# Who was the most productive composer?



## Clouds Weep Snowflakes

And by that I mean the sheer amounts of compositions; Mozart composed over 600 pieces of music, for the sake of an example, is that the record?


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## Art Rock

Of the big names, Bach and Schubert easily beat Mozart. Overall, probably Telemann (more than 3,000 compositions, half of which have been lost, and most of which have not been performed since the 18th century).


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## mmsbls

I don't know who wrote the most individual works but there are indications of rather surprising musical output.

Simon Sechter supposedly composed over 8,000 works of which over 5,000 were fugues (see here and here).

Leif Segerstam has composed at least 327 symphonies as of 2018.

Both of those efforts seem rather amazing. Of course, the quality presumably varies significantly and the length may be rather short in some cases.


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## FleshRobot

Does Schubert really beat Mozart? Also, a lot of Baroque composers re-used a bunch of their music because many of their compositions weren't revived after their first performances, so the comparison to latter composers isn't fair.


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## joen_cph

Farten Valen wrote about 25,000 piano etudes, besides his official output, but they don't seem worthy of musical performances and might be mainly technical exercises.


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## Art Rock

FleshRobot said:


> Does Schubert really beat Mozart?


Simply look at the numbers. Mozart (Koechel numbers) goes to 626, Schubert (Deutsch numbers) goes to over 950.


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## nobilmente

ISTR Villa-Lobos wrote a lot, and his published scores are said to have a lot of errors due to lack of time to correct.

Liszt was pretty prolific too...


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## Josquin13

When I think of unusually prolific composers (which for me means composers that wrote a huge quantity of music of a high quality), Orlando Lassus (or Orlando di Lasso, Orlande de Lassus, or Roland de Lassus--take your pick) comes to mind. (Although admittedly the majority of Lassus's works have yet to be recorded.) I suspect that Lassus set music to more languages than any other composer in music history--Latin, Italian, French, and German. Can anyone think of another composer that set music to more languages than that? I can't. Here's a quote from Wikipedia on Lassus:

"One of the most prolific, versatile, and universal composers of the late Renaissance, Lassus wrote over 2,000 works in all Latin, French, Italian and German vocal genres known in his time. These include 530 motets, 175 Italian madrigals and villanellas, 150 French chansons, and 90 German lieder. No strictly instrumental music by Lassus is known to survive, or ever to have existed: an interesting omission for a composer otherwise so wide-ranging and prolific, during an age when instrumental music was becoming an ever-more prominent means of expression, all over Europe. The German music publisher Adam Berg dedicated 5 volumes of his Patrocinium musicum (published from 1573-1580) to Lassus' music."






Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was another Renaissance composer that was unusually prolific--composing "hundreds of compositions, including 105 masses, 68 offertories, at least 140 madrigals and more than 300 motets. In addition, there are at least 72 hymns, 35 magnificats, 11 litanies, and four or five sets of lamentations" (from Wikipedia).










As others have mentioned, Mozart and Schubert were remarkably prolific too, all the more so considering that they died in their mere 30s!! (Mozart at aged 35, Schubert at just 31).

In addition, I would consider Handel, F.J. Haydn, and J.S. Bach to have been unusually prolific. Telemann too, but I don't consider Telemann's output to have been as consistently in the same league as those three giants.

Among families of composers, I suppose the Scarlatti, Bach, and Couperin families rank at the very top for the sheer amount of music they created. The Haydn family deserves mention too (Michael & Franz Josef).

Camille Saint-Saens, Richard Strauss, and Richard Wagner should be mentioned, as well (although of course Wagner wrote mostly operas, so he wasn't a particularly versatile composer).

Among modern composers, Vagn Holmboe was quite prolific, as he managed to compose 370 works--including 13 Symphonies, 3 chamber symphonies, 4 symphonies for strings, 20 string quartets, many concertos, one opera, and numerous choral works, and at the same time did something that no other composer in music history can claim--as far as I know, Holmboe also managed to personally plant 3000 trees on his farm land at Lake Arresø! (which he called "Arre Boreale"), and find the time to teach. Now that's prolific.






Alan Hovhaness, Bohuslav Martinu, and Darius Milhaud were also highly prolific, among other 20th century composers.


