Cycles in Composers
First published: 2021
Brief summary
CRI blog post discussing a proposed 125-year cycle in birth dates of significant composers.
Article
My friend William Eric Green is a concert pianist and composer. He recently suggested on Facebook that there seemed to be a 125 year cycle in birth dates of composers (I should mention that he is also an expert at remembering birthdays):
A slightly geeky one for the composers …I’ve always been intrigued that Bach, Handel and Scarlatti were all born in 1685 (Rameau in ’83, Telemann a year or two earlier) then 125 years later Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi and Wagner were all born within 4 years of each other. Could there be some sort 125-year ‘famous composer’ cycle …? Going back to 1560, Gabrieli, Morley, Peri, Dowland, Bull and Sweelinck were all born between 1557 and 1562.
One website of the Top 20 composers 1400-1600 (average 1 per 20 years) gives 3 of those above. Gosh. Going ahead 125 years from 1810 to 1935, composers born 1933-37 include – Penderecki, Gorecki, Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle, Schnittke, Kancheli, Part, Riley, Reich and Glass. Gosh again.
So … then I drew a timeline then stabbed my pencil on random dates, looking for important composers 2 years either side, and got – 1720 (only Leopold Mozart); 1741 (Boccherini, Dittersdorf); 1826 (Bruckner, Smetana, Strauss, Foster) 1867 (Glazunov, Nielsen, Sibelius, Satie, Joplin) and 1923 (Piazzolla, Xennakis, Ligeti, Berio, Boulez).
Additional summary
The remainder discusses further composer clusters, possible bias, and a chart with five purple lines close to 125 years apart.
Source details and credits
- Source / publisher: CRI Blog / Ray Tomes
- Source type: Blog post
- URL type: WWW
- Credits: CRI Blog / Ray Tomes
- URL: https://cyclesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2021/09/19/cycles-in-composers/