How long does it take you to finish a piece?

It's not so much the writing that takes so long for me, it's the revisions...

For a small instrumentation piece like Organ or Brass 5tet, a couple weeks. A few days if I'm fired up about it.

For an orchestra piece, a few months, a few weeks if I'm fired up about it.

For a choral piece, a few years, a few months of I'm fired up about it.

For an opera, never.


Just remember, it took Brahms 20 years to write his First Symphony.

Very long, because I spend maybe a couple hours or less a week composing. 30 bars a week is average for me. Most of my pieces are quite short, though. I usually compose in short bursts.

I know, I'm slow, but composition is just something of a hobby for me, and not being trained in it makes it take longer.

For me, it absolutely depends on the piece. I haven't written loads of works or huge works, but for example it took me about two weeks' time to finish a solo clarinet, 3/4-minute piece (from sketches to highly-polished handwritten score), and it took me 4 days to write a 3-minute piece for nine instruments, because it was for a competition and the deadline was on a Friday, and I found out about the competition on the previous Monday. Pressure can be good some times, but I generally go by the adage we have here in Greece, "If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening my axe". So the preparation for the piece and gathering all the information I need will probably take me more time than writing the piece itself.

EDIT:

Just remember, it took Brahms 20 years to write his First Symphony.

Well, Brahms was quite the exceptional perfectionist, methinks. He destroyed many of his sketches/drafts/works because he didn't think of them as "worthy", so basically he kept re-writing and re-writing the symphony until he got something that he like 100% in the end.

I suddenly don't feel so bad about how long it usually takes me to write something. In the past I would spend a few months on a 3-4 minute song. Nowadays I'm in the habit of writing 1 minute pieces in a day or two.

I always thought I was spending way too much time trying to fix the things that I wrote, especially because I was rarely any happier with the result after each fix. I figure it's probably more productive to write a lot of music and if it's not perfect, screw it. Instead of trying to fix a piece until the end of time, nowadays I just look at what I wrote and note the things I liked and didn't like so that I can keep them in mind on the next piece.

Hi
I often have times like many of the people on here - short bursts of quick working and longer periods of frustration. I think there are so many parameters it is hard to say - pressure to complete something for someone else, or writing a hobby piece to make yourself proud will make a huge difference.
In general I write fast, but my stuff is often more about ideas getting thrown out there , than well-thought out developments and structures...although as I'm getting older these latter things start to appeal more and more.
I also find that my emotional attachment to pieces I'm writing only lasts so long, and then I lose my momentum. Unless I working for someone else, I find y own drive goes on a work after a few weeks - but having said that I tend to write smallish pieces, as I simply don't have time to write on 80 stave paper...much as I'd like to!

For me it all depends on how quickly the ideas flow. Sometimes I can pretty much write a whole piece in one long night, even for a decent-sized instrumentation, or I recently rattled off a 4 minute piece for solo recorder in one evening, but other things take me ages. I finished my three pieces for brass choir which vary somewhere between 3 and 7 minutes I think. First two I each finished in one month each, the last and longest one which was based on a text took two months. An 8 minute set of variations for horn and orchestra took a single month. Now I'm struggling on some piano solos, tuba sonata, and other stuff for a couple months now. Every once in a while I go back an add a couple measures to my brass quintet, but I just can't sit there and work on it, I get stuck.

So really, I work two ways. Either all in one go, which might take my anywhere between 1 evening and 2 months, or little by little just taking pecks at a piece when I feel like it, which my take... a year. I struggled with 2 movements of my bassoon duet in maybe two months or so, then hadn't touched it for 8 months or so, came back, and wrote two more even longer movements in one month. So go figure.

I like to take my time. Whenever I rush, crap just comes out. Also I have to be in the mood. If I'm not in the mood for writing a particular piece then crap is liable to come out then too. I took roughly 5 weeks on and off to write a 12 minute piece. The piece didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped due to rushing it through 5 weeks. But the first of the two movements (2-3 mins) took me about 2 days, and it turned out fine, although it was definitely a lot easier to write than the second one.

I have this terrible habit of beginning to rush my way to finishing a piece once the end is in sight.

Wow. A lot of responses, so thank you for that. I suddenly don't feel so bad for being so slow.

It really depends on what I'm writing for. If its only a little solo, generally, only a few hours. If it's a huge orchestral piece, then I take a "little" longer.