← Fame through time1700-1799
The 18th century
Whose working lives fell in the 18th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 18th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart21 decades - 2
Johann Sebastian Bach22 decades - 3
Antonio Vivaldi14 decades - 4
George Frideric Handel21 decades - 5
Joseph Haydn22 decades - 6
Antonio Salieri15 decades - 7
Madame du Barry22 decades - 8
Leopold Mozart20 decades - 9
Selim III18 decades - 10
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach15 decades - 11
Christoph Willibald Gluck9 decades - 12
Jean-Philippe Rameau11 decades - 13
Georg Philipp Telemann12 decades - 14
Maria Anna Mozart3 decades - 15
Domenico Scarlatti17 decades - 16
Count of St. Germain7 decades - 17
Johann Christian Bach12 decades - 18
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle20 decades - 19
Constanze Mozart6 decades - 20
Farinelli22 decades - 21
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi8 decades - 22
Luigi Boccherini13 decades - 23
Tomaso Albinoni8 decades - 24
François Couperin14 decades - 25
Muzio Clementi17 decades - 26
Giuseppe Tartini22 decades - 27
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach13 decades - 28
Barbara of Portugal, Queen of Spain17 decades - 29
Sayat-Nova0 decades - 30
Luigi Cherubini2 decades - 31
François-André Danican Philidor0 decades - 32
Michael Haydn22 decades - 33
Anna Magdalena Bach10 decades - 34
Chevalier de Saint-Georgesnot measured- - 35
Domenico Cimarosa22 decades - 36
Giovanni Paisiello22 decades - 37
Julie d'Aubigny17 decades - 38
Dmytro Bortnianskyi3 decades - 39
Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttelnot measured- - 40Jan Dismas Zelenka0 decades
- 41
Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach6 decades - 42
Johann Adolph Hasse3 decades - 43
Thomas Arne0 decades - 44
Maria Antonia Walpurgis of Bavaria0 decades - 45
Maria Barbara Bach0 decades - 46
Baldassare Galuppi15 decades - 47
Johann van Beethoven12 decades - 48
Giovanni Battista Viotti3 decades - 49
Nicola Porpora12 decades - 50
Turlough O'Carolan0 decades - 51
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf3 decades - 52
André Grétry0 decades - 53
Johann Stamitz11 decades - 54
Johann Joachim Quantz7 decades - 55
Benedetto Marcello22 decades - 56
Josef Myslivečeknot measured- - 57
Leonardo Vinci21 decades - 58
Carl Stamitz6 decades - 59
François Joseph Gossec1 decades - 60
Pietro Locatelli3 decades - 61
Ignaz Pleyelnot measured- - 62
Carl Friedrich Abel1 decades - 63
Niccolò Piccinni13 decades - 64
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre0 decades - 65
Marie-Louise O'Murphy0 decades - 66
Maria Theresia Paradis3 decades - 67
Jean-Marie Leclair4 decades - 68
Friedrich Wilhelm Bülow von Dennewitznot measured- - 69
Aloysia Weber0 decades - 70
Johann Mattheson9 decades - 71
William Boyce15 decades - 72
Francesco Geminiani0 decades - 73
Hannah Glasse0 decades - 74
Alessandro Marcello20 decades - 75
Giovanni Battista Martini4 decades - 76
Senesino21 decades - 77
Charles Burney22 decades - 78
Christian Gottlob Neefe7 decades - 79
Anna Amalia of Prussia, Abbess of Quedlinburg2 decades - 80
Ernest Louis, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadtnot measured- - 81
Joseph Martin Kraus4 decades - 82
Antonio Caldara13 decades - 83
Carl Heinrich Graun8 decades - 84
Sake Dean Mahomed0 decades - 85
Giovanni Battista Sammartini4 decades - 86
Jan Ladislav Dussek0 decades - 87
Carl Friedrich Zelter11 decades - 88
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger4 decades - 89
Étienne Méhul0 decades - 90Jeremiah Clarke3 decades
- 91Antonio Solernot measured-
- 92
Alexey Razumovsky0 decades - 93
Christoph Graupner6 decades - 94
Johann Baptist Vanhal0 decades - 95
Giovanni Bononcini9 decades - 96
Count Hieronymus von Colloredo2 decades - 97
John Stafford Smith1 decades - 98
Johann Friedrich Fasch4 decades - 99
Georg Benda0 decades - 100
Francesco Durante22 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.