On this New Year's Eve, I'd like to analyze and reflect on my year of blogging about composers on their birthdays. I spent some time analyzing all of my blog posts on composers, including mundane details like number of words I wrote, number of links I included, etc. I tallied all my results up in an excel spreadsheet tried to make sense of it all. Hope it's interesting to you!
First post:
November 12, 2007 (Borodin)
Last post:
October 26, 2008 (Scarlatti)
Total Posts:
53 (on 57 composers)
Composers by broad music era:
Baroque 6
Classical 5
Romantic 23
Modern 23
Words written:
24,538 (total)
463 (average per blog post)
Links to music:
396 (total)
7.5 (average per blog post)
Comments:
75 (total)
1.4 (average per blog post)
Most posts in a month: 13 (March)
Least posts in a month: 1 (July)
Top Ten longest blog posts (# of words):
1. Bach (2,010)
2. Mahler (1,300)
3. Mozart (1,208)
4. Brahms (1,156)
5. Handel (1,059)
6. Ravel (1,017)
7. Beethoven (984)
8. Rachmaninov (936)
9. Liszt (791)
10. Shostakovich (757)
Top Ten most links to music:
1. Bach (38)
2. Brahms (25)
3. Rachmaninov (25)
4. Ravel (16)
5. Beethoven (14)
6. Liszt (14)
7. Mahler (14)
8. Grieg (13)
9. Prokofiev (13)
10. Tchaikovsky (13)
Shortest blog post:
Boccherini (91 words)
Fewest links to music:
Borodin (no links!)
Well, I've really spent way too long on this ridiculous post. It took me several hours to make the spreadsheet tabulating everything. I guess it's the scientist in me coming out or something.
Yes, I spent a whole lot of time blogging this last year. I have no idea how many countless hours were spent, not only writing, but listening to / watching hundreds of youtube videos, searching for great musical performances. I find it interesting that I did only about 20% of my blogging on Baroque and Classical period composers combined, with the other 80% on the Romantic and Contemporary composers. This definitely agrees with my bias for music of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Note, however, that Bach completely blew away all the competition for longest post and number of links to music. Although I favor 19th and 20th century music in general, Bach is probably my favorite composer, and that is reflected in my posts. Below is my attempt at a top ten list of who my actual favorite composers are.
My Top Ten favorite composers:
1. Bach
2. Mozart
3. Beethoven
4. Chopin
5. Brahms
6. Ravel
7. Rachmaninov
8. Liszt
9. Mahler
10. Schubert
I think it would be more accurate to make three groups: 1-5, 6-7, and 8-10. The top 5 have all been my favorite at some point, and are equals in my mind, though Bach is usually the favorite. Ravel and Rachmaninov are further down, but wonderful. The last 3 are wonderful, too, but I could just as easily have put three other composers that didn't make the list here.
Before I wrap up this post, I'd like to extend my apologies to the following composers, who I would have liked to blog on, but didn't end up having enough time. Maybe I will come back to them another time...
Alban Berg
Fernando Sor
Leopold Godowsky
Henri Vieuxtemps
Bedrich Smetana
Johann Strauss
Louis Gottschalk
Jules Massenet
Erik Satie
Isaac Albeniz
Mikhail Glinka
Feruccio Busoni
Edward Elgar
Tomaso Albinoni
Richard Strauss
Eugene Ysaye
Ottorino Respighi
Henryk Wieniawski
Enrique Granados
Alexander Glazunov
Moritz Moszkowski
Leonard Bernstein
Georges Enesco
Johann Pachelbel
Anton Bruckner
Darius Milhaud
Antonin Dvorak
Charles Griffes
Gustav Holst
Paul Dukas
Giuseppe Verdi
Camille Saint-Saens
Charles Ives
Georges Bizet
Niccolo Paganini
John Philip Sousa
Paul Hindemith
Carl Maria von Weber
Benjamin Britten
Olivier Messian
Zoltan Kodaly
Edward MacDowell
Giacomo Puccini
John Williams
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3 comments:
Hi Dan,
Happy New Year! Interesting blog - you sure are the musicologist!
So are you done blogging composers for now? I sure have enjoyed this, but you may well have other ideas what with your family expanding and life changing in other ways. Let me take this opportunity to say thank you.
Do you have any future plans for this blog?
Well, thank you both for the comments - I'm flattered. :) You're welcome, Matt - it has been a pleasure, though quite a lot of work, too! I don't have any plans, really. I just have been so much busier lately with interviews for residency, traveling, etc. that I have less time to blog.
My pace over the year has been an average of one music-blog per week. I'll probably still do more composer posts, but it will probably be more like once a month. Also, I may not limit it to composers, and I probably won't worry about being on a birthday, but we'll see.
Also, I figure that once July hits, I'm probably going to drop out of the blogosphere, or at least the posts will be far less often. Working 80 hours per week with people's lives in my hands will be quite an adjustment to make...
...which reminds me, I originally started blogging for the purpose of sharing my thoughts on being a physician-scientist. Maybe I'll come back to more of that in some future posts.
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