# Popularity within classical music - optimism or pessimism?



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

The ongoing thread about a "new middle ages" for music has sent me back yet again to the results of my composer polls and prompted me to produce the following chart:








(click on it to see it full-size)

There's nothing especially novel or surprising here, but it's a handy visual representation of what we all already know, so I'll discuss the chart in a little detail before getting round to the point of the post.

The blue line shows the percentage score achieved by the most-popular composer born in each decade from the 1450s (Josquin) to the 1960s (Chin). (For those unfamiliar with the polls, the "score" means that about 35% of respondents said they liked Josquin).
I've marked many of the composers to make the graph clearer.
There seem to be 4 main phases to the blue graph: a wobbly bit that peaks with Monteverdi, a trough-to-peak leading to Bach, a bit more wobbliness in the Classical era, a high run from Schubert to Shostakovich, and then a plummet in the 20th century.

Then there's the red line, which focuses on the _fifth-most popular_ composers born in each decade - to remove outliers. (For the earlier decades, I generally polled fewer than 5 composers, so it's likely that an actual 5th-placed composer would do worse than depicted here). 
In the early stages it's a very different graph to the blue one: aside from a few bumps, it's low all the way along before starting to rise in the late Classical era, showing some major fluctuations over the 19th century, and then showing a similar but not quite as precipitous drop as the blue line in the 20th century.

As I said, I think we all knew this already: the 19th century is when the number of popular composers greatly increases, and before then there are certain "big names" that stand well above their peers. And modern/contemporary music overall is less popular than 18th/19th-century music (but nevertheless, the most popular modern music is more popular than most pre-18th century music).

So my question is this...

If similar composer polls were held 50 or 100 years from now, what would the chart look like?

I think that one's view of how the right-hand side of the chart would look will be a reflection of how enthusiastic or unenthusiastic one is about today's music. The pessimist may well extrapolate those lines down to zero. The optimist, on the other hand, might expect that in 50 years the scores achieved by Ligeti, Schnittke et al will be much higher as these composers take their places in the pantheon.
But what about the other parts of the chart, too? Will the composers of the 19th century suffer a similar fate to their predecessors as they fade into the past, leaving only a handful of "big names"? Will there still be such huge peaks for the likes of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven?


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

I think the romantic era composers have an advantage in the recordings of their music will keep them from fading away. The earlier eras had to depend on their works being played.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> I think the romantic era composers have an advantage in the recordings of their music will keep them from fading away. The earlier eras had to depend on their works being played.


I think this is huge.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> If similar composer polls were held 50 or 100 years from now, what would the chart look like?
> 
> I think that one's view of how the right-hand side of the chart would look will be a reflection of how enthusiastic or unenthusiastic one is about today's music. The pessimist may well extrapolate those lines down to zero. The optimist, on the other hand, might expect that in 50 years the scores achieved by Ligeti, Schnittke et al will be much higher as these composers take their places in the pantheon.
> But what about the other parts of the chart, too? *Will the composers of the 19th century suffer a similar fate to their predecessors as they fade into the past, leaving only a handful of "big names"? Will there still be such huge peaks for the likes of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven?*


The graph of eras preceding the 19th century will probably remain pretty stable: Bach, Mozart and Beethoven will continue to dominate, with Handel, Haydn and that five gazillion concerto guy just below them in popularity. The Romantic and early Modern periods are different: they brought a much greater diversity of style due to the emergence of previously peripheral nations and cultures, as well as to the normal growth of music's techniques and vocabulary, so we have a lot more composers whose unique voices will retain their appeal, and we won't see an extreme dominance by a handful of composers, even if certain peaks rise and fall.

As for the last sixty or seventy years, I'll leave that to tasseographers.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Nereffid, forgive me if you have already posted this somewhere, but have you figures for the number of composers born in each ten-year cohort? If composer X is the most favored and composer Y is the 5th most favored composer in any given cohort, how large is the cohort in which they are imbedded? This may bear strongly on the strength of the appeal of some particular composer as pitted against a cohort of tiny versus vast size.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> Nereffid, forgive me if you have already posted this somewhere, but have you figures for the number of composers born in each ten-year cohort? If composer X is the most favored and composer Y is the 5th most favored composer in any given cohort, how large is the cohort in which they are imbedded? This may bear strongly on the strength of the appeal of some particular composer as pitted against a cohort of tiny versus vast size.


There were 600 composers altogether, and they were chosen mostly on the basis of being relatively well-known to begin with; outside the 18th/19th/early 20th centuries, this tended to mean _relative to their peers_. I could give you a full list but I don't feel like doing it right now - sorry! But I can give a few pointers: 9 born in the 1560s, 11 in the 1680s, 6 in the 1750s, 7 in the 1770s, 15 in the 1840s, 28 in the 1860s, 36 in the 1890s, 30 in the 1940s. There just aren't very many "well-known" composers prior to Vivaldi. 
The graph above doesn't just reflect the poll results - it also reflects what I had to work with in the first place, which is why I say it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. The popularity of the 5th-best composer probably shows a reasonably good correlation with the size of that decade's cohort.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> There were 600 composers altogether, and they were chosen mostly on the basis of being relatively well-known to begin with; outside the 18th/19th/early 20th centuries, this tended to mean _relative to their peers_. I could give you a full list but I don't feel like doing it right now - sorry! But I can give a few pointers: 9 born in the 1560s, 11 in the 1680s, 6 in the 1750s, 7 in the 1770s, 15 in the 1840s, 28 in the 1860s, 36 in the 1890s, 30 in the 1940s. There just aren't very many "well-known" composers prior to Vivaldi.
> The graph above doesn't just reflect the poll results - it also reflects what I had to work with in the first place, which is why I say it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. The popularity of the 5th-best composer probably shows a reasonably good correlation with the size of that decade's cohort.


