What are we composing for?

I have been composing for ... eh, probably 6 years now. I've written some things for piano, haven't played any in recital yet, and I've written plenty enough for large ensemble. I've gotten one performance by a concert band, but that was when I was musically young, so I didn't have the control I have now.

I recently wrote a piece for a competition here on YC, and it was based off a German text so I put the appropriate markings in German to fit the theme of the piece. I went to the Shoutbox to ask if anybody knew what a certain indication was in German and QC asked me, "Why? Who are you writing it for? Who is performing it?"

... and the answer is no one. I would like to get the opportunity to perform one of my large ensemble pieces but those opportunities pretty much never come along. From what QC said, he makes me think that we should write for somebody or some ensemble and it has to be performed or else there is no point to composing it. I'm not saying that is what he is saying, but that is the impression I got. I get this impression from a lot of people, so I thought I'd ask... why do we bother? Do we HAVE to always write with somebody in mind and write specifically for them (the ensemble)? Must we always be queuing up our compositions for performances and tailoring them to the confines of what ensembles we have available to perform them? What is the point in composing if we aren't planning a performance?

Those seem to be the questions I wanna throw out at people when they say, "Well, who are you writing it for?" I'm writing it for my own damned enjoyment. I'm writing to let my creativity flow. I ALWAYS compose and prepare the orchestration and score such that it would be 100% plausible to perform, but I often write difficult figures, or use "extreme" registers. It's like a puzzle to me. Fitting things together in the most pleasing fashion and most playable fashion (if challenging or not.) I'm just trying to get the experience I need to do the job for real and so I have something to show when I want to apply for a school. Is a performance really THAT important? I don't think so. Do you think so? If you do, when do you think it starts to become important in a composer's career? Why do YOU compose? What are YOU trying to get out of it?

When I write something today I write it in mind that if I run across an opportunity to perform it five years from now that I'll have a few pieces I can pull out of the bag from earlier. I'm not vying for a performance immediately, but eventually would be nice. That's to answer one of the questions myself.

(P.S. Incidental composers who compose exclusively for computers... you're void of this. :P )

(P.P.S. However I know some of you still compose works intended more for performance as well.)

I just have to hope opportunities come along. I write pieces that I think have the potential to be performed, so I usually write for instrumentation that I have available - I can write vocal pieces because I have a singing sister at my disposal. Although I did orchestrate my opera although I knew it would likely not be performed, but I will still be able to include it as a piece to send out to colleges when I apply. So I guess having to apply to colleges is sort of my M.O.

OK, you're composing to get experience composing. But having the music performed, seeing what the musicians think about their parts, hearing how well they manage to pull it off, and just actually hearing how effective your orchestrations really are--isn't that part of the experience? I think that's why some people stress the importance of writing for existing musicians, and with performance in mind. It's not some philosophical idea that it's not important if nobody performs it--it's just the very pragmatic notion that there's so much you can learn from going through the process of turning your dots into real, living music as many times as possible, that if you have the opportunity, why pass it up?

I ultimately compose for myself, I suppose. As vain as it sounds, I enjoy playing the music I write and I get a thrill when other people enjoy it too. I love compliments and criticism about my music, and love to see people's emotional response to it.

Music is all about communicating your feelings and ideas, whether it's with everyone here on Young Composers, in a concert hall in front of an audience, or at home with the family.

I'm aware that it's unlikely I'll get to play my pieces in front of a packed concert hall, but as long as it touches a few people, then my music has fulfilled its role.

I compose mainly for myself too, but that doesn't mean I don't want it performed or to be heard by others. Just writing down a piece can also be fulfilling, but never quite as much as getting an actual physical sound out of it, so I do try to get everything major I write performed. (That doesn't apply when I'm just doing something for a little non-serious exercise or something.)

The last few years I've mainly composed on commission, i.e. I wrote pieces of a specified duration for a specified instrumentation with a fixed deadline. This has the great advantage that you always get a performance, sometimes even a really good one or with a large ensemble (say, an amateur orchestra). And it also means that you are pressed into writing things that lay outside the scope of what you'd do otherwise, which forces you to expand your musical thinking into new areas, which can be quite exciting when it works.

But after the last such piece I've now finally started with a piece I wrote without any outside reason whatsoever. It's a piece for three pianos and the only reason I'm writing it is because I feel like it (and have wanted to write for that instrumentation for a couple of years already). I have no clue if or when it will be performed (I'm confident that I will get a performance though), or when it will be finished, and I'm loving it. It makes such a great change to write a piece for once where I can do entirely whatever I feel like, make it as long or short as I want and take my time, maybe three months, maybe half a year, maybe two years, maybe even longer, who knows.

