Composer Info

This sortable table lists the 1,000 most frequently appearing composers writing the tunes in the Skiptune database. In total there are nearly 5,100 composers, including partnerships, responsible for writing the 82,000 tunes. You can sort by alphabetizing the composer list, or by the number of tunes written by composer, by clicking on the up or down arrows in the header.

The extremely large number of “anonymous” composers suggests that we don’t know who wrote about a third of the tunes in the database. It is staggering to realize how much of our music comes from unknown composers. The top composer, ranked by number of entries in the database, is Henry Purcell, a composer we focused on in 2017 through 2020 to ensure a solid base of melodies from the late 1600s when the baroque era was about to give way to the classical era.  Over time we will enter more and more pieces from composers in the later classical and romantic eras.

This table was last updated in January 2026. Names with a slash (“/”) in them are partnerships between composers where it is impossible to credit just one person for the melody. Names preceded by “Mr.” or “Mrs.” are artifacts of centuries-old records that were never meant for anyone other than the village or area in which they were written. We don’t know the full names of these composers who would otherwise be recorded as anonymous, but they are included here with honorifics to preserve the integrity of the record.