# Top percentages of composers in your collection?



## Earthling

Today I was attempting to organise my collection of classical music. This seems an impossible task, and its partly because of my own odd methods. I usually download mp3s and later I burn much (but not all) to CD as a backup. The rest is saved strictly as data on CD-ROMs just to save space. There are only a few exceptions where I will purchase the actual CD (a good deal of my Bach and Beethoven).

Anyway, I was going through my backup CDs, which contain the music I listen to the most and I did a little number crunching to figure out the percentages of CDs and mp3s of a particular composer. I wasn't surprised by the result, obviously revealing my own biases. These are the top five:

*Bach = 23.7%
Beethoven = 9.3%
Debussy = 6.7%
Vaughan Williams = 5.0%
Mozart = 2.5%
*

This doesn't necessarily reflect my actual listening habits, since there's quite a lot in the remaining 52.8%.

Anyone else?


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## Guest

Well I can't give exact percentages, but no. 1 is easily Brahms. Dvorak is no. 2, then maybe a tie between Sibelius and Vaughan Williams.


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## Art Rock

Based on physical CD's, so no percentages (2000+), but Bach first at over 100 CD's. In addition, a lot of Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak, Shostsalovich, Beethoven, Mozart. And everything Mahler ever composed, with some in 2-5 different versions.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Considering the number of discs I have there is no composers who even approaches 20% of my collection. The largest number of discs I have are by the usual suspects:

J.S. Bach- 115
Mozart- 72
Beethoven- 58
Schubert- 51
Haydn-48

After that...? I would guess that Handel, Vivaldi, Brahms, Richard Strauss, and Richard Wagner would be the largest in number.


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## Sid James

The largest number of discs per composer in my collection are as follows:

Beethoven - 11
Mozart - 8 (surprising!)
Villa-Lobos - 7
Shostakovich - 7
Janacek - 6

There are many composers whom I have about 5 or so discs from, eg. Debussy, Hovhaness, Bruckner, Bartok, Haydn, Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Martinu, etc. & others I have 4 discs from like Ligeti, Carter, Messiaen, Rachmaninov.

I mainly listen to the music of the C20th, but not to the exclusion of the others...


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## Weston

Since I have transferred all my music to mp3 or downloaded it that way, it is easier for me to go by the number of megabytes. Doing a very dirty calculation I get fairly low percentages for everyone. I guess I'm eclectic at least. The results are a bit surprising but not after I thought about it for a while.

Here are my top 20 in terms of megabytes:

*Composer: Megabytes, Percentage*
Beethoven: 3233, 8.53%
Bach: 2271, 5.99%
Mozart: 1618, 4.27%
Brahms: 1175, 3.10%
Schubert: 1085, 2.86%
Haydn: 942, 2.49%
Mendelssohn: 845, 2.23%
Shostakovich: 832, 2.19%
Vivaldi: 783, 2.07%
Telemann: 741, 1.96%
Dvorak: 623, 1.64%
Sibelius: 613, 1.62%
Vaughan-Williams: 603, 1.59%
Handel: 591, 1.56%
Bruckner: 575, 1.52%
Mahler: 564, 1.49%
Rachmaninoff: 550, 1.45%
Liszt: 460, 1.21%
Schumann: 459, 1.21%
Chopin: 384, 1.01%

Add them all together and that's about 50% of my collection. What surprises me is how high Mozart is on the list considering I'm not overly fond of his music. It's his availability and prolific output that determines how much I have. Whereas I might like Holst a lot more than Mozart, there just isn't as much of it to be had. Likewise, while I am all but indifferent to Mahler, he made the list because his works are almost excruciatingly long. The remaining 50% not listed would be a very long list and might include some of the more interesting works and composers.

So, I'm not sure what this exercise tells us in the end, but I had fun working on it.


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## Nix

Mozart- 10.98%
Beethoven- 10.21%
Haydn- 7.24%
Bach- 6.53%
Shostakovich- 3.64%

Not that reflective on what I listen to the most- just on what was easy to obtain.