Thanks, Nereffid. I will be first in line to examine the fruits of your research into cohort strength. I am toying with the notion that love for classical music may be both fungible and be fixed in quantity, as a working hypothesis: spreading a fixed quantity of marmalade over a larger and larger slice of bread. For instance, if a cohort contains 50 composers, the love may be spread a bit more thinly across that larger potential pool than a case where the cohort is of 10. There, a Beethoven would have far fewer rivals than if he were aswim in a sea of competitors. The tendency has been for the cohort size to increase as we approach our own time. Thus, that steep falling off may be accounted for, at least in part.


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## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

It looks like the gap between 1st and 5th is considerably smaller over the past century or so. I imagine this gap will grow in 100 years, as some composers emerge as the definitive favorites.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> Thanks, Nereffid. I will be first in line to examine the fruits of your research into cohort strength. I am toying with the notion that love for classical music may be both fungible and be fixed in quantity, as a working hypothesis: spreading a fixed quantity of marmalade over a larger and larger slice of bread. For instance, if a cohort contains 50 composers, the love may be spread a bit more thinly across that larger potential pool than a case where the cohort is of 10. There, a Beethoven would have far fewer rivals than if he were aswim in a sea of competitors. The tendency has been for the cohort size to increase as we approach our own time. Thus, that steep falling off may be accounted for, at least in part.


I don't think it's all cohort size, although that applies to me. There are so many good composers writing beween 1500 and 1800 that I've got stuck.

If you look at older music, there are large books on how to play e.g. Baroque - A Performer's Guide to Music of the Baroque Period by Christopher Hogwood et al - for example. There are many recordings. There are different approaches we have a whole range of expertise developed over a number of years.

The newer the music the fewer the recordings, the less expertise in technique possibly a lower quality of performance because musicians have not fully comprehended the music. As time goes by, people will appreciate the music more because it is played better, because there are more champions of the music, because there is a better standard of recordings which makes them more playable on radio. It simply takes time for new music to debelop.

We can argue about the multitudinous sets of Bach cantatas or the WTC where are the multitudinous box sets of Ligetti for example. When we can start a thread arguing for the best version of Le grand macabre then we can say that modern music has fully arrived. Until then, there will be a few recordings gradually becoming more popular.

So in 50 years time, I expect music of the period 1970 - 2020 to show a decided upturn in popularity while people will be arguing why new music of the 2060's is so under rated.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

In 50 years? I won't be here to worry about it. I'll be listening to Mozart performing Mozart Piano Concertos. I wonder if they will be HIP-inspired?


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Taggart said:


> So in 50 years time, I expect music of the period 1970 - 2020 to show a decided upturn in popularity while people will be arguing why new music of the 2060's is so under rated.


I concur with this prediction, although the huge dip in popularity predates the 1970s by about 60 years. One can argue that Mahler was the last 'giant' of classical music (or at least the last to be recognized as such); who knows, one cannot foretell the future. Untill then I will continue to uphold the somewhat pessimistic standpoint that new music will never be as popular as their pre-20th century counterparts. I think that with the rise of pop music, avant-garde and most other things being composed today will never gain the recognition or universal attachment that they may deserve. In a day and age where attention spans keep shrinking, symphonies five minutes in length could be the norm by 2050.


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Popularity never matters, putting emphasis on popularity indicates insecurity.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Popularity matters hugely. That's the only way a work enters the long-term performing repertoire.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Some time ago, I calculated the average year of composition of our favorite works. I got an average year of composition of 1808, not far from what Nereffid's graph suggests. Right in Beethoven's middle period!

In another century, will 1808 still be the year? Or will there be so few people listening that the question really won't matter?


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

KenOC said:


> Popularity matters hugely. That's the only way a work enters the long-term performing repertoire.


And? I'm not talking about "repertoire". Popularity means dog (it's also a revolving door) and as I said, putting emphasis on it signifies insecurity.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ST4 said:


> And? I'm not talking about "repertoire". Popularity means dog (it's also a revolving door) and as I said, putting emphasis on it signifies insecurity.


Unfortunately, if a work is not popular then sooner or later it disappears and is forgotten, and neither you nor anyone else will hear it. How many works has that happened to?


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

ST4 said:


> And? I'm not talking about "repertoire". Popularity means dog (it's also a revolving door) and as I said, putting emphasis on it signifies insecurity.


I agree with KenOC about repertoire, and I'm not sure how else we can approach the concept of "do people generally like this?" without using popularity as a measure.

At least in my case, wondering whether something is or will be popular is a sign of curiosity, not insecurity.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Nereffid said:


> If similar composer polls were held 50 or 100 years from now, what would the chart look like?


One thing that I predict is that composers like Sondheim and even Lloyd Webber are going to be reconsidered and then classified as classical music (or whatever term is then used, since I suspect the term "art music" has a future).

Another prediction is that the hard insistence on a distinction between composing and performing is going to dissolve (this is related to my prediction in the rise of "art music" as a category), so that musicians like Miles Davis, Merzbow, or Foday Musa Suso get included in "our" "canon." We'll talk more about "musicians" and less about "composers." I really don't understand why the fetishization of "the composer" retains so much power even in 2017, and I feel sure it can't last 50 more years.

So I predict that our era of music will look much different to observers two generations from now (if we haven't thrown ourselves into some post-apocalyptic nightmare) than it does to us.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Unfortunately, if a work is not popular then sooner or later it disappears and is forgotten, and neither you nor anyone else will hear it. How many works has that happened to?


Are you stuck in a pre-recording era, Ken?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Chronochromie said:


> Are you stuck in a pre-recording era, Ken?


Good point. Works that not a single person enjoys can now be immortal.


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