur Honegger, Gyorgy Ligeti, Bohuslav Martinu, Felix Mendelssohn, Gabriel Faure, Victor Herbert, Henri Dutilleux, Alexander Glazunov, Franz Joseph Haydn, Ottorino Respighi, Sergei Prokofiev, Alfred Hill, John Corigliano, Isaac Albeniz, Mily Balakirev, Einar Englund, Leonard Bernstein, Anton Rubinstein, Arnold Schoenberg, Edward Elgar, Alexander Borodin, Fritz Kreisler, Charles Ives, Giuseppe Verdi, Modest Mussorgsky, Francis Poulenc, Ennio Morricone, Johannes Brahms, Charles Gounod, Erik Satie, Johann Strauss II, Anton Webern


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Spent 29 minutes, 40 seconds with Bartok's Piano Concerto No. 2 today.
Lang Lang. Berlin Phil/Rattle.


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## OldFashionedGirl (Jul 21, 2013)

I can't dedicate a long time listening to just one composer. I can't say I'll dedicate a whole month listening to Beethoven, for example. I always listening different kinds of composers. And if I find myself listening to a determinate composer over and over again I don't doing it on purpose. These days I have listening Bach, Prokofiev, Bartók, Ligeti, Mozart, Beethoven and Ives.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

OldFashionedGirl said:


> I can't dedicate a long time listening to just one composer. I can't say I'll dedicate a whole month listening to Beethoven, for example. I always listening different kinds of composers. And if I find myself listening to a determinate composer over and over again I don't doing it on purpose. These days I have listening Bach, Prokofiev, Bartók, Ligeti, Mozart, Beethoven and Ives.


A very fine variety!!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

science said:


> I went full nerd and calculated it out (in terms of time). In the past year and two weeks, I've listened to:
> 
> 8.00% - Beethoven
> 7.69% - Bach
> ...


That was then. I did it again and these are my numbers from 16/5/12, listing only composers that broke the 1% barrier:

Beethoven 8.58% (+.58%)
Bach, JS 6.62% (-1.07%)
Mozart 4.29% (+.74%)
Brahms 3.39% (+.33%)
Schubert 2.74% (+.78%)
Haydn 2.69% (-.52%)
Mahler 2.44% (+1%)
Wagner 2.21% (-.42%)
Chopin 2.00% (-.23%)
Schumann 1.47% (+.8%)
Schoenberg	1.46% (-.14%)
Monteverdi	1.24% (-.88%)
Prokofiev 1.06% (-.38%)
Shostakovich	1.06% (+.28%)

Which means I've spend just over 41% of my time (since early February 2014) listening to just 14 composers, and almost 20% of my time listening to just 3.

The Bach drop surprises me. I wasn't conscious of that at all. The Mahler rise does not surprise me. In general, I'm surprised that my listening hasn't been even more concentrated. I've been really beefing up on the major works of the big names for the past few years. I don't know when/if I'll feel free to just listen for fun again.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

This is easy  
40 % Palestrina
30 % Granados
20 % Chopin
10 % Shostakovich
but this is only the last 3 days...


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## dieter (Feb 26, 2016)

Hardly any: most of them are deceased. The only composers I spend time with are the unpublished species. Even them, most of them do it part time, thank the lord.


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

I would have to say 80% JS Bach 
10% CPE Bach
10% Beethoven

Of the 80% JS Bach about 90% is dedicated to listening to his cantatas. 

About six weeks ago I gave Bach a rest and listened to more of Beethoven, Brahms, and Dvorak. Yet the lure of JS was too much I was soon back on his cantatas. It is like a drug. A really strong addictive drug.


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

Interesting, this thread prompted me to look for statistics lists in my player. I've installed the new one in February, and statistics are lifetime popularity I understand, so the following should be the list for the last three months. However I still had to do some calculating myself. Most popular top and then in descending order the least.

Mozart
Brahms
Biber
Granados
Haydn
Albeniz
Bach
Schubert
Rachmaninov 
Sibelius


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

hpowders said:


> J.S. Bach 93%
> 
> Prokofiev 7%


You need a little more ... variety?