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## World Violist

1. Sibelius
2. Arvo Part
3. Berg (tie)
3. Debussy (tie)
5. Rubbra


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## Octo_Russ

I don't know the percentages, [and i did actually count my collection a few years ago and worked it out], but i do know the list in the right order,

*1 Beethoven
2 Schubert
3 Chopin
4 Brahms
5 Tchaikovsky
6 Mahler
7 Bach
8 Mozart
9 Dvorak
10 Shostakovich*

The surprises for me is that Tchaikovsky is placed so high, and Bruckner comes in at 21st!, but i play more Bruckner than Tchaikovsky?, the good thing is that Beethoven is only roughly 5% of my collection, ten years ago he was probably 10%, and yet i have many more Beethoven discs since then, it shows my musical love is diversifying.


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## Guest

I don't have the time to do an analysis, but I suspect that Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms would be pretty high up there. But maybe not. One issue is that Beethoven and later romantic composers didn't write as much as earlier ones, so there isn't as many works to collect, although you can get different recordings. Haydn wrote 100+ symphonies, Beethoven only 9. I suspect that will probably skew things.


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## emiellucifuge

Dvorak 6.6%
Beethoven 4.5%

All other major composers have around 3%


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## dmg

1. Mozart
2. Beethoven
3. Saint-Saëns
4. Dvořák
5. Tchaikovsky
6. Brahms
7. Liszt
8. J.S. Bach
9. Chopin
10. Bruckner


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## Chi_townPhilly

Giving the 'Advanced Search' function a workout...

Searching, searching...

Ah, here it is!

More than a year has passed since that post, though... and the current order is probably more like: 
1) *Wagner* 2) *Bruckner** 3) *Beethoven** 4) *Mahler* 5) *Tchaikovsky**.

And as before, the top 5 are about half my collection.

* added the Karajan Symphony Edition 'Cube,' which lifted the numbers on these composers...


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## Aramis

No idea, really, how am I supposed to count it? I got real mess in my collection, there is almost no order. My guess would be Wagner, especially if total music lenght would be considered more than number of albums. If no, number one in case of overall amount of albums would be probably Ludwig Van.


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## Earthling

Actually my Bach figures would be a bit higher-- I gorgot I also have Gould's recording of the _French Suites_, Vito Patonoster's cello transcription of the _violin sonatas & partitas_ and quote a few other other things I don't think I took into account... Also it turns out I have more Stravinsky that I first thought!


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## ScipioAfricanus

Mozart
Beethoven
Brahms
Bruckner


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## Toccata

It's not possible to answer this question satisfactorily without clarification on how to deal with duplicates of the same work by different orchestras/ensembles. For example, if you have, say, 5 copies of one of Beethoven's symphonies should it be counted as one or 5?


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## Earthling

Opal said:


> It's not possible to answer this question satisfactorily without clarification on how to deal with duplicates of the same work by different orchestras/ensembles. For example, if you have, say, 5 copies of one of Beethoven's symphonies should it be counted as one or 5?


I've got five very different recordings of Bach's cello suites, so I count all of them (two discs each). I have a a string orchestra transcription of the Goldberg Variations, so I count that as well. Each performance is a different interpretation, so yeah.


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## Keikobad

With five complete recordings of Wagner's Ring, 8 of Tristan, and 7 of Strauss' Elektra, I'd say that Strauss, Wagner and Bach (5 St. Matthews, 4 St. Johns, 6 B minors, and 3 complete WTC recordings.....to name but a few) comprise the greatest amount.


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## pipelare

Fun. Top 10 as percentage of recording time:

Bach, Johann Sebastian - 19.09%
Haydn, Franz Joseph - 5.01%
Vivaldi, Antonio - 3.70%
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus - 2.96%
Anonymous - 2.78%
Telemann, Georg Philipp - 2.36%
Beethoven, Ludwig van - 2.28%
Piazzolla, Astor - 2.03%
Monteverdi, Claudio - 1.65%
Schütz, Heinrich - 1.36%


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## handlebar

Mahler and Haydn first, then Beethoven,Mozart,Liszt,Bach,Bax,Mozart,Bruckner and then the rest trickle down from there. I have almost 4000 CD's so there are a lot of holes filled.