I think all of these approaches have their merit. And I don't think you -must- get a performance, even though for me, I seem to need a performance to be able to draw a final line under the piece, to make it truly finished. Plus, I just love hearing my stuff performed. I'm vain like that :D

I think it's ultimately for profitable to see yourself writing for someone else rather then yourself. For one, you have incentive to get stuff done, secondly, if you decide to make a career out of it you'll probably end up composing for someone else anyway, and lastly, compositions you do for yourself usually don't get performances. At least that's what one of my comp profs told me.

Well I write music pretty much because I can say stuff in music that I can't say any other way. Not very clever or profound, but who cares.

Like Gardener said tho, when I've had pieces performed (commissions or otherwise) it does bring the piece to a "well, that's done" close moment. Though you can always tweak stuff on it and I usually end with a new and better score after a performance. Recently however the feedback I've gotten from performances hasn't been so new or important as when I first started, but you always learn a thing or two anyways.

But, by no means do I think performance is the end-all goal for me. I mean, I write a lot of scraggy that can't be performed. Like I said, to me it's just expression. Getting it played by people and such is a nice bonus and it's nice when others can hear it, but the important thing for me is that I externalize my internal musical thoughts and work on them so they're better than what I had in my head.

And for that it really is fine with just a well written score, even if it has no performance. Getting a performance is sometimes easy, sometimes it isn't so I wouldn't really put it so high on the list unless you're reasonably famous or like Gardener have a flow of work that lets your stuff get performed regularly.

There's also the "Well I also write electronic music" side. I'm writing something that will actually get a performance where I'm putting general midi instruments next to the real ones in duets and other situations and sort of messing with "well that sounds like scraggy" sounds in a way that focuses on, well, that sounds like scraggy is subjective.

But that piece is going to basically exist complete only once I get the actual performance recorded along with the electronics (and all works, lol.) So it's one of those half/half things.

And then there's obviously electronic music which doesn't need anyone performing it. I'm totally for that, and I love it. I don't honestly hold the traditional instruments in such high regard that I can't just replace them with square waves and noise. ... In fact I've recently began writing chiptunes using famitracker. So I guess it depends. To me a cello doesn't really sound any "better" than a something produced by a chip on an ancient gaming console. It just has to do with what I want.

I think because my objectives are so open, I'm also really open to using just whatever I can get my hands on to put together a piece of music. I also end up running into ideas I've never seen anyone do before, or where there's no reference literature and I have to make scraggy up as I go along which is fun.

Plus there's a second purpose to writing a score to me, depending on the piece. I have a series of preludes which are basically more important written than performed (though we did perform them, somewhat) and it's the sort of thing that reaches more into visual art and, well, poetry and such than music (though they're obviously playable as music too.)

I'm not too concerned, like I said, so long as what I have in my head ends up on paper regardless if anyone will ever see it or much less perform it.

... And I also have some more metaphysical reasons for composing, but I'm not getting into that as this is waaaaay tl;dr as it is.

I compose for other people.

In the sense that I compose from a need to communicate with the audience.

Once one of my pieces has been performed, if the public reaction was favourable, I do my damnedest to get more performances.

and of course, the paycheck doesn't hurt.

I guess at this point i'm assuming that by majoring in composition in college I'll have at least a little access to performing ensembles and will get some works peformed that way. After that it's basically if my first works were good enough, people will want more.

So I guess the answer is, I write to have a backlog of performable pieces to pull out if the opportunity presents itself, and I'm just assuming it will eventually.

EnigmusJ4, you and I are in the same proverbial boat.

I would love for my compositions to be performed in front of others - in fact I'd say it'd be my dream come true. When I hear that others on YC have the luxury of getting other musicians to learn their music and perform it in front of actual audiences, I can't help but be rather jealous. However, I have absolutely no social connections to anyone in the music scene, because none of my academics has anything to do with music. In fact, not even my friends or family really know I compose music - they'd be beyond surprised to find out that I've spent hundreds of hours of my life writing music.

At first, when I posted my music on YC, I was a little confused because the majority of criticism was geared towards performance-oriented problems, but I've always only cared about the listening-experience of my mp3's themselves, because that's all I've got.

So, yeah. I'd love to compose for others, but realistically speaking, I only compose for myself. No one else is interested in hearing anything I write. :forlorn:

I have a different point of view here...

