The Best Composer Ever

The Chamber Music Library is currently sponsoring a contest to determine the "Best Composer Ever." We're asking people — staff, mostly, but also patrons and passers-by — to vote for their favorite composer.


This might be your favorite composer to play...or your favorite composer to listen to...or your favorite composer to have a beer with...


(or in Scott's case, of course, a delicious non-alcoholic beverage).

Here are the standings so far:

With one vote, in no particular order: Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Larry Bell, Janacek, Mozart, Piazzola, Mahler, Poulenc, Rameau, Messiaen, Barber, Scriabin, Xenakis, Glass, Wagner, Strauss, M. Haydn, Villa-Lobos, Hildegard von Bingen, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, Elgar, and Brahms.

With two votes, the slightly-more-awesome: Not-Brahms, Lee Hartman, Bach, Cage, Stravinsky, Ives, and Handel.

The front-runners, with three votes: Berg, Berio, Shostakovich, and George Crumb.

And the lead dog, with four whole votes, is Bela Bartok.


Then, of course, there are rather a lot of composers who are cool enough to get on the board, but not cool enough to get any signatures: Scarlatti, Birtwistle, Clara Schumann, Haydn, Corelli, C.P.E. Bach, Martinu, Saariaho, Golijov, Armand-Louis Couperin, Leonel Power, Ibert, Ravel, Ginastera, Harbison, Alan Fletcher, Debussy, Milhaud, Augusta Read Thomas, Bozza, John Adams, Knussen, Copland, Hindemith, Schubert, Webern, Britten, Fussell, Smetana, Tchaikovsky, and Dohnanyi.

So tell us... Who is your favorite composer?