Jim


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## Conor71

My analysis is based on number of tracks/total number of classical tracks, so quite rough, but it is reasonably representative of which composers I favour :

1. Bach, Johann Sebastian 17.8%
2. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 9.4%
3. Beethoven, Ludwig Van 8.9%
4. Shostakovich, Dmitri 5.0%
5. Sibelius, Jean 3.7%


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## World Violist

I feel like revisiting this one too... though it's younger. Sibelius is doubtlessly the #1 composer, thanks to the Sibelius Edition boxes I've been collecting, and Bach is definitely #2 thanks to my having begun to collect his cantatas. But (!) I'm going to figure out actual percentages now. So a few hours later... (and by the way I am counting the stuff I haven't gotten in the mail yet: one Enescu CD and Die Zauberflote)

Sibelius- 44.7%
JS Bach- 17%
Enescu- 14%
Norgard- 12.8%
Mozart- 5.4%
Rozsa- 2.3%
Lassus- 1.7%
Bridge- 0.4%
Part- 0.4%
Clarke- 0.2%
Kaliwoda- 0.2%
Schutz- 0.2%

...and yes, that's all of them. A word about Arvo Part and his small representation: I have several CDs of his, but they're all back at home (I think I'll end up getting the new CD of his 4th symphony eventually, by the way). Indeed, if I counted every CD I own, whether it be with me or not, there would be countless composers added and Mahler would probably take second place to Sibelius. However, these are 1) my favorite composers or 2) composers I played in my senior recital and therefore have on a CD with me.

Totally useless exercise? Yes. But hey, I have very little better to do at the moment.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Sibelius- 44.7%
JS Bach- 17%
Enescu- 14%
Norgard- 12.8%
Mozart- 5.4%
Rozsa- 2.3%
Lassus- 1.7%
Bridge- 0.4%
Part- 0.4%
Clarke- 0.2%
Kaliwoda- 0.2%
Schutz- 0.2%

Intriguingly quirky collection. Might I ask how large a collection and how long you've been collecting? I somewhat suspect my own collection follows the usual suspects as a result of having built a collection of such size over a period of 15+ years. When first I posted the numbers were as follows:

J.S. Bach- 115
Mozart- 72
Beethoven- 58
Schubert- 51
Haydn-48

with Handel, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, and Debussy probably being the nest in terms of number. With nearly 2000 CDs only Bach amounts to more than 5% of my collection... and of the top three it is Bach who continues to grow at the greatest rate. I rarely come across anything new by Beethoven or Mozart that I want (with the exception of the great Rene Jacobs recordings of Mozart's operas. The most rapidly growing areas of my collection include Modern and Contemporary classical, the Baroque, the Renaissance, and Medieval music.


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## World Violist

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Sibelius- 44.7%
> JS Bach- 17%
> Enescu- 14%
> Norgard- 12.8%
> Mozart- 5.4%
> Rozsa- 2.3%
> Lassus- 1.7%
> Bridge- 0.4%
> Part- 0.4%
> Clarke- 0.2%
> Kaliwoda- 0.2%
> Schutz- 0.2%
> 
> Intriguingly quirky collection. Might I ask how large a collection and how long you've been collecting? I somewhat suspect my own collection follows the usual suspects as a result of having built a collection of such size over a period of 15+ years. When first I posted the numbers were as follows:
> 
> J.S. Bach- 115
> Mozart- 72
> Beethoven- 58
> Schubert- 51
> Haydn-48
> 
> with Handel, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, and Debussy probably being the nest in terms of number. With nearly 2000 CDs only Bach amounts to more than 10% of my collection... and of the top three it is Bach who continues to grow at the greatest rate. I rarely come across anything new by Beethoven or Mozart that I want (with the exception of the great Rene Jacobs recordings of Mozart's operas. The most rapidly growing areas of my collection include Modern and Contemporary classical, the Baroque, the Renaissance, and Medieval music.


I've been collecting CDs for a few years now I suppose, though as I said before there wasn't a whole lot I brought with me when I left home for college. I still think I'll bring the Sibelius Edition CDs back to my old room when I get back there.

It's not a very large collection either... I only count around 20 individual cases of CDs on my shelf. I find having too many CDs makes me a bit uncomfortable, so I just take the ones I can't live without and leave the others somewhere else, give them away or something else of the sort.


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## Air

I swear, I don't like Beethoven and Chopin that much (top 3= Bach, Mozart, Prokofiev)...

1. Beethoven - 9.1%
2. Prokofiev - 7.4%
3. Chopin - 7.1%
4. Bach - 5.9%
5. Mozart - 4.7%
6. Bruckner - 4.6%
7. Vaughan Williams - 4.4%
8. Sibelius - 3.9%
9. Schumann - 2.9%
10. Rachmaninov - 2.3%

Followed closely by Schubert, Ravel, Bartok, Stravinsky, Wagner, and Debussy.


