Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Classical WETA, Part 2

In my last post, I talked about the Classical Countdown on Classical WETA. Let us now compare results from year to year. I made the following list the same way I made the last one (see the previous post), only I used the older 2007 Classical Countdown results as opposed to the 2008 results.
  1. Beethoven 612
  2. Tchaikovsky 387
  3. Bach 366
  4. Mozart 344
  5. Rachmaninov 285
  6. Dvorak 215
  7. Vaughan Williams 141
  8. Wagner 101
  9. Brahms 97
  10. Copland 93
  11. Rimsky-Korsakov 88
  12. Vivaldi 86
  13. Gershwin 83
  14. Saint-Saens 82
  15. Pachelbel 79
  16. Mussorgsky 77
  17. Handel 77
  18. Barber 76
  19. Grieg 68
  20. Bruch 65
  21. Mahler 64
Membership in the top six, therefore, has not changed at all from 2007 to 2008. Below that point, there are significant changes. This is not surprising since the point totals are smaller the farther down the list you go. Beethoven, once again, achieved the number one ranking with ease.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here are the lists side by side and sorted by increase in popularity.
How did Mendelssohn get so popular all of a sudden, and how did Wagner
fall off the list?

2007 2008 Change
NA 9 > +12 Mendelssohn
19 8 +11 Grieg
21 11 +10 Mahler
17 10 +7 Handel
NA 16 > +5 Chopin
NA 17 > +4 Smetana
3 2 +1 Bach
5 4 +1 Rachmaninov
9 7 +2 Brahms
1 1 0 Beethoven
6 6 0 Dvorak
14 14 0 Saint-Saens
20 NA 0? Bruch
18 NA < 0 Barber
2 3 -1 Tchaikovsky
4 5 -1 Mozart
7 12 -5 Vaughan Williams
16 18 -2 Mussorgsky
11 13 -2 Rimsky-Korsakov
12 15 -3 Vivaldi
15 NA < -4 Pachelbel
13 19 -6 Gershwin
10 NA < -9 Copland
8 NA < -11 Wagner

February 12, 2009 at 10:13 AM
Bill Krueger said...

Thanks for your comment, this is great!

To explain the more dramatic shifts, let us first look at Wagner. His Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde was ranked #73 in 2007 but did not make the top 90 in 2008. His Overture to Tannhauser stayed about the same, in the mid-60s. Finally, Ride of the Valkyries fell quite a bit, from #34 in 2007 to #68 in 2008.

As for Mendelssohn, his Symphony No. 4 "Italian" appeared out of nowhere, coming in at #30 in 2008. Also, his famous Violin Concerto moved up 10 places to #33.

February 12, 2009 at 1:31 PM

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