The standard repertoire is a set of several hundred works from the Baroque era through the 20th century that are the most popular with classical music audiences and musicians and thus have been frequently performed by many orchestras, opera companies, soloists, etc. over decades or centuries and in many countries.
The standard repertoire comprises only a minuscule percentage of the vast amount of classical music that has ever been composed, and it is dominated by just a few dozen composers. Some composers such as Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms and Tchaikovsky have contributed numerous works, whereas others have contributed just a few, or even only one (so-called one-hit wonders).The number of compositions entering the standard repertoire that have premiered during the past fifty years or so has been extremely small because few of them compare in popularity among audiences and performers with earlier works.