Tommasini's List

For the past two weeks, Anthony Tommasini has been painstakingly assembling a list of his top ten classical composers. It appears in tomorrow's Arts and Leisure section (link to the full article above). His ranked list is:
1.Bach
2.Beethoven
3.Mozart
4.Schubert
5.Debussy
6.Stravinsky
7.Brahms
8.Verdi
9.Wagner
10.Bartok
I couldn't stop thinking about my list, as soon as he started his. I posted one list on WQXR's website earlier this week, and then I took another stab at it today. It's difficult enough to make the list, so I really didn't rank it. Well, I ranked 1-4 (who are the same as Tommasini's), but once you get through those four, it's infinitely more difficult. The rest of my list is:
5.Ravel
6.Verdi
7.Chopin
8.Haydn
9.Bartok
10.a whole bunch of guys (all guys, I'm afraid), running neck and neck:
Richard Strauss; Benjamin Britten; Claude Debussy; Gabriel Faure; Dmitri Shostakovich; Leo Delibe; Olivier Messaien; Johannes Brahms
My 10+ list would include:
Robert Schuman (Kinderszenen); Ralph Vaughan Williams (Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis); Franz Liszt (Mefisto Waltz); Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky (Pathetique); Leonard Bernstein ("Candide"); Adam Guettel ("The Light in the Piazza"). Yes, there's even a living, breathing composer on the list- imagine!