What Makes a Great Composer?

Music for What Makes a Great Composer?

Why do some composers become great while others are forgotten? What shapes musical creativity—and who gets remembered?

Spanning nearly a thousand years of music history, What Makes a Great Composer? A Data-Driven Exploration of Music History by Karol J. Borowiecki and Marc T. Law (Princeton University Press) uncovers the forces behind musical greatness—from talent, training and creative cities to institutions, conflict, gender and chance.

The selections below let you hear these ideas in the music itself. Organized by chapter, they bring to life composers, works, and questions explored in the book. They are not a definitive list of the “greatest” compositions, but an invitation to listen differently—and to discover the stories behind the music.

For longer works, we generally recommend a single movement or excerpt that can be heard alongside the relevant chapter.