Playlist updated.
Awesome presentation, whuntva. Excellent choices of pictures, excellent comments, excellent timing. Congratulations, whuntva.
And excellent list, boys (and girl). The list is very good especially coming from a bunch of non-experts in Classical music. I enjoyed it a lot. There is only one thing that makes me sad about it, the low turnout. Only 9 voters while games like Video Game Tracks are getting 11-12 voters when after all it's mostly "pseudo-Classical" music. But please please please don't take it as an offense, it's simply the feeling I got when I listened the #1 of every individual Video Game list, I just felt sad and thought: why these people are not listening to the real thing?
I just want to add some stats to the thread, stats about:
a) Years of composition:
Taking into account the year in which the composer finished the definitive composition (sometimes the writing lasted for some years) this is the graphic we obtain, with a mean of
1861,a median of 1876 and a standard deviation of 89.
If we consider the centuries represented this is the graphic we got, with the XIX Century as a clear winner. We are Romantics, aren't we?
But if we sort it by half-centuries the most represented is the first half of the XX Century.
b) Periods:
The periods in Classical music can't be assigned exactly to centuries. The classification in periods I used is slightly different than the used by whuntva, I followed the classification of the excellent web page
Arkiv Music. In this page for instance Satie's "Gymnopédies" are considered 20th Century despite being written in 1888 and Sibelius "Symphony No. 5" Romantic despite being written in 1915. This is the distribution by periods:
c) Nationality:
This was one of the most difficult parts because of the historical changes on the borders of many countries in Europe. For instance Beethoven was born in Bonn, now Germany but then capital of the Electorate of Cologne part of the Holy Roman Empire. So I thought including the nation where the village or city where the composer was born now takes part. But then I found out that the village where Austrian composer Gustav Mahler was born now is part of the Czech Republic. And Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was born in a village now part of Romania. So I finally used again Arkiv Music as a guide.
The dominant nations on Classical music are quite different than in pop music. USA is still on the Top 5 but but UK almost got out of the Top 10. The German-speaking countries dominated the Poll with a crushing victory (more than 50 votes between Germany and Austria).
Here it is the Top 10 of nations:
And the rest:
d) Composers:
We included a total of 63 different composers on our Poll of 125 Classical pieces.The Top 5 of composers came from German-speaking countries (a fact that mainly explains the previous point).
Ludwig van Beethoven was our winner, with 12 pieces on the Top 125 and 3 on the Top 10, two of them of numbers 1 and 2. Johann Sebastian Bach was the second one, with 10 works, three of them on the Top 10. And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a close third with a total of 9 pieces, only one of them on the Top 10 but at #3. Schubert and Brahms were tied on the 4th position.
Here you have the graphic with the thirteen composers with more than 2 pieces represented, one of them still alive, Philip Glass.
And the ones with 2 pieces:
e) Periods and composers:
If we combine the information from the four previous points we find:
There were only three works composed prior to 1700, two of them in the Renaissance period (witten by Palestrina and Gabrieli) and the other in the Baroque period (written by Pachelbel). Italy won this period.
The half century from 1700 to 1749 was the Baroque period, dominated by Johann Sebastian Bach (10 works). Only Vivaldi (2) and Händel (1) from this period were also selected by us. Germany was the obvious winner.
The next 50 years (from 1750 to 1799) was the Classical period, dominated by Austria and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (9 pieces), with Beethoven beginning his triumphal march in 1799 with his "Pathétique."
Ludwig Van Beethoven with 11 works (and Germany with 17) was the winner of the following period, from 1800 to 1849, a transitional period with 11 pieces filed under Classical and 13 under Romantic. Schubert, Chopin, Berlioz, Paganini, Liszt and Schumann were the most Romantic of the pack.
The next half century (from 1850 to 1899) was the peak of the Romantic period and featured a draw at the top between Brahms and Tchaikovsky, with 5 works each. There was also a tie between Germany and Russia with 8 works each (Wagner, Bruch, Strauss, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff were the others). France obtained also a meritory third position (4 works by Bizet, Dukas, Saint-Saëns and Satie).
The first half of the XX Century (from 1900 to 1949) was the most represented, with a total of 30 pieces, 23 of them assigned to the 20th Century period but 7 of them still assigned to the Romantic period. The votes were more disperse than in previous periods, but France held the first position (9 works by Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, Milhaud and Varèse) and Russia the second (5 pieces by Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Prokofiev). And there was a triple tie of composers at the top between Debussy, Sibelius and Bartok, with three works each.
The next 50 years (from 1950 to 1999) were dominated by the USA, with 9 works (out of 15) with composers like Reich, Carter, Nancarrow, Crumb, Eastman, Adams and the winner of the period, Philip Glass with three works.
And as the one and only representant of the XXI Century we have a Japanese artist, Kashiwa Daisuke.
f) Decades:
As a final curiosity these were the 10 decades with more representation:
1. 1870s (10 works)
2. 1910s and 1720s (8)
4. 1890s and 1900s (7)
6. 1780s, 1800s, 1880s, 1930s and 1970s (6)
So, you know, the 1870s were the 1970s for Classical, with Brahms and Tchaikowsky as the biggest stars of the decade.
And the 1800s were (more or less) the 1960s for Classical (the decade with more works in the Top 10).