# The 2014-15 Orchestra Season by the Numbers



## Lunasong

Interesting study summarized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. And apparently, more analysis to come.
http://www.bsomusic.org/stories/the-2014-15-orchestra-season-by-the-numbers.aspx

For now, here are some of the initial findings from the data we analyzed:

Collectively, the 21 orchestras will perform more than 1,000 different pieces in part or full by 286 different composers a total of almost 4,600 times.
9.5% of all pieces performed are written since the year 2000.
The average date of composition of a piece performed during the year is 1886.
A little more than 11% of the works performed are from composers who are still living.
Female composers account for only 1.8% of the works performed. When only looking at works from living composers, they account for 14.8%
German composers account for more than 23% of the total pieces performed, followed by Russians (19%) and Austrians (14% - in large part due to Mozart).
American composers made up less than 11% of the pieces performed. When looking at only works by living composers, however, they account for more than 54% 









Methodology

The orchestras included are the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony and Utah Symphony - Utah Opera.
The programs and repertoire included are from the 2014-2015 season as listed on each orchestra website and literature prior to the start of the season.
Calculations for the initial findings and infographic are weighed by the number of times a piece of music will be performed in concert.
Gala concerts, touring, chambers series, pops and family concerts are included but are in a separate category from the main classical programs. The infographic and initial findings calculations excludes these concerts.
While technically touring, the Cleveland Orchestra's concerts in Miami are included in the main classical programs as its performances in Miami are an annual part of its season.
To be included in any of the categories, concerts must use musicians from the listed orchestra.
Additionally, pops and family concerts listings are not extensive, as full program repertoire is often not included online for these concerts.
Composer nationalities are based on information from the New Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians as accessed through Oxford Music Online. When no entry exists for a living composer, nationality information comes from the best available biographical information usually from the composer's website.
Composition date is based on the best available scholarship of the year in which a piece was completed.
Later revisions are not included in the composition date unless a concert program specifically denotes a different version of the original piece. For example, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite was completed in 1910, but the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will perform the 1919 version and the St. Louis Symphony will perform the 1945 version for ballet and orchestra, which is included in the composition date for those entries.
In most cases, composition date information comes from the International Music Score Library Project / Petrucci Music Library.


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## KenOC

I downloaded the spreadsheet from the site you mention -- 21 major American orchestras, concert programming for the 2014-2015 season. Here are the composers represented at ten or more concerts, not including repeats of the same concert:

1. Ludwig van Beethoven - 123 concerts
2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - 115
3. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - 104
4. Richard Strauss - 64
5. Johannes Brahms - 63
6. Maurice Ravel - 62
7. Johann Sebastian Bach - 57
8. Igor Stravinsky - 51
9. Sergei Rachmaninoff - 45
10. Jean Sibelius - 40
11. Antonín Dvořák - 38
12. Dmitri Shostakovich - 38
13. Joseph Haydn - 38
14. Sergei Prokofiev - 37
15. Gustav Mahler - 35
16. Claude Debussy - 30
17. Robert Schumann - 26
18. Felix Mendelssohn - 25
19. Béla Bartók - 23
20. Hector Berlioz - 22
21. George Frideric Handel - 19
22. George Gershwin - 17
23. Camille Saint-Saëns - 15
24. Franz Schubert - 15
25. Leonard Bernstein - 15
26. Modest Mussorgsky - 15
27. Aaron Copland - 14
28. John Adams - 14
29. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - 14
30. Richard Wagner - 14
31. Samuel Barber - 14
32. Carl Nielsen - 13
33. Manuel de Falla - 13
34. Ottorino Respighi - 13
35. Edward Elgar - 12
36. Antonio Vivaldi - 11
37. Franz Liszt - 11
38. Mason Bates - 11
39. Anatoly Lyadov - 10
40. Anton Bruckner - 10

There are another 251 composers in single-digit territory, of whom well over half are programmed at just a single concert.


