# Composed by groups



## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

There are many rock groups composing their songs together. This seems seems to be rare phenomenon in classical music. Any good examples?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Mika said:


> There are many rock groups composing their songs together. This seems seems to be rare phenomenon in classical music. Any good examples?


One very bad example---some sort of Chinese committee "composed" the Yellow River Piano Concerto and it is dire.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

L'éventail de Jeanne might be approaching what you're looking for, but it doesn't appear to have been directly collaborative.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Building on Crud's post, there where several collaborative works by *Les Six* fx. Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel might be one...

Wasn't there some sort of "Requiem of repentance" (can't remember the exact title..)written for the 50' year since the end of WWII?

/ptr


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## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

There is also at least one open source opera : http://www.operafestival.fi/OperaByYou/English/Home
I am looking for some permanent solutions. In theory this shouldn't be too dramatic step for string quartets. Symphony orchestra jam sessions might not exist yet


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

François Francœur and François Rebel composed several operas together in the first half of the 18th century.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Francoeur


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## GodNickSatan (Feb 28, 2013)

I've thought about this before. A lot of the great composers knew each other and were even friends, so why didn't they ever get together and write something truly amazing? Whhhhhhhy.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Ooh, I've got one. _Lindberghflug_ was composed jointly by Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith.



GodNickSatan said:


> I've thought about this before. A lot of the great composers knew each other and were even friends, so why didn't they ever get together and write something truly amazing? Whhhhhhhy.


Most of them were far too egotistical for anything like that to work. The entire working period would be one of struggle, and the end result would either be lacklustre or nothing.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Le congrès des rois, to which Cherubini, among others, contributed.

Also, Hexameron, to which Liszt, Chopin, Thalberg, Czerny, Pixis, etc. contributed.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

The F-A-E Sonata, a four-movement work for violin and piano, is a collaborative musical work by three composers: Robert Schumann, the young Johannes Brahms, and Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich. It was composed in Düsseldorf in October 1853. (wiki link)


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## dionisio (Jul 30, 2012)

_Pasticcios_ were very common during baroque opera.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

There's the Genesis Suite composed by several composers living in the USA in mid 20th century. Schoenberg, Shilkret, Toch, Stravinsky, Castelnuovo Tedesco, Tansman and Milhaud. But don't ask me about it, I haven't heard the piece, only knew of it thru finding out about this cd (I've bought a lot of Naxos over the years, but havent got this one yet - looks interesting).

Speaking generally, there was this trend at that time (after the war) of people coming together, reconciling after all that conflict and death. I think an example of that is the United Nations headquarters in New York City, which similarly had a number of big names of Modernist architecture work on it at the time. Eg. Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. I don't like this style of architecture, I find it an eyesore, but regardless of that this was a kind of trend that did find a place in the creative & practical arts at that time - maybe idealist and optimistic and in a sense naive in terms of our own more cynical times?...


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Here are a few I know about:

Anton Cajetan Adlgasser/Michael Haydn/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - each wrote one act of the opera _Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots_. Only Mozart's contribution remains.
Filippo Amadei/Giovanni Battista Bononcini/George Frideric Handel - each wrote one act of the opera _Muzio Scevola_
Malcolm Arnold/Alun Hoddinott/Daniel Jones/Nicholas Maw/Michael Tippett/Grace Williams - _Severn Bridge Variations_
Nikolai Artsybushev/Alexander Glazunov/Anatoly Lyadov/Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov/Nikolai Sokolov/Jāzeps Vītols - _Variations on a Russian Theme_
Antonio Bazzini/Raimondo Boucheron/Antonio Buzzolla/Antonio Cagnoni/Carlo Coccia/Gaetano Gaspari/Teodulo Mabellini/Alessandro Nini/Carlo Pedrotti/Pietro Platania/Federico Ricci/Lauro Rossi/Guiseppe Verdi - _Messa per Rossini_. Verdi's contribution, the _Libera me_, was used in the composer's own Requiem.
Conrad Beck/Luciano Berio/Pierre Boulez/Benjamin Britten/Henri Dutilleux/Wolfgang Fortner/Alberto Ginastera/Cristóbal Halffter/Hans Werner Henze/Heinz Holliger/Klaus Huber/Witold Lutosławski - _Sacher Variations_
Lennox Berkeley/Benjamin Britten - _Mont Juic_ - suite of Catalan dances
Lennox Berkeley/Benjamin Britten/Arthur Oldham/Humphrey Searle/Michael Tippett/William Walton - _Variations on an Elizabethan Theme (Sellinger's Round)_
Georges Bizet/Léo Delibes/Émile Jonas/Isidore-Edouard Legouix- each wrote one act of the operetta _Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre_
Ernest Bloch/Aaron Copland/Paul Creston/Anis Fuleihan/Eugene Gossens/Roy Harris/Walter Piston/Bernard Rogers/Roger Sessions/Deems Taylor - _Variations on a Theme by Eugene Goossens_
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedescò/Darius Milhaud/Arnold Schoenberg/Nathaniel Shilkret/Igor Stravinsky/Alexandre Tansman/Ernst Toch - _Genesis Suite_
Léo Delibes/Ludwig Minkus - collaborated on the ballet _La source_
Arthur Honegger/Jacques Ibert - collaborated on two operas, _L'Aiglon_ and _Les petites cardinals_


