Welcome to the Piano World Piano Forums Over 3 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments. Over 100,000 members from around the world.
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
The current issue of BBC Music Magazine (Dec 2019) has a feature on the 50 Greatest Composers as voted for by 174 contemporary composers, ranging from Kalevi Aho to Unsuk Chin to Ola Gjeilo to Jennifer Higdon to Stephen Hough to Lowell Liebermann to Magnus Lindberg to Roxanna Panufnik to Steve Reich to Bent Sørensen to John Williams (to pick a few of the more well-known names). Each of them was allowed to nominate five composers, then the votes were counted.
I know everyone wants to know where Freddy, everyone's favorite composer (except mine ) is placed.
He is at No.20, just below Reich and Brahms. Of the two well-known pianist-composers, Hough and Montero, only Hough voted for Chopin as one of his five.
The highest-placed contemporary composer (and woman) is Kaija Saariaho at No.17. (BTW, she wasn't one of the voters). Which I agree with .
Poor old Rach is No.50 , just below Schumann and Boulez.....
Of course, we'd get a completely different set of results if the voting was by pianists (Monteverdi probably won't even figure in the list), but it's interesting to see which composers are considered 'great' by other composers.
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."
1) Me myself 2) Max Richter 3) Stravinsky 4) Liszt 5) Ferneyhough 6) Polyphonist 7) Arvo Pärt 8) Palestrina 9) My HS composition teacher 10) C. P. E. Bach
1) Me myself 2) Max Richter 3) Stravinsky 4) Liszt 5) Ferneyhough 6) Polyphonist 7) Arvo Pärt 8) Palestrina 9) My HS composition teacher 10) C. P. E. Bach
...
34) Bach
...
48) Webern 49) Stockhausen 50) Mozart
...
...
...
3481) Rachmaninov
Where does PDQ Bach (the greatest Bach in the canon) fit in your list?
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."
Poor old Franz is obviously not innovative enough for contemporaries. The other Franz (Liszt) is nowhere to be seen......
And how come Sondheim is there but not Lennie??
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."
1) Me myself 2) Max Richter 3) Stravinsky 4) Liszt 5) Ferneyhough 6) Polyphonist 7) Arvo Pärt 8) Palestrina 9) My HS composition teacher 10) C. P. E. Bach
...
34) Bach
...
48) Webern 49) Stockhausen 50) Mozart
...
...
...
3481) Rachmaninov
Where does PDQ Bach (the greatest Bach in the canon) fit in your list?
The way the poll is organized, in fact these composers did not rank 50 but only 5 each. Basically after the first 10 or 15, the ranking of all the other ones does not mean anything. So it is just a mathematically statistical result not the result of an actual ranking.
The way the poll is organized, in fact these composers did not rank 50 but only 5 each. Basically after the first 10 or 15, the ranking of all the other ones does not mean anything. So it is just a mathematically statistical result not the result of an actual ranking.
There is a statistical interpretation that can be made though - that very few of the 174 living composers ranked Rachmaninoff (for example) among their top 5 composers.
across the stone, deathless piano performances
"Discipline is more reliable than motivation." -by a contributor on Reddit r/piano "Success is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration." -by some other wise person "Pianoteq manages to keep it all together yet simultaneously also go in all directions; like a quantum particle entangled with an unknown and spooky parallel universe simply waiting to be discovered." -by Pete14
The way the poll is organized, in fact these composers did not rank 50 but only 5 each. Basically after the first 10 or 15, the ranking of all the other ones does not mean anything. So it is just a mathematically statistical result not the result of an actual ranking.
I agree in principle, which was why I only gave the first ten in my OP.
Incidentally, one or two of the voters tried hard to skew the results, e.g. John Corigliano voted for Beethoven, Beethoven, Beethoven, Beethoven, Beethoven. Another composer voted Bruckner x 5, but to no avail.
Poor old Anton......
But it does give us an idea which composers today's composers think are great, which don't tally with the views of the general musical public: Schubert and Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov will certainly be much higher than Monteverdi, likely in the top ten; and Stravinsky and Ligeti will be a lot lower.
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."
Most of the top 10 is to be expected. I was surprised by Ligeti and to some extent Stravinsky. On the other hand there are plenty of composers not even listed. Also very surprising that Schumann is not much appreciated.
Just shows how few composers actually understand what people like!
across the stone, deathless piano performances
"Discipline is more reliable than motivation." -by a contributor on Reddit r/piano "Success is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration." -by some other wise person "Pianoteq manages to keep it all together yet simultaneously also go in all directions; like a quantum particle entangled with an unknown and spooky parallel universe simply waiting to be discovered." -by Pete14
) is placed.
.
, just below Schumann and Boulez.....
![[Linked Image]](http://forum.pianoworld.com//gallery/42/medium/12282.png)
![[Linked Image]](http://forum.pianoworld.com//gallery/42/medium/12283.png)