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## dgee

That's a slightly terrifying list of most performed living composers - Higdon and Bates!

And what about Lyadov?! That's 10 more performances of Enchanted Lake than is entirely necessary...

Look forward to having a leisurely browse later. IIRC correctly a similar exercise is published for Proms concerts. If I find it, I'll link in


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## Lunasong

Ken, after looking at your stats, I wondered if there was a way to figure out the total number of concerts. There is, but not without manipulating the data to sort by orchestra/date. I didn't feel like doing it (yet). 

I was pleasantly surprised at the % of works performed by living composers until I realized the decade the composers consistently started to be dead was the 1960s, which gives us roughly 50 years of living composer potential production. The earliest dated work was 1680 so there are approx 7 periods of 50 years since then. 1/7 = 14.2%, so living composers at 11% are actually under-represented.

I would imaging there's a bias by American orchestras toward programming compositions by living American composers.


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## KenOC

There does seem to be a bias toward American composers among the living ones. Of course many of these performances are debuts, many or most commissions. And almost all commissions by American orchestras are given to American composers, or so I imagine.

"American composers made up less than 11% of the pieces performed. When looking at only works by living composers, however, they account for more than 54%."


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## Vaneyes

No Nono, Berio, Schnittke, Ligeti, Norgard, Gubaidulina, Dutilleux, Carter, Penderecki, Scriabin, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Honegger, Roussel, Poulenc, Hovhaness, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky.

Might as well stay home, and listen to Top 40 radio.


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## hpowders

The slothy conservatism of musical audiences continues.


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## KenOC

Vaneyes said:


> No Nono, Berio, Schnittke, Ligeti, Norgard, Gubaidulina, Dutilleux, Carter, Penderecki, Scriabin, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Honegger, Roussel, Poulenc, Hovhaness, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky.
> 
> Might as well stay home, and listen to Top 40 radio.


You got me curious. Here is the number of times each composer you mentioned has been programmed this season:

Berg - 4
Berio - 1
Carter - 0
Dutilleux - 2
Gubaidulina - 1
Hindemith - 4
Honegger - 1
Hovhaness - 0
Khachaturian - 5
Ligeti - 6
Lutoslawski - 1
Myaskovsky - 0
Nono - 0
Norgard - 0
Penderecki - 0
Poulenc - 6
Roussel - 1
Schnittke - 1
Schoenberg - 4
Scriabin - 7
Szymanowski - 3
Webern - 3


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## Vaneyes

Thanks for that. Scriabin and Ligeti plays show some promise. The rest need work--especially, half of the missing-in-action twenty-two.:tiphat:


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## Radames

In February the Boston Symphony is doing Liadov's Baba-Yaga, Kikimora, From the Apocalypse,and Nenie. Does that count as 1 or 4? Because seeing Liadov 10 times was surprising. I think I have only heard anything by him done twice in concert.


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## Lunasong

Orchestra programming decisions aim to balance artistic merit and importance with the financial reality of what the ticket-buying public wants to hear.

The repertoire in the classical canon that most frequently make it on a concert calendar tend to be the works that best satisfy both of those factors. Using data from 22 American symphony orchestras' concert calendars this season, below are the top 10 most performed works of 2014-2015.

Bolstered by annual performances near Christmas, George Frederic Handel's Messiah was featured in the 38 concerts by a total of 13 of the 22 orchestras sampled. Close behind, Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition will be performed 37 times during the concert season by 12 different orchestras.

Beethoven claimed three of the top 10 most performed works. Symphony No. 5 was third overall with 35 performances by 12 orchestras while his Symphony No. 7 and Violin Concerto in D Major accounted for the sixth and seventh spots, respectively.

School and family concerts were not included in that calculation, but many of the most often works performed also are played in full or excerpted in family concerts. Mussorgsky's Pictures will feature in an additional nine such concerts. In large thanks to its use in Disney's Fantasia, Stravinsky's The Firebird Suite will be performed another 15 times in pops or family concerts, including performances by two orchestras that didn't program the work during their classical season.