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## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

Anything kind of alive? I know living composers are hard to find


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Mika said:


> Anything kind of alive? I know living composers are hard to find


Hard to find? There are hundreds (probably thousands) of living composers writing almost as we speak. Of the composers mentioned in my previous answer, Boulez, Dutilleux, Holliger and Huber are still alive, while Henze died only relatively recently. That having been said, I am not aware of more recent collaborations between living composers.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

ptr said:


> Wasn't there some sort of "Requiem of repentance" (can't remember the exact title..)written for the 50' year since the end of WWII?


Probably the _Requiem der Versohnung_ or Requiem of Reconciliation, composed by Luciano Berio, Friedrich Cerha, Paul-Heinz Dittrich, Marek Kopelent, John Harbison, Arne Nordheim, Bernard Rands, Marc-André Dalbavie, Judith Weir, Krzysztof Penderecki, Wolfgang Rihm, Alfred Schnittke, Gennadi Roschdestwenski, Joji Yuasa and György Kurtag. Seems like it could be a bit of a mess, composed by such an eclectic bunch but I am yet to hear it.

Many of these are really collaborative though, more like compilation albums. Even the _Yellow River Concerto_ seems mostly the work of Xian Xinghai alone, just with endless meddling and editing afterwards, including by Mao's wife. Rather like the wikipedia of classical music.


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## Guest (May 15, 2013)

Another example of collaborative composition (though of the 'reconstructive surgery' kind) is the Samale/Mazzuca/Phillips/Cohrs team who got together to see what could be done with Bruckner's torso. So to speak.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Publisher Diabelli asked every composer he knew of to provide a variation on a waltz he had written. Everyone provided one except Beethoven, who gave him 30. Thus, Beethoven's contribution took up one volume, and everyone else (Liszt and Mozart's son among them) the other.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

dionisio said:


> _Pasticcios_ were very common during baroque opera.


...and in 20th century operetta. The most famous example being The White Horse Inn (Im Weissen Ross'l) by ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz and two other guys. The legend is that they where basically broke after the first world war and came up with the idea of throwing a few of their songs together and spinning some loose plot around it as part of an operetta. The gambit worked, this was a hugely successful operetta of the time. A couple of songs from it became the equivalent of top of the pop charts at the time (this is between the two world wars). The plot is ridiculous, wafer thin and formulaic (but so what, this is operetta after all) but the music is enjoyable, if you like that sort of thing.



Mahlerian said:


> Publisher Diabelli asked every composer he knew of to provide a variation on a waltz he had written. Everyone provided one except Beethoven, who gave him 30. Thus, Beethoven's contribution took up one volume, and everyone else (Liszt and Mozart's son among them) the other.


I heard about that. All of the variations on Diabelli's waltz are available on a recent reissue on Eloquence label. Beethoven's and the others. A 2 cd set (but again, haven't bought that cd, just know of it - some interesting collaborative works revealed on this thread for sure)...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Crudblud said:


> L'éventail de Jeanne might be approaching what you're looking for, but it doesn't appear to have been directly collaborative.


"Serial collaborations" are more the standard, though rare in ratio to all of classical music. Composers each write one movement or segment of a series of pieces meant to be performed as one work.

Most of those are about as 'certain' to have one point of view, or be as consistently good, as a mixed show at an art gallery, too many different styles, too many cooks, and the overall work does not come off so well, or at least "weak."

From a number of those serial collaborations, there are often one, maybe two, segments which are still performed, recorded and consumed, because the composer and that segment were much stronger and remain of general interest. The other movements are already forgotten, or are sometimes done altogether as a sort of archive / document performance.

I cannot think either of any successful works of visual fine art, or literature, where a collaboration was part of the process.

All the areas of the fine arts expect, ergo, demand, a highly singular "voice," and as highly singular a style.

Pop songs, mainstream rock, etc. have a much more limited spectrum of harmonic language: there is is much more readily possible for two or more persons to collaborate, they are thinking very much along the same lines, and think in and speak the same "harmonic lingo."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

moody said:


> One very bad example---some sort of Chinese committee "composed" the Yellow River Piano Concerto and it is dire.


