Both Mozart and Shostakovich reached milestone birthdays this year (Mozart celebrating 250 and Shostakovich turning 100). But what about the candle count for other major composers? We just might need to bring out the fire extinguisher for some of them. Happy birthday, Western Music!
Medieval Composers
Hildegard von Bingen: 908 years
Pérotin (Perotinus): approx. 806 years (most likely older)
Guillaume de Machaut: 704/6 years
Renaissance Composers
Josquin des Prez: 551/6 years
Thomas Tallis: 501 years
Giovanni Palestrina: 480/1 years
William Byrd: 466 years
Baroque Composers
Claudio Monteverdi: 439 years
Antonio Vivaldi: 328 years
Johann Sebastian Bach: 321 years
George Frideric Handel: 321 years
Classical Composers
Franz Josef Haydn: 274 years
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: 250 years
Romantic Composers
Ludwig van Beethoven: approx. 236 years
Franz Schubert: 209 years
Hector Berlioz: 203 years
Felix Mendelssohn: 197 years
Robert Schumann: 196 years
Fryderyk Chopin: 196 years
Franz Liszt: 195 years
Guiseppe Verdi: 193 years
Richard Wagner: 193 years
Anton Bruckner: 182 years
Johann Strauss, Jr.: 181 years
Johannes Brahmns: 173 years
Georges Bizet: 168 years
Pyotr Tchaikovsky: 166 years
Giacomo Puccini: 148 years
Post/Late-Romantic composers
Antonin Dvorák: 165 years
Gustav Mahler: 146 years
Claude Debussy: 144 years
Richard Strauss: 142 years
Jean Sibelius: 141 years
Ralph Vaughn Williams: 134 years
Gustav Holst: 132 years
Sergey Rakhmaninov: 133 years
Maurice Ravel: 131 years
Twentieth-Century Composers
Charles Ives: 132 years
Arnold Schönberg: 132 years
Béla Bartók: 125 years
Igor Stravinsky: 124 years
Edgard Varèse: 123 years
Sergei Prokofiev: 115 years
George Gershwin: 108 years
Aaron Copland: 106 years
Dmitri Shostokovich: 100 years
John Cage: 94 years
Benjamin Britten: 93 years
Milton Babbitt: 90 years
Leonard Bernstein: 88 years
Terry Riley: 71 years
Steve Reich: 70 years
Philip Glass: 69 years
John Adams: 59 years
