Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most famous and accomplished Germans in history, tops the list by a significant margin. Another German, Johann Sebastian Bach, follows, with Austrian/German/Salzburgian (depending on who you ask), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart following closely behind.

There are no shocks here, except maybe Beethoven’s lead, but this is narrowing. Mentions of Beethoven have dropped significantly in 2021. In April, Beethoven was mentioned 11k times, compared to Bach’s 10.1k, and Mozart’s 10k.

Nevertheless, as we all know too well, being talked about a lot on the internet is not necessarily a good thing. Now it’s time to look at the positive and negative side of the conversation.

Negatives and positives

To work out net sentiment for each composer, we simply removed the neutral mentions, and subtracted the negative mention percentage value from the positive mention one. In other words, a similar approach to working out a politician’s net approval.

Here’s what we found out.

Topping the list is British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, and he has a respectable lead, too. Vivaldi, one of the oldest names on the list, takes second, with Bernstein, one of the youngest, in third.

But where has Beethoven ended up? He ranked 29th with a net sentiment of 16%. This seems overly harsh for someone considered one of the best composers of all time, but with fame comes hate. To soothe any Beethoven fans reading this, he got the most positive mentions by volume (although, saying that, he got the most negative ones as well).

And while he still got more love than hate, Richard Wagner was at the bottom of the list with a net sentiment of just 6%. Since he was an incredibly controversial figure in his lifetime and now, we’re not really surprised.

Of course this analysis is open to interpretation, as some may put more stock in volume than advocates vs detractors, but either way, we’ll leave you with some music while you debate amongst yourselves.

Here’s Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No.2 performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

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The Brandwatch React team