Marginal Revolution: Who were the richest composers of all time?

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Who were the richest composers of all time?

No, they don't count Paul McCartney, only "classical" music is eligible, unless it is George Gershwin, who comes in first. Here is the rest of the list, overall opera composers do well.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 31, 2005 at 07:57 AM in Music | Permalink

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Comments

Interesting list.

Posted by: Jessica at Aug 31, 2005 11:05:15 AM

This list is poorly composed: composers in the richest societies ended up as the richest. Duh. That's why it's dominated by composers of 19th century popular forms.

A more interestings approach would be to use Forbes's metric for comparing welath across decades: net worth / annual GDP. This metric gives a sense of "what fraction of that societies economic resources did this individual control." Crude, but it compensates for the fact the many of today's welfare recipients are (in absolute terms) wealthier than medieval gentry who had neither plumbing nor mattresses.

Handel would then score quite high, for example. He was quite the Andrew Lloyd Weber of his day, and had Royal Patronage to boot. How would one rate Machaut? He was one of the most famous men in France in his day, got the best commissions (eg composing for the recently completed Cathedrals) and lived quite comfortably.

Also, before about 1750 most musicians were amatuers -- they had day jobs. Many of those day jobs were quite wealthy positions --- the Florentine Camerata (the folks who more or less invented modern opera) were a prosperous bunch.

and why the heck is the world's canonical rock star, the man who "went everywhere, did everything, with everyone" and had women throwing undergarments on the stage not on the list? 'cuz behind that Bacchanaliam facade Lizst had the cold, calculating heart of P.T. Barnum.

Posted by: tylerh at Aug 31, 2005 3:32:48 PM

I suspect that John Philip Sousa would have made the top 10 had he been considered. I don't think he made that much from his compositions, but his band was hugely popular for many years.

Posted by: Bruce Bartlett at Aug 31, 2005 4:37:56 PM

I think the right metric for payment adjustment is not cpi or something similar but the changes in the average working wage. At very high income levels, the cost of human labor and prestigious housing are more important, because of the goods the elite tend to consume, especially when comparing composers from many different eras.

Net worth over gdp is also a good measure.

The real problem is how to deal with people favored by the court. They not only had high money incomes, but could get things that only connections could give you. Think of how rich the top officials in the Soviet Union really were when taking into account what they could get through the state rather than with money. The same for bigshots in a monarchy.

Posted by: jn at Sep 1, 2005 12:34:55 PM

What about Ravel?

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