# Capacity for creativity, capacity for appreciation



## Guest (Apr 22, 2019)

Do composers and artists - pop/rock, classical, any genre - have a limited capacity to create new works? Or does the average listener have a limited capacity to appreciate the works of one artist?

I was pondering this for two reasons. One is that wrt most of those that I like listening to, I probably only appreciate a releatively small number - no more than a dozen, perhaps - compared to what some of the most prolific artists actually produce. I have no intention of listening to all Haydn's symphonies - I like the ones I like well enough, but he gets a bit samey. And that brings me to the second reason. Most artists mine the same seam. If you reall enjoy what they mine, you may hang around for quite a while, but I'd guess that for many of us, we run out of interest after a while and look for something else. So, I bought the first three Depeche Mode albums and then didn't bother with the rest until very much later. And while I've got all Radiohead's albums, I wonder whether the next will be the one where I decide I'm done.

By the way, this is not meant to be a discussion about Depeche Mode or Haydn or Radiohead, I used them as examples for illustration only. I could as easily have used Shostakovich (I know I'm not going to love all 15 of his symphonies - I don't even love all of Beethoven's, Sibelius's or Prokofiev's and they wrote notably fewer) or Sigur Ros (I've stopped trying to keep up with their output).


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Do composers and artists - pop/rock, classical, any genre - have a limited capacity to create new works? Or does the average listener have a limited capacity to appreciate the works of one artist?
> 
> I was pondering this for two reasons. One is that wrt most of those that I like listening to, I probably only appreciate a releatively small number - no more than a dozen, perhaps - compared to what some of the most prolific artists actually produce. I have no intention of listening to all Haydn's symphonies - I like the ones I like well enough, but he gets a bit samey. And that brings me to the second reason. Most artists mine the same seam. If you reall enjoy what they mine, you may hang around for quite a while, but I'd guess that for many of us, we run out of interest after a while and look for something else. So, I bought the first three Depeche Mode albums and then didn't bother with the rest until very much later. And while I've got all Radiohead's albums, I wonder whether the next will be the one where I decide I'm done.
> 
> By the way, this is not meant to be a discussion about Depeche Mode or Haydn or Radiohead, I used them as examples for illustration only. I could as easily have used Shostakovich (I know I'm not going to love all 15 of his symphonies - I don't even love all of Beethoven's, Sibelius's or Prokofiev's and they wrote notably fewer) or Sigur Ros (I've stopped trying to keep up with their output).


Your experience is as mine. I've always assumed that each composer's experiences and perspectives are somewhat limited compared to the total possible - thus limiting their range of expression. Notwithstanding this, one still marvels at those works that resonant.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

This might not be what you’re looking for, but I would imagine that most composers never expect their works to be played one after another, like perhaps a sequence of Haydn symphonies. There’s space intended between them and I believe that gives greater longevity to the appreciation of anyone. Composers can be worn out even if everything they’re doing it is the peak of their creativity. The only major compose that I know of who ran out of gas was Jean Sibelius, who for the last 30 years of his life never did anything major that I know of. In any event, I’m sure others will have something more interesting to say.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

To take a major composer, I expect his music to develop and change through his career and I might want to listen to music from all his "styles". And then composers tend to write very differently for different forms - sonatas, symphonies, quartets, oratorios, operas - and if I get tired of their voice in one form I have often been delighted to discover how "different and yet the same" it is in another form.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I see creativity as a case of there basically being two very different stereotypes of composers: one who refines things as they go along, and the other who aims to do things differently with each new work they create. The former is more about gradual and subtle change, the latter is more about avoiding habits and therefore seeing a need for constant change.

If we look at these stereotypes as existing along a spectrum, in reality composers are rarely at either extreme. I think that Haydn would fit in more in the refiner group, while Holst would be in the constantly changing one. Perhaps Beethoven and Stravinsky, with their clearly delineated periods, belong to the widest intermediate category.

As a listener, I don't want to hear everything. Even if I did, I wouldn't have the time for it unless I was a hermit of some sort. I don't even see it as an aspiration. Ironically, in today's world with more music than ever before being available only adds to the pressure of needing to know everything. 

In a time poor world, we have the situation of what's variously called the Hedonic Treadmill or Consumption Treadmill. Once a need is satisfied (say, getting a Beethoven cycle) another need develops soon after (e.g. getting a Brahms cycle). Then when one has collected all the major cycles, the needs don't stop. Get other music, other interpretations. Read up on music, learn an instrument, go to concerts. On and on, it never stops. Now what was the original need here? How did this get so complicated? Now why are we never satisfied?

I am happy to listen purposes of enjoyment and learning. It is what motivated me to start this hobby in the first place. I like to think that my approach is more about quality versus quantity. Maybe others will see it as an easy way out of my duty to know everything and therefore on the dangerous road to ignorance? I call it a practical way out of information overload, a thing that I'm determined will not kill off my interest in music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

My interest in hearing all or most of a composer's work is theoretical. It sounds like a great idea, and I've set out to do it with a few favorite composers, but at a certain point I tire of the assignment and never come back to it with the same intensity. This has nothing to do with a limited capacity to appreciate anything, though. It's just that with age comes an appreciation of the limited time we have, and while that might give some people a greater urgency to complete such projects, it's the opposite with me. The older I get the "lazier" I get; I accept that I'm not going to hear everything, I just want to do whatever strikes me as most pleasant right now, and I don't worry about that symphony or opera or bagatelle I kept meaning to listen to. Actually, one of the things I like about TC is that people bring up unfamiliar works that I'd probably neglect forever otherwise, and I listen to them out of curiosity. I like serendipity.

I don't think most composers exhaust their creative capacity, but I'm sure that age affects different artists differently. Verdi continued to grow artistically right up to his eighties, and many who died younger would probably have done the same.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

The highest rated compositions and artists are not significantly_ higher-rated _than anyone else actually, and thus there's not as much objective good in music as it seems to most people. That is because each individual has a very different-working mind and views totally different (oftentimes foreign) pictures and concepts upon hearing the same words and sounds as anyone else. If you could experience someone else's mind or perception of qualia, you'd in that moment cease to be you, so that most of what you know about music and art is entirely subjective and changes with interpretation.

This is actually a fact which most people disregard about life in general, keeping to the mentality "my way or the highway" and "things ain't as good as they used to be," which explains humans' and animals' hard-nosed evolution. This mentality entirely disappears upon exercising open-mindedness to exploration.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

"Capacity", well, that depends entirely on the individual composer and listener. The only factor that applies to us all is that there's limited time for both creation and apprecation. 
There are some composers I explore in-depth and listen to very frequently, because I rarