The Written Word

Another way of measuring composers' legacies is to see how much has been written about them. You could imagine taking every book ever written and then tallying up for each composer how many pages discuss that composer in some way. I did a study based on this idea, only I used just four books, each of which contains many sections where each section is devoted to a particular composer. The books I used all rank highly on amazon.com in terms of relevancy for the query, "classical music." They are:

1. The Rough Guide to Classical Music, by Staines et al.
2. The Essential Canon of Classical Music, by David Dubal
3. Classical Music: Third Ear: The Essential Listening Companion, by Alexander Morin
4. The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection: The 350 Essential Works, by Ted Libbey

These books cover 534 different composers. It turns out that Beethoven has the highest page count total with 133 pages between the four books. Here are the results, where the numbers following the names are page totals, summed up over all four books (in the case of a tie, I somewhat arbitrarily favored less recent composers):

Classical Music Composers

1. Beethoven 133
2. Mozart 125
3. Bach 104
4. Tchaikovsky 77
5. Handel 69
6. Brahms 65
7. Schubert 63
8. Strauss 60
9. Mahler 59
10. Schumann 52
11. Haydn 51
12. Stravinsky 45
13. Prokofiev 43
14. Wagner 41
15. Debussy 41
16. Chopin 39
17. Dvorak 38
18. Liszt 37
19. Verdi 37
20. Ravel 36
21. Mendelssohn 34
22. Shostakovich 34
23. Rachmaninov 33
24. Sibelius 33
25. Bartok 32
26. Britten 31
27. Elgar 30
28. Monteverdi 28
29. Schoenberg 25
30. Vivaldi 24
31. Berlioz 24
32. Janacek 24
33. Berg 24
34. Copland 24
35. Bruckner 23
36. Vaughan Williams 23
37. Puccini 22
38. Gershwin 22
39. Hindemith 22
40. Mussorgsky 21
41. Grieg 21
42. Donizetti 20
43. Nielsen 20
44. Franck 19
45. Rimsky-Korsakov 19
46. Saint-Saens 19
47. Faure 19
48. Weber 18
49. Rossini 18
50. Poulenc 17
51. Paganini 16
52. Bizet 16
53. Smetana 16
54. Scriabin 16
55. Schutz 15
56. Bellini 15
57. Borodin 15
58. Purcell 14
59. Offenbach 14
60. Falla 14
61. Barber 14
62. Gounod 13
63. Strauss II 13
64. Ives 13
65. Scarlatti 12
66. Wolf 12
67. Martinu 12
68. Villa-Lobos 12
69. Gluck 11
70. Bruch 11
71. Delius 11
72. Korngold 11
73. Respighi 10
74. Webern 10
75. Walton 10
76. Bernstein 10
77. Messiaen 10
78. Schnittke 10
79. Stockhausen 10
80. Gesualdo 9
81. Massenet 9
82. Leoncavallo 9
83. Holst 9
84. Bax 9
85. Grainger 9
86. Kodaly 9
87. Cage 9
88. Tippett 9
89. Carter 9
90. Boulez 9
91. Tallis 8
92. Rameau 8
93. Boccherini 8
94. Glazunov 8
95. Szymanowski 8
96. Zemlinsky 8
97. Mascagni 8
98. Honegger 8
99. Milhaud 8
100. Rodrigo 8
101. Ligeti 8
102. Glass 8
103. Palestrina 7
104. Byrd 7
105. Tartini 7
106. Hummel 7
107. Chabrier 7
108. Granados 7
109. Reger 7
110. Busoni 7
111. Lehar 7
112. Weill 7
113. Martin 7
114. Khachaturian 7
115. Orff 7
116. Lutoslawski 7
117. Takemitsu 7
118. Henze 7
119. Penderecki 7
120. Adams 7
121. Josquin Deprez 6
122. Lassus 6
123. Dowland 6
124. Lully 6
125. Charpentier 6
126. Buxtehude 6
127. Couperin 6
128. Pergolesi 6
129. Telemann 6
130. Bach, C.P.E. 6
131. Clementi 6
132. Cherubini 6
133. Glinka 6
134. Delibes 6
135. Sullivan 6
136. Satie 6
137. Dukas 6
138. Enescu 6
139. Bloch 6
140. Berio 6
141. Arnold 6
142. Davies 6
143. Part 6
144. Reich 6
145. Hildegard of Bingen 5
146. Machaut 5
147. Dufay 5
148. Ockeghem 5
149. Victoria 5
150. Gabrieli 5
151. Corelli 5
152. Scarlatti, A. 5
153. Albinoni 5
154. Strauss I 5
155. Meyerbeer 5
156. Berwald 5
157. Albeniz 5
158. Humperdinck 5
159. Duparc 5
160. Suk 5
161. Hartmann, K.A. 5
162. Varese 5
163. Gerhard 5
164. Durufle 5
165. Nono 5
166. Harrison 5
167. Kurtag 5
168. Rautavaara 5
169. Gubaidulina 5
170. Gorecki 5
171. Rihm 5

172 – 534. Others (1 – 4 pages each)

535+. Those who did not appear in any of the books