Whaddya mean, "dire"? When they launch into "The East is Red" in the last movement, it's really quite thrilling. Kind of like Ives with "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean" in the finale to his Symphony #2.

The concerto was based on the Yellow River Cantata by a single composer, Xian Xinghai, composed in 1939. Well, actually it's kind of "dire" too.


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## Feathers (Feb 18, 2013)

Rachmaninoff, Arensky, Glazunov, and Taneyev did an interesting collaborative improvisation, if that counts.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Robert Moran and Philip Glass co-composed The Juniper Tree
http://www.philipglass.com/music/recordings/juniper-tree.php

Getting several composers together is not simply a matter of difficult due to "artist ego."

Since Beethoven, composers have been taught to and are expected to have a very identifiable and unique compositional style. There is the rub - finding two or more composers whose style, or perhaps their ability to write in one or more particular styles, can find agreement about the goal, and the merit and quality of what they will be co-writing. That I think is going to be difficult.

The pop co-authoring is often a matter of one party with strengths in the texts, or melody, another with a better sense of chordal harmony, etc. Even amongst equal classical composers, what and how they can write can diverge wildly.

Performing / improvisation groups in classical music were an active segment of the more experimental part of the sixties. The best of those were still brought together and under the aegis of one composer who had a specific aesthetic, and goal. Even then, most of those groups produced music more interesting than great.

Your goal / desire is also very dependent upon what sort of new classical music you might want to make, then finding musicians all with a fairly similar amount of ability, and in agreement as to that goal of what sort of music will be made.

Still, "art by committee" is infamous for being bland, watered down in whatever strengths it may have had if instead it was the work of an individual, and often it is a creature of too many compromises to stand out as having one point of view.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven actually cooperated in two or three "group compositions" in mid-life. I think a couple were for the Congress of Vienna. Too lazy right now to look them up.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

quack said:


> Probably the _Requiem der Versohnung_ or Requiem of Reconciliation, composed by Luciano Berio, Friedrich Cerha, Paul-Heinz Dittrich, Marek Kopelent, John Harbison, Arne Nordheim, Bernard Rands, Marc-André Dalbavie, Judith Weir, Krzysztof Penderecki, Wolfgang Rihm, Alfred Schnittke, Gennadi Roschdestwenski, Joji Yuasa and György Kurtag. Seems like it could be a bit of a mess, composed by such an eclectic bunch but I am yet to hear it.


X-actly! Thanks, Somehow I had it in my thick scull that Gubaidulina was involved, but it did not help my search.. 

/ptr


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I vaguely remembered reading about it and now I found it. A number of Russian composers including Glazunov, Liadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin wrote "Variations on a Russian Folk Song for two violins, viola and cello."

http://www.sharmusic.com/Shop-Shar/...-Viola-and-Cello---International-Music-Co.axd

Also, here's a list on wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music_written_in_collaboration


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Depending on how much weight you put on timbre and instrumentation and orchestration as an element of composition, one can view any orchestration or transcription done by one composer of another's work as group composition of sorts. For example Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I personally think that that timbre is extremely important, and the new colors in Ravel's orchestration dramatically alter the composition.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> Depending on how much weight you put on timbre and instrumentation and orchestration as an element of composition, one can view any orchestration or transcription done by one composer of another's work as group composition of sorts.


Lol. Collaboration is usually understood as an effort made by two or more living beings....


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Chopin & some other guy - grande duo concertante


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Looked up the Beethoven stories. Beethoven was involved in some collaborations in 1813-1815. All were "political" works. The first was less than a real collaboration: Wellington's Victory, for which Maelzel contributed at least some trumpet signals for the first movement (he claimed more, even full authorship at one point).

The second was the music for Georg Friedrich's 1814 one-act singspiel "Die Gute Nachricht" (The Good News), written when Napoleon's initial downfall seemed certain. This had music from several composers. Beethoven contributed the final chorus, "Germania."

Subsequent to Waterloo, in 1815 Friedrich wrote another singspiel, "Die Ehrenpforten" (The Gates of Honor), and again Beethoven contributed the final chorus, "Es ist vollbracht" (It is accomplished).


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Of course, of all those collaborative pieces cited, the entirety of each and all is still in circulation, performed, recorded, and well-received to this day because those collaborative efforts were such consistently high-quality music


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Burroughs said:


> Chopin & some other guy - grande duo concertante


Some other guy ?? If you want to answer it's not very difficult to look up the details---I just did!
It was Auguste Franchomme.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

The "_Mass for Rossini_" already mentioned by DeliciousManager - where the individual movements are composed by different composers - is a really great work, one of my preferred from the 19th century actually. It includes a shorter, earlier version of Verdi´s Requiem Dies Irae. There´s a fine recording by Rilling.


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