Finishing Old Works?

For or against?

It feels weird if it's old enough, almost like ruining the ideas of another person. Thoughts?

I'm typically against revisiting old works. As young composer we are still finding our compositional voice and revisiting old works isn't really progressing forward. Unless the work was unfinished because of time or commitment constraints and still fits in your current style. Besides that trying to finish or rework old pieces just seems like a step back in our development of our music creating skills.

Amen!

^ That made me laugh. xD

Guess it depends how old is old and what needs to still be done.  

Sometimes I like leaving old pieces as they are so I can track my progress. If I went back and redid everything, that would be lost.

I usually finish a piece and can't stand to listen to it anymore. Imagine the pleasure I get with the thought of the ideas I didn't finish. 

I am for reworking themes though. I've resurrected themes from string and piano pieces to make weird electronic music. Kinda cool I guess.

I've done my fair share of revisiting / finishing old works. Of course I understand how valuable the old versions can be as a testimonial about my growth (?) and development (?) as a composer - but on the other hand I'd be ashamed if anyone would ever listen my totally embarrasing early pieces without they being at least somehow upgraded to a listenable standard.

Just a thought...

Any work you create is a document of a certain period. And always there are good compositions and bad compositions in your opus. For example: I know I could have reworked my Divertimento grazioso from 1998 and improve it but why? I think it's the best I have managed to do then. It would lose all charm of that period. So no turning back. All the flaws you encounter and understand shall be fixed in future compositions.

I never modify a work that is more than 2-3 years old for the reasons mentioned above. Pieces within that era that are genuinely unfinished do indeed have a possibility of being finished. There is actually one that I started working on in 2012 which I'm really liking. I just haven't sat down and *really* figured out how to progress past the first 1:15 of it, into the second main section of the piece. I love it and I want to finish it, as I consider it one of my better works so far. It just became a lower and lower priority over time...I need to fix that ;)

Much like everyone else, I leave my old unfinished work as it is. Every so often I'll take a look at it to see what I wrote like, but I think it's best to keep it as a learning/progress document. Some things let me think, "Huh, why on Earth would I do that?". Overall it's interesting to see how much I've grown as a composer. 

Especially looking at old tracks that don't have mastering, mixing, or anything on them.  :musicwhistle:

usually if you go back to revise an old piece its like you're doing a collaboration. even better, it's a collaboration with an upgraded version of yourself. so i think these will turn out to be some of the best works you've done.

I revisit older unfinished works all the time.  I have piles of fragments of works in varying stages of development which I feel have potential to be something good.  However, I agree about not revisit completed works, they should stand alone and serve as a snapshot of one's development at the time.

I don't revisit old works most of the time. It's no use. It's like trying to salvage a ship that's busted in half and at the bottom of the ocean. The musical devastation that I leave in my wake is incurable and so I just keep running ahead to wreak more disaster.  :D

usually if you go back to revise an old piece its like you're doing a collaboration. even better, it's a collaboration with an upgraded version of yourself. so i think these will turn out to be some of the best works you've done.

You've pretty much described my experience with my own String Serenade - resulting in one of the works I'm most fond of.

Anyway, I'm not treating my own works as museum pieces just yet. Let others do that once I'm dead or called it quits.

I am all for revisiting old ideas: most of my best compositions have actually been based on ideas I had years earlier. Rather than finishing pieces I abandoned, though, I tend to write completely new pieces based on ideas (melodies or sections or extramusical "programs") that weren't quite ready to be complete pieces when I first came up with them. I guess this means some of my compositions have unusually long "gestation" periods: sometimes I'll come up with a good idea, fight with it for a few days or weeks, then if it isn't working I'll go write other things and ignore it for a few months or years or as long as it takes until one day (maybe under the pressure of a deadline) it becomes glaringly obvious how I can develop it into a complete piece. When I do this, my music tends to be more thematically unified and the piece, as they say, writes itself.

Several of my composition professors have told me that, while they struggle to develop their own ideas, they have a very easy time envisioning possibilities for their students' unfinished pieces ("when I look at students' [unfinished] ideas, I often see how the whole piece could unfold," one of them said.) I think it can be the same way when looking at our own older stuff: we have more distance from our old ideas and can look at them more objectively after a few months than we could when we were first struggling to write them down. At least that's how it is for me: it helps to create firm boundaries between an idea's conception and its development, and maybe the more time there is between the two phases (to let my subconsious "digest" the ideas), the better. It's easier to compose variations on a theme you've known your whole life than one you've just heard for the first time.

I realize my process is probably somewhat unusual, but if you're ever strapped for ideas, it can't hurt to look at some of your old pieces--you might be surprised by the new ideas that occur to you.

I rework everything. I don't come up with a lot of good musical ideas, so when I get one I make the most of it. The working process of Franz Liszt might be a good analogue.

(Of course I also save all the old versions so I can track my own progress)