I always compose for a specific band - MY band, whatever that may be. I always have some sort of working ensemble for which I'm writing - with specific player and specific strengths and weaknesses. At the moment, it'll all for my own, selfish performance purposes...

I write, so my bands and I have something original to play. Currently, those bands are a quintet and Blunt Object (11-piece).

The most important thing I get to write for are the individual performers. For the Quintet, I'm not writing for tenor sax, trombone, guitar, bass, drums...I'm writing for Ben, Myself, Thom, Damian, and Mark. Blunt is the same way... Writing for the specific player, with their idiosyncrasies and personality allows me to know better how the music will filter through them, how it will react. It's much more organic for me than writing for a generic ensemble without knowing the personality and capabilities...

So far in my career, I've always had the pleasure of leading my own ensembles, and having them at my disposal. It's a wonderful feeling.

I know I compose mainly because I enjoy making new music and making mew music for others. Making music is like a drug for me and the only way I can get high is making more. If I was to stop I dont think I could handle the withdrawals.

The other reason is that its my major in college. I dont think I can major in anything else other than music composition due to the fact that Im not that good at anything else other than music composition. I cant really do music education, unless I am teaching at a college level. I dont do well kids. I also cant really do music performance because I not that good of a performer. And forget any other major, I am really only good at music... its quite sad but good all at the same time.

Another reason, and problebly the more important, is that I need to make this a career. I have plans on either become a film composer. Thankfully at my school they teach us how to write a score for films and we get the opportunity to score films.

If you need opportunities to have your pieces performed, they're tons of competitions out their for young composers in where not only will your pieces performed but get national recognition. You can also join national organizations like NACUSA or CPCC. They would send you flyer's that tell you performances opportunities and conventions where you can get others to perform your music.

I write because I want to write. However, I don't use that as an excuse to just write for ridiculous ensembles, just "because I can." If you are going to spend time laboring over a piece (which is what one does if one truly puts their creative energies into the piece) then you should at least create something that is going to get played. The music doesn't happen until someone brings it to life, be that you, or a soloist, or an orchestra.

The more performances you have, the better you get at judging how to write down what you hear. Performances help in that manner.

The more your music gets performed, the more likely people will hear it, start to recognize your name, and ask you to write music for them. Performance helps in that manner as well.

I honestly think that performance is 'the goal' to keep in mind, though I'd also like to add that composition is a near-endless circle. But without a performance, it's just notes on a page.

I honestly think that performance is 'the goal' to keep in mind, though I'd also like to add that composition is a near-endless circle. But without a performance, it's just notes on a page.

:sadtears:

:sadtears:

Did something I say disturb you?

I do it first for the sake of creativity, then, for experience, if I ever get "THE JOB" which doesn't seems so imposible, at least at a lower scale... then, to have my "repertory bag", for any use, hahahaha. And last, because I write the music I'd like to hear for the moment :thumbsup:

Even tough I could never performe, I guess that wouldn't be at all bad. But I do always worry about any details in the interpretation issues, and actually, I'm pretty personalized with each part of "my ensemble"

Did something I say disturb you?

I think he means that since he can't get his stuff performed, what he writes doesn't mean squat (according to way he interpreted your words, that is.)

I think he means that since he can't get his stuff performed, what he writes doesn't mean squat (according to way he interpreted your words, that is.)

Yep. :happy:

I think he means that since he can't get his stuff performed, what he writes doesn't mean squat (according to way he interpreted your words, that is.)

Haha, oh wait. That's not what I meant at all man! There are obvious advantages to composing even if it doesn't get performed, but one will grow most as a composer if it gets performed. Even if it's just a reading of your piece, it can be helpful.

Really though, the music only can happen the way its' meant to if it's performed. That can be by you at the piano, or the instruments it was written for, or even a sequenced recording (which isn't ideal, but not a horrible way to make it happen.)

I certainly wasn't trying to negate your music or your worth as a composer, at all. I think if you want your music to be performed you should go and make it happen. Even if you think it's bad, so much can be gleaned from a single reading. I understand about not knowing who to talk to to make it happen. I'm not sure where you are in school, but just ask some buddies who you go to high school with. Maybe write smaller ensembles, like a trio, or even a solo piece. I apologize if what I said sounded like I was talking down on your music; I certainly wasn't man. I was just saying that the people who say "I don't need a performance" are a little, you know, wayward, perhaps.

Robin's method there is really one of the best. I've personally done this myself, but in the modern music sense. I have a bunch of good friends who play various instruments and I write for them to play/etc. I know I'll get a performance in essence because it's well, it's a dedicated piece and we're all pretty good friends so it works out.