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Very rough estimate:

20% Beethoven
20% Bach
10% Brahms
10% Mozart
40% Schubert, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Dvorak, Haydn, Mahler, Bruckner, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Mendelssohn, Handel, Scarlatti, Berlioz ... others


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Hm...

I guess as much time as _he _has. Busy man, having to go visit everyone else in the world every day... this can range from complete absence for a day, to 2 hours of time. Rarely more than 1 day apart though, even if we meet for just a few minutes. I'd say 50% of the time it depends on me, and 50% of the time it depends on him.

*puts hands back in straight jacket after typing this* :tiphat:


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

In the grand tradition of overwrought navel-gazing over trivialities, which is also one of my favorite hobbies, here are my new numbers. 

(These percentages are the amount of time I have spent listening to specific composers as a percentage of the total amount of time I have spent listening to music on iTunes since the last time my iTunes crashed so badly that I lost my play counts. The major caveat is that of course I probably made some mistakes putting the data into Excel. The minor caveat is iTunes stinks. When I become a billionaire, I promise to pay some brilliant programmer to develop a better digital music management tool for us all. The numbers in parentheses are the change since my last tally, about ten months ago. This tally includes that tally, so these numbers must understate the changes in my listening habits.)

Beethoven: 8.21% (-0.37%) 
Bach: 5.32% (-1.30%)
Mozart: 4.18% (-0.11%)
Brahms: 2.97% (-0.42%)
Schubert: 2.76% (+0.02%)
Haydn: 2.48% (-0.21%)
Mahler: 2.42% (-0.02%)
Wagner: 2.13% (-0.08%)
Chopin: 1.62% (-0.38%)
Shostakovich: 1.24% (+0.18%)
Schoenberg: 1.22% (-0.24%)
Schumann: 1.17% (-0.30%)
Handel: 1.12% (N/A)
Prokofiev: 1.11% (+0.05%)
Tchaikovsky: 1.04% (N/A)
Monteverdi: 1.02% (-0.22%)

I'd like to welcome Handel and Tchaikovsky to the 1% club! Barely missing the list were Bartok, Sibelius, and Bruckner. 

So now there are 16 composers who occupy at least 1% of my time.

Almost every composer fell because I'm making an effort to listen to all of my music: I still haven't listened to more than half of my music since the last crash. As I make more progress on this goal, it is likely that most composers in the 1% club will continue to fall, mainly excepting Mozart if I really dig into the Brilliant Box of his complete works. 

The only really big mover was Bach, poor Bach! 

The biggest climber was Shostakovich, but six composers fell more than he rose. 

The big three have now occupied over 17% of my listening to music time, and the sixteen composers in the 1% club have claimed almost exactly 40% of it. 

The next 16 composers, assuming I didn't miss anyone, collectively occupied just over 10% of my time. They are Bartok, Sibelius, Bruckner, Dvorak, Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Faure, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Verdi, Biber, Britten, and Richard Strauss. 

The third tier of 16 has claimed about 6% of my time, and they are Janacek, Saint-Saens, Vaughan Williams, Ives, Albeniz, Berlioz, Puccini, Byrd, Messiaen, Carter, Kodaly, Ligeti, Nono, Enescu, Berg and Hildegard von Bingen. (Hildegard is of course the first female on this list; the 47 composers I listen to most are all men.) 

The fourth tier has claimed almost 4% of my time, and they are Boccherini, Grieg, Joaquin, Purcell, Zelenka, Cage, Elgar, Delius, Palestrina, Gesualdo, Reich, Hindemith, Scriabin, Respighi, Martinu, and Franck. I won't go on! The last of that list, Franck, is at about a fifth of a percent. 

I tallied 140 composers for this accounting, and all together they came to almost 69% of my listening time. 

Hopefully iTunes and my hard drives will hold up for another year - I would not bet on that of course - and I will be able to do another progress report!


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

45% Mahler
40% Bruckner
10% (in descending order): Bach, Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi, Telemann, etc.
4% Beethoven

1%: Lately, some cheeky Frenchmen have been nosing in, particularly Debussy, Ravel and Satie


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