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## joen_cph

Among the Danish composers, N.V. Bentzon holds the record - he wrote 13 sets WTC, each of 48 pieces for example, and around 24 symphonies, plus concertos, sonatas, and a lot other works, and poetry and painting/drawing etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Viggo_Bentzon


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## Schoenberg

600 pieces of music actually isn't that much, I'm willing to bet that most major composers have written more.


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## apricissimus

It's no trick to write a lots of music. It's whether its good or not that matters.

I mean, Leif Segerstam has written something like 300+ symphonies. But I understand they're hardly like traditional symphonies. I've heard a couple, and I have to say I'd take Beethoven's 9 any day. (Apologies to Segerstam fans.)

I suppose Segerstam can toss off one of his symphonies rather quickly. But I don't think the world is clamoring for them.


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## CnC Bartok

Art Rock said:


> Simply look at the numbers. Mozart (Koechel numbers) goes to 626, Schubert (Deutsch numbers) goes to over 950.


Yeah, but - song cycles aside - doesn't each individual three-minute song get its own D-number? The Philips Mozart complete edition stretched to 200 CDs I believe, how many for a complete Schubert edition?

Vivaldi wrote over 500 Concertos, although considering he composed the same concerto over 500 times, he shouldn't be considered that prolific. :devil:

Carl Ruggles ought to get a mention on this thread, too.


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## Lever Du Jour

Telemann was the most prolific composers in terms of the sheer number of compositions


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## elgar's ghost

CnC Bartok said:


> _Yeah, but - song cycles aside - doesn't each individual three-minute song get its own D-number? The Philips Mozart complete edition stretched to 200 CDs I believe, how many for a complete Schubert edition?_


Good point - in terms of volume I reckon Schubert's output would be at least 50% smaller, even when factoring in the plethora of flotsam and jetsam.


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## Art Rock

The question was about amounts of compositions (number of pieces of music), not their combined duration. Otherwise Cage wins by virtue of ASLSP alone.


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## Ras

Art Rock said:


> The question was about amounts of compositions (number of pieces of music), not their combined duration.


Yes, and that way of measuring productivity is quite dubious: Take Bach's WTC I and II and his St. Matthew's Passion: 
Each set of Preludes and fugues in the WTC counts as a separate work in the BWV catalog - that adds up to 48 numbers whereas Bach's longest work the St. Metthew's Passion only takes up one number in the BWV catalog. So measuring a composer's productivity just by adding up the opus/Bwv/Twv/Deutsch or Kochel numbers is dubious: if the musicologist who made those lists included a whole lot of short pieces as separate works it will look as if that composer produced a whole lot of music - but in fact he didn't!

My conclusion is: if you want to measure a composers productivity you will have to measure his lifespan measured in days against the amount of music he composed measured either as hours of music or against the number of measures in the score. (Of course if you choose a Celibidache-recording to determine the hours of music produced you would have double up the numbers!) :tiphat:


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## pianozach

Just counting the catalog numbers doesn't tell the whole story.

Is WTC just one work, or is it 24 pairs of Ps & Fs, or is it 48 pieces?

Is Wagner's Ring ONE work or FOUR operas, or bunches and bunches of songs?

When one is counting, do Beethoven's 9th and Debussey's Clair de Lune really get and equal ONE vote?

How does one measure the *volume* of music?

Should a string quartet get 4 votes for each instrument?

Shouldn't we be counting by minutes, or notes?


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## Guillaume80

I wouldn't really be interested of the quantity of composition but mostly the quality of it and the genius part behind this...on that I would believe Chopin is probably ahead of everyone else (ok I am a pianist and huge fan of Chopin so my opinion may be highly biaised...


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## Ras

I never heard any of his music, but Christoph Graupner was more prolific than his contemporaries Bach and Telemann - from Wiki:

>>>Graupner was hardworking and prolific. There are about 2,000 surviving works in his catalog, including 113 sinfonias, 85 ouvertures (suites), 44 concertos, 8 operas, 1,418 religious and 24 secular cantatas, 66 sonatas and 57 harpsichord partitas.[2] Nearly all of Graupner's manuscripts are housed in the ULB (Technical University Library) in Darmstadt, Germany. <<<


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