# The greatest were born in the Winter?



## Swosh (Feb 25, 2018)

December: Beethoven
January: Schubert, Mozart
February: Mendelssohn, Handel
March: Haydn and Bach were born on the same day, Chopin

Kind of an interesting pattern... or maybe I'm grasping at straws.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Of course, for all those music lovers from south of the equator, this "born in the winter" assessment aint exactly right. Right?


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> Of course, for all those music lovers from south of the equator, this "born in the winter" assessment aint exactly right. Right?


I was thinking exactly the same when I first read that OP.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

April: Prokofiev
May: Monteverdi, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky
June: Stravinsky
July: Mahler
August: Debussy
September: Dvorak


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

SONNET CLV said:


> Of course, for all those music lovers from south of the equator, this "born in the winter" assessment aint exactly right. Right?


Funny enough, the first three composers from the Southern hemisphere that I checked (Ginastera, Sculthorpe, Volans) were all born in the local autumn/winter (April/July).


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I think it tells me more about when the parents' are more fertile.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Swosh said:


> December: Beethoven
> January: Schubert, Mozart
> February: Mendelssohn, Handel
> March: Haydn and Bach were born on the same day, Chopin
> ...


Also in December: Sibelius, Puccini, Atterberg, Berlioz
January: Lyatoshynsky, Gliere, Balakirev
February: Robert Fuchs, Melartin
March: Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

Orfeo said:


> Also in December: Sibelius, Puccini, Atterberg, Berlioz
> January: Lyatoshynsky, Gliere, Balakirev
> February: Robert Fuchs, Melartin
> March: Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky


Yes, we're farthest from our dangerous galactic center in December and January.

In March we're closest to our Supercluster, not dangerous but it's the home of intelligences.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were also born in the Winter, among others.

The cold weather might inhibit parental movement, leaving more room for internalized infantile brain rumination.

Scheming babies.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Born in winter, conceived in spring. Which is what really matters.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Born in winter, conceived in spring. Which is what really matters.


Yes, there's an idea that Jesus was conceived in March, born in December, and died on the day he was conceived. Dying on the day of their conception was a peculiar hallmark of heroes in the Age of Aries.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

OK, I got bored in the gallery this afternoon (November is a very slow month), so I looked at this further. I took a list of 100 greatest composers that looked at least reasonable (link) and put their birth months in a spreadsheet. That gave me 90 names to compare (10 birth date unknown), a reasonable number from a statistics point of view - and all from the Northern hemisphere. I don't know whether there is information about distribution of birth months for the general public over the centuries for a fair comparison*, but looking at this greatest composers dataset gave some surprises.

Here we go, number of composers per month:

1: 7
2: 6
3: 15
4: 2
5: 7
6: 8
7: 4
8: 3
9: 11
10: 9
11: 10
12: 8
unknown: 10

Lumping per season (3-5/6-8/9-11/12-2):

Spring: 24
Summer: 15
Autumn: 20
Winter: 31

Or dividing in two, "summer" (4-9) and "winter" (10-3):

Summer: 35
Winter: 55

I'm not a statistician (and my days of university courses on that subject are long long ago), but that looks like a clearly significant difference to me.

* current data suggest a rather even distribution with a small peak around October, but variance from month to month not more than say +/-10%.


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