While the exact number is up for some scholarly debate - Beethoven's Violin Concerto from 1806 is arguably more representative of the Classical period - the majority of the works featuring in the top repertoire are from the Romantic era.

http://www.bsomusic.org/stories/by-the-numbers-top-repertoire-of-the-orchestra-season.aspx


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## Guest

I don't feel too bad for Mr. Schoenberg's poor showing simply because this thread makes me feel special for having seen Verklarte Nacht in Dallas about a year ago 

Was really quite a cool program.
Bach - Oboe D'Amore Concerto
Schoenberg - Verklarte Nacht
Prokofiev - Symphonie-Concertante

Edit: I also know that Dallas programmed Britten twice this year (well, once in the 2014-2015 season and once in the spring of 2014), so odd to not see him around.


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## KenOC

arcaneholocaust said:


> I also know that Dallas programmed Britten twice this year (well, once in the 2014-2015 season and once in the spring of 2014), so odd to not see him around.


Britten is programmed ten times, in 28 performances. Most common are his Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes. Not a real strong showing this season, I think.


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## mountmccabe

KenOC said:


> Berio - 1
> Carter - 0
> Gubaidulina - 1
> Honegger - 1
> Hovhaness - 0
> Lutoslawski - 1
> Myaskovsky - 0
> Nono - 0
> Norgard - 0
> Penderecki - 0
> Roussel - 1
> Schnittke - 1


Well, the new post on living composers mentions that the LAPhil and the National Symphony have both programmed some Pendercki. This lead me to look around and sure enough, they are listed though they didn't make it to the MasterSheet for some reason. NY Phil Ensembles is also performing his String Trio during their chamber series so his work is performed at 5 concerts (or 6 if you count the chamber series.

I double-checked the 0 and 1s and came up with the following revised list (chamber performances only counted in parentheses):

Gubaidulina: 4 concerts, 1 piece
Honegger: 4 concerts, 1 piece
Lutoslawski - 9 concerts, 4 different pieces
Penderecki - 5 concerts, 1 piece by 2 orchestras (plus 1 performance of 1 chamber piece)
Roussel - 3 concerts, 1 piece
Schnittke - 3 concerts, 1 piece (plus 1 performance of 1 chamber piece)

Though after looking at the data it appears as if we were counting different things; I misunderstood your list as concerts like the rest of the data rather than pieces. Those 6 Ligeti pieces were seen over 16 concerts.

So it was not quite as bad as _I_ thought from the numbers here... but there will be no argument from me that the numbers are still lower than I'd wish.


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## KenOC

I was counting the times a piece by each composer was programmed. If the concert was repeated three times (not uncommon) that's still only one time programmed. If a composer has two pieces on the same concert or series of concerts, that's two times programmed.

The list is said to be of concerts given by 21 major US orchestras, so I assume works for smaller forces are not included. And of course I can't vouch for the accuracy of the data!

The research was based on reviewing the seasonal programs of each orchestra as posted on the web, I believe, so concerts not included in those listings aren't counted.


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## mountmccabe

At any rate this is really fascinating information. I especially love the chart. This all reminds me of what Operabase has for opera performances each season, with a lot of statistics and pointing out rare pieces being performed.

This is another reason I love the Berkeley Symphony near me; they only do 4 concerts a year but this season each one of them includes a piece by a living composer and two of them include world premieres.


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## KenOC

Yes, good information, even if there are questions about the quality of the data. I've never run into this kind of database of orchestral music performances before. Perhaps it's out there somewhere, in the ether...