It's not so hard to go and meet people who can play your pieces, but of course it's more of a personal relationship thing and not "Well I need a pianist or I wouldn't be talking to you" cuz that's just mean. :/

PS: Plus if your friends are cool you'll get a lot of feedback since good friends don't tend to hold back criticism LOL. :>

Why do I compose?

Well, I've read everyone's responses to this, and they're all very good reasons to do it, much better than my reason for composing. I wish I could STOP composing. Really, I do. I could be happy having money and a "real job", but NOOOOO, I had to be ambitious and decide that I was going to be the next John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber, or Mr. Holland. Funny how that worked out for me... because I'm none of these.

Truth be told, I compose because if I don't, eventually my mind becomes cluttered with different musical ideas that just occupy my brain to the point that I can think of nothing else but those ideas. I've been doing this for years, first actively when I started learning how to compose, then unconsciously after years of study. Composing, at least for me, is like taking a very big, massive poop.

Music and I, we have a very dissonant, love-hate relationship. I hate it when I'm composing a piece, but I love it when I have the final product. I could care less if someone performs it, I just want it out of my head. No joke.

Composing, at least for me, is like taking a very big, massive poop.

O.o...

...

Never thought of it that way...

I compose becuase I love it, whether or not I can get a performance, but I also compose with the aim of writing something that my high school orchestra teacher will aprove for a concert...

Why do I compose?

Well, I've read everyone's responses to this, and they're all very good reasons to do it, much better than my reason for composing. I wish I could STOP composing. Really, I do. I could be happy having money and a "real job", but NOOOOO, I had to be ambitious and decide that I was going to be the next John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber, or Mr. Holland. Funny how that worked out for me... because I'm none of these.

Truth be told, I compose because if I don't, eventually my mind becomes cluttered with different musical ideas that just occupy my brain to the point that I can think of nothing else but those ideas. I've been doing this for years, first actively when I started learning how to compose, then unconsciously after years of study. Composing, at least for me, is like taking a very big, massive poop.

Music and I, we have a very dissonant, love-hate relationship. I hate it when I'm composing a piece, but I love it when I have the final product. I could care less if someone performs it, I just want it out of my head. No joke.

I absolutely know what you mean. You've described my love-hate relationship with music, as well as my psychological yearnings for composing (aka, addiction >_< ), to the proverbial tee. It does feel good to have used up all the musical ideas that have been cluttering my mind. It's quite a release. I've never compared it to defecation, but I know what you mean. ^_^

I absolutely know what you mean. You've described my love-hate relationship with music, as well as my psychological yearnings for composing (aka, addiction >_< ), to the proverbial tee. It does feel good to have used up all the musical ideas that have been cluttering my mind. It's quite a release. I've never compared it to defecation, but I know what you mean. ^_^

Yeah, just wait until your mind starts filling back up with ideas again. It happens more frequently and more rapidly the more you listen to music.

And the reason I compare it to defacating is simply put: I never get what I want, and it's for the smallest reasons I can never pinpoint (otherwise, I'd get what I want - ahh irony).

Anyone have any suggestions for advanced tonal harmony reading that I can be looking into (preferrably on a free website somewhere)? I've been looking around here, but all I seem to be able to find are mostly things I already know. It's just a pain in the donkey to fumble my way through the harmonies I want to use. There's got to be a better way.

WHy do I compose? Well, I have had long periods where I never wrote a note and my "composing" was limited to extemporizations on the piano. Yet when I was a little kid before taking any piano lessons and all we had was a crappy little upright that was one of the things I wanted to do - compose. But strangely it was for my parents. A little like QC said, I compose for other people (or an imaginary audience if you will) because I enjoy communicating to other people in music and as SSC said some of these things I find words and gestures sometimes cannot communicate -- and even this is imperfect. But it feels good in the end.

Lastly, I realized late when I began studying composition seriously these past few years starting well into adulthood that I thrive on composing for other people and with a strucutre (eg a particular form, group and deadline) -- I love the collaboration and learning and borrowing performers excellent ideas and making them my own as well as hear what other composers like myself do. Otherwise, I tend to collect many incomplete ideas and eventually stop. Maybe it is the level I am at.

It is a timely question for me because with the loss of my day job recently I wonder if I should continue serious study at the school I studying composition this past year (it isn't cheap). In the end, I figure I need to (I mean I actually do enjoy doing counterpoint exercises and ear training as an alternative to composing!) -- there are too many opportunities in life to do the things you have to or only feel half-assed committed to, why not carve some time of life with a few things you truly enjoy.