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## Argus

Strictly classical. I can't be bothered with percentages, I'll just list CD's.

1 box set of Beethoven (4 CD's).

2 Riley, Dvorak and Glass.

1 Mussorgsky, R. Strauss, Satie, VW, Bartok, Grieg, Stravinsky and Copland.

1/2 (shared CD's) Holst/Walton and Rodrigo/Dodgson.

That's it for classical. I've not got a large collection at all. Less than 200 in total. I'm on the look out for some but mainly ones that are pretty rare or quite expensive. I really want some La Monte Young but those are exceptionally hard to find. Also on the wish list is some Flynt, Branca, Gosfield, Reich, R. Strauss, Jeck, Stockhausen, Scott, Cage and those Sub Rosa anthology sets. But I'll wait until they are available, and going for a fair price.

Non-classical it's 7 CD's for Black Sabbath, followed by 6 for Miles Davis and 5 for Santana and Zappa.


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## Comus

It seems many are in the Bach camp for numbers at the very least.

1. Schoenberg
2/3. Bach/Webern (I'm not sure which order)


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## dmg

OK, so I went and calculated everything based on tracks. This is what I came up with (top 25):

1.	Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus	57.4973%
2.	Bach, Johann Sebastian	2.5674%
3.	Beethoven, Ludwig van	1.9202%
4.	Williams, John	1.7907%
5.	Soule, Jeremy	1.7476%
6.	Saint-Saens, Camille	1.6828%
7.	Minobe, Yutaka	1.5750%
8.	Schumann, Robert	1.5750%
9.	Chopin, Frederic	1.2082%
10.	Stravinsky, Igor	1.1866%
11.	Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix	1.1219%
12.	Mahler, Gustav	1.1003%
13.	Rossini, Gioacchino	1.0140%
14.	Schubert, Franz	1.0140%
15.	Britten, Benjamin	0.9493%
16.	Shostakovich, Dmitri	0.9493%
17.	Brahms, Johannes	0.8414%
18.	Strauss, Johann Jr.	0.7335%
19.	Ravel, Maurice 0.7120%
20.	Respighi, Ottorino	0.7120%
21.	Orff, Carl	0.6904%
22.	Handel, George Frederick	0.6472%
23.	Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyitch	0.5825%
24.	Gershwin, George	0.5609%
25.	Dvorak, Antonin	0.5394%


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## Air

dmg said:


> 1.	Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus	57.4973%


Complete edition?


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## Kopachris

By number of recordings:
Bach - 87 (31%)
Beethoven - 32 (11%)
Vivaldi - 23 (8%)
Elgar - 20 (7%)
Chopin - 19 (7%)
Mozart - 19 (7%)
Tchaikovsky - 16 (6%)
Strauss - 11 (4%)
Remaining 19% - Holst, Handel, Haydn, Dvorak, and misc. individual recordings


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## dmg

Air said:


> Complete edition?


Yep. 

Though if I removed that, Mozart is still #1 at 11.54%.


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## elgar's ghost

Too daunting a task to count, let alone attempting to catalogue it but based on the amount of space taken up especially by the box sets I would say 1/ Mozart 2/ Bach 3/ Beethoven possibly followed in no particular order by Dvorak, Britten, Handel, Shostakovich, Elgar, Mahler and Brucker (the last two by virtue of having multiple recordings of their works). Schubert, Hindemith and Stravinsky must be there or thereabouts, too.


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## bassClef

I can only sum up my digital collection by # of "tracks", not that that makes much sense. On top of that I have a CD collection but I'm not adding those up!

Stravinsky 933
Prokofiev 587
Sibelius 436
Orff 398
Bartok 385
Shostakovich 359
Tchaikovsky 314
Mahler 305
Grieg 260
Dvorak 224
Adams 175


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## fedrick32

I have:

Beethoven: 10.8%
Mozart: 8.7%
Haydn: 8%
Handel: 6%
Mahler: 5.5%


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## Nix

Nix said:


> Mozart- 10.98%
> Beethoven- 10.21%
> Haydn- 7.24%
> Bach- 6.53%
> Shostakovich- 3.64%


Update 8 months later:

Mozart- 9.29%
Beethoven- 8.97%
Haydn- 6.48%
Bach- 4.19%
Shostakovich- 3.31%

Varying it up a little... keeping in mind that this is out of 28.2 days worth of music.