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## mountmccabe

KenOC said:


> I was counting the times a piece by each composer was programmed. If the concert was repeated three times (not uncommon) that's still only one time programmed. If a composer has two pieces on the same concert or series of concerts, that's two times programmed.
> 
> The list is said to be of concerts given by 21 major US orchestras, so I assume works for smaller forces are not included. And of course I can't vouch for the accuracy of the data!
> 
> The research was based on reviewing the seasonal programs of each orchestra as posted on the web, I believe, so concerts not included in those listings aren't counted.


Ha, yes, I did not mean to call you out for the mistakes in the Mastersheet! (There are more, I was looking at women composers and the Mastersheet only lists two pieces but over half of the orchestras listed programmed pieces by women composers).

And I was trying to give numbers to compare to the nice fancy charts from BaSO; I missed that in your tallies for the most programmed composers you used the same metric, not counting repeats of the same program. That's a very reasonable way to look at things!

I would guess, though, that that the concerts that focus on Beethoven, Mozart, and the other heavyweights tend to get repeated more frequently and/or the more rare pieces will be dropped from matinee or lunch-time concerts (I have seen this following both the New York Philharmonic and the Phoenix Symphony (though it looks like PSO did not make the cut for this data!)


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## Lunasong

Most performed living composers








http://www.bsomusic.org/stories/by-the-numbers-living-composers.aspx

Click the link for a chart of works being performed by more than one orchestra which doesn't format correctly when copied.

The audience, composer Mason Bates says, is more open to new music than they're often given credit for.

"Well programmed pieces - pieces that are provocative and interesting and fresh but inevitable in a certain way that have logic that can be followed - that's absolutely something audiences are willing to explore."

Marketing new music - as any orchestra marketing director will tell you - is not always an easy sell. But Bates says that what's more important than the marketing is the education and outreach to the audience about a piece they are about to hear. If the audience finds the way new music is presented to them is approachable, it becomes easier to market other new works to them.


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## Lunasong

Pieces by women composers









According to a survey of the 22 largest American orchestras, women composers accounted for only 1.8 percent of the total pieces performed in the 2014-2015 concert season.

Perhaps more worrying, however, is that women composers only accounted for 14.3 percent of performances of works by those living composers who are writing the pieces that may one day enter the regular repertoire.

"These numbers are both abysmal and embarrassing, particularly in this day and age," said Kristin Kuster.

more discussion at http://www.bsomusic.org/stories/by-the-numbers-female-composers.aspx


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## mountmccabe

New data is now available for 2015-16. This time they looked at the concert seasons of 89 American orchestras.

The 2015-16 Orchestra Season By The Numbers

Most Performed Works of the 2015-16 Season.

The numbers look very similar. Most represented composers for each season:

2014-15 (21 orchestras, 4600 performances)
Beethoven - 317 (6.9%)
Mozart - 313
Tchaikovsky - 260
Bach - 176
Ravel - 172
Brahms - 162
Strauss - 154
Stravinsky - 125
Rachmaninoff - 124
Prokofiev - 104

2015-16 (89 orchestras, 8664 performances)
Beethoven - 641 (7.4%)
Mozart - 528
Brahms - 415
Tchaikovsky - 388
Rachmaninoff - 256
Ravel - 256
Dvorak - 220
Sibelius - 214
Strauss - 206
Stravinsky - 193

The most popular pieces are different. There is an entirely new top ten, though many of the same composers dominate. Well, other than Handel's _Messiah_, which was left off the new data because they excluded holiday concerts (and other non-standard concerts). _Messiah_ plus the next 5 for each year:

Handel - Messiah (38 performances, 13 orchestras)
Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition (37/12)
Beethoven - Symphony 5 (35/12)
Stravinsky - Suite from the Firebird (30/11)
Tchaikovsky - Symphony 5 (30/10)
Beethoven - Symphony 7 (28/10)

Handel - Messiah (99 performances, 38 orchestras)
Beethoven - Piano Concerto 5 (62/25)
Beethoven - Symphony 3 (60/26)
Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto (58/22)
Sibelius - Violin Concerto (55/24)
Beethoven - Symphony 9 (54/21)


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