The 111 Most
Influential Composers
It has been
explained how inclusion in the present list of 500 composers
was decided on the basis
of ranked scores obtained from integrating a series of variables.
One of the implications of these
scores is that they make it possible to secondarily derive an
ordered list of the most influential
composers.
Once the
scores were ranked, the ranks were used as the basis for weights
that were substituted
for the names of each composer appearing in all the 'Has Influenced'
fields in the main "Composers" file; the resulting
lists of numbers were then totalled up for each subject composer.
The composer weights were created by: (1) adding 2.0 to the
rank number for each composer, then (2)
dividing this value into 1000., then (3) taking the cube root
of the resulting value. So, for J. S.
Bach, the highest ranked composer, the cube root of (1000. /
(1. + 2.)), or 6.934, was arrived at. For the
composer at rank 500., the parallel value was 1.258. There is
nothing magic about this particular
formulation; I simply wanted a sliding scale that would give
greater weight to someone’s
influencing Bach than to an influence on any old composer.
This ended
up meaning that an influence on Bach was weighted about twice
as high as one on
Vivaldi or Rossini, either of whom’s name in turn received
a weight about twice as high as
those connected to Gottschalk or Roussel. In other words, a composer
who is said to have influenced only the two
composers Vivaldi and Puccini would end up ranked much higher
on this 'Most Influential
Composers' listing than would a composer who is said to have
influenced only Gottschalk and
Roussel.
It must
of course be admitted that these scores and rankings are no
better than our perceptions
and knowledge of who really did have an influence on whom. Still,
it appears to me that there is
enough agreement among experts in this respect that the results
produced here probably do
reflect at least a first-order level of accuracy. Whether Debussy "really" ranks
fourth in this
respect, or first, or fifth, or even tenth is not that important;
clearly the evidence suggests that he
has been at least a whole order of magnitude more influential
than, say, Rossini or Corelli (who
in turn have been at least a whole order of magnitude more influential
than Balakirev or Michael
Haydn).
Another
item. Looking at List A to follow one may wonder why some rather
conservative
composers such as J. S. Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, or Maurice Ravel
rank so relatively high on it,
whereas some admitted innovators such as John Cage or Karlheinz
Stockhausen rank much
lower. The answer lies in the fact that the approach taken here
emphasizes influence as defined
strictly in terms of those composers whose music we as an overall
population are actually
listening to these days. Ravel, for example, is not usually credited
with breaking much truly new
ground--yet, for whatever reason, a good number of important
twentieth century composers are
thought to have been influenced by his music. In other words,
the list and rankings here are based
on a real and present-day outcome pattern rather than some attempted
independent (and absolute)
measure of innovation or creativity.
And it
might also be noted that the "influence" rankings
presented below should
be viewed as only one
aspect of overall importance or current relevancy. In the overall
rankings for the latter, J. S. Bach
came out first, Mozart second, Beethoven third, Schubert fourth,
and Brahms fifth. This
coincides very closely with what past observers have concluded,
whatever their methods of
assessment have been. Just because someone might have been very
influential--like Schoenberg,
for example--doesn't necessarily mean that their music is currently
played or enjoyed as much as
some other less influential figure's is!
Following
are three lists, each containing essentially the same information,
but sorted in three
ways. In List A, the main sort is on the basis of the total weights.
The rank in Version 2 is given
on the left margin. The weights total is
then given, followed by the number of times (n) overall the composer
was listed as an influence
(in the case of J. S. Bach, by 121 composers of the 500). The
means and standard deviations for
each list of weights follow, and the table is rounded out by
the composer’s overall rank in the
main list of 500.
In List
B, the same data are sorted according to the total number (n)
of composers influenced. In
this list Stravinsky comes out first. The weights totals, means,
standard deviations, and overall
ranks are also given.
In List
C, the same data are sorted according to the means. This creates
an unusual look at the
subject of “influence” in which the top-ranking composers
of the 111 appearing in List A are figures who did not necessarily influence
many other composers, but who mostly influenced important
figures.
retrieve PDF file here
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