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## GMSS

I don't really know the accurate percentage of composer in my collection...
60% are Mahler
and others are:
Shostakovich/bruckner/richard strauss etc
and my collections are not big....


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## Sebastien Melmoth

Schubert 15%
Bach 15%
Beethoven 15%
Brahms 10%
Wagner 10%
Schönberg 10%
Mahler 5%
Mozart 5%
Reger 5%
Bruckner 5%
miscellaneous 'little' composers 5%


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## tahnak

ScipioAfricanus said:


> Mozart
> Beethoven
> Brahms
> Bruckner


I have music on 78 rpms, cassette tapes, vinyl long play records, Cds and DVDs ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach, Pope Gregory up to Dmitri Shostakovich and Alban Berg. I had made a note few months back. I have music of one hundred and sixty composers. Percentage wise, my collection in descending order is Piotr Tchaikovsky, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Rachmaninov, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Joseph haydn, Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner, Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov, Modeste Mussorgsky, Aleksandr Borodin, Hector Berlioz, Frederic Chopin, Franz schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Carl Maria Von Weber, Antonin Dvorak, Jean Sibelius, Ricard Strauss, Gustav Mahler.... Dmitri Shostakovich and Alban Berg.


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## Charon

This is an interesting topic. I will do a more thorough account of the music in my library this week to get a picture of who's all at the top. But I have a feeling the top ten will look something like this:

1. Mozart
2. Haydn
3. Beethoven
4. Wagner (because of the Ring Opera cycle)
5. Bach
6. Brahms
7. Schubert
8. Chopin
9. Tchaikovsky
10. Mahler


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## World Violist

Ok, so after a bit of changing things around and getting some more CDs/DVDs, here's what I come up with (according to number of individual discs; opera DVDs get whatever their normal number of CDs would be):

JS Bach: 38.8%
Enescu: 14.3%
Norgard: 14.3%
Sibelius: 6.1%
Monteverdi: 6.1%
Rameau: 6.1%
Brahms: 4.1%
Wagner: 4.1%
Saariaho: 4.1%
Lassus: 2%
Berlioz: 2%

Of course this list is somewhat faulty not least because there are other composers on the Brahms CDs and so on. Maybe I'll figure this out more accurately based on amount of time someday...


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## TWhite

Well, my musical tastes tend to run to Late Romantic through mid 20th Century music, so I was not surprised to find that Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Copland, Barber, and French, Latin-American and Spanish composers pretty much dominated my collection--as to what percentage, I'm not really sure, but it's failry generous. 

However, I was rather (and pleasantly) surprised to find out how much Beethoven I've collected over the years. And LISTENED to. And liked a LOT!

Not much Baroque--some Handel and Vivaldi, but not too many others. I seem to bypass that Era pretty much, while heading lately back into Renaissance and Medieval. Right now, I can't get enough Palestrina, Lassos, Victoria or Bingen. 

Tom


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## Meaghan

Wow, I just figured this out, and the results really surprised me. Particularly Rachmaninov's position (I don't listen to him that much) and the fact that a non-classical composer is #4. Huh. 

1. Mahler 8.6%
2. Beethoven 7.5%
3. Britten 6.7%
4. Sondheim (You can laugh. I think he's super.) 5.8%
5. J.S. Bach 4.5%
6. Rachmaninov 4.2%
7. Brahms 3.3%
8. Copland, Sibelius, Stravinsky (3-way tie) 3.1% each
9. Rimsky-Korsakov 2.9%
10. Mozart 2.8%

This isn't completely accurate, because when I search a composer's name on my itunes, it also sometimes turns up pieces by composers who share albums with the one I'm searching. But the rankings are probably about right, though they don't quite reflect my actual top 10 favorites.


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## graaf

By duration of recordings:
16.19%	beethoven 
14.65%	mozart
5.52%	chopin 
4.52%	bach
4.35%	mahler 
3.98%	tchaikovsky 
3.62%	brahms
3.27%	shostakovich
3.19%	vivaldi (mostly due to about 20 versions of Four Seasons)


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