Gardener

That's a difficult topic, as there are basically two "types" of composers (which of course overlap): One, like Ives, or the Russian "Mighy Five" earns their money with entirely non-musical jobs and only composes in their spare time. The other tries to earn their living with composing. Both, in most cases, want to create art, but both have their ways of earning the money they need to live. Ives didn't need his symphonies to be played, as he earned money well enough in the insurance business. Composers like Haydn on the other hand wrote because it was "their job" and a certain compositorial output was expected from them.

I don't think such considerations necessarily make a composition less valuable, or less artistic and composers such as Bach were extremely good at "doing their duty" (and writing cantata after cantata because he had to) while still doing entirely his own thing and not bending to what the audience would have loved most to hear.

I'm not saying that "doing one's duty" is a necessity as a composer, not in the least. But I don't think it makes your compositions less personal and valid, as long as you know precicely what you want and don't make concessions where you feel it would corrupt your music.

I also find that "writing because you have to" has certain artistic advantages: If you only do what you want all the time, you might after a while notice that you begin repeating yourself in your musical articulations, as you keep writing in ways where you feel comfortable.

If you're happy with that, that's fine, but personally I also write music to discover areas that are new to me, to explore, to expand my musical experience. And this can sometimes be easier if there's something from the outside "forcing" you into something where you might not feel totally comfortable and at home first, but which may lead to musical insights that you couldn't have got otherwise. I don't really like it when in my own music every note feels totally natural and logical. I much prefer it when I find elements in it that are somewhat strange to me, that I don't really understand myself, but which invite me to explore them more.

I've quite often written for instruments which I didn't pick myself, but for which I was given the opportunity of a performance. Actually, it's already been quite a while since I wrote my last piece that was entirely "my own idea" (even though I really want to do such a piece again now). In any case, this fact has often forced me to think about musical questions I had avoided until then and the pieces which have resulted out of this have generally been great experiences I wouldn't have wanted to miss.

I don't think you have to write for a performance. You can write whatever you want for whatever reason, really. But a life performance is always something entirely different to just looking at a score and the actual, physical experience of listening to your music is one of the main reasons I write. And while the act of writing music is a musical act independantly of whether it is actually performed, I think I got to agree with the sentiment that ultimately something is only music when it reaches its intended goal, i.e. usually a performance. Leaving aside very conceptual things, music is about sound in the end, no matter if it's a piano sonata, an electronic piece, written as a very free graphical score to be turned into music in whatever way one likes, or even three movements of ”tacet".

Of course it's a highly difficult topic, as you can hardly say that the later life of Beethoven was without music, despite the lack of anything audible for his ears. But maybe we have to be consistent and say that Beethoven's later life was in fact without music, as strange as this must feel to us (and despite the fact that Beethoven probably didn't feel as if his life was without music). But I think in the end it's probably just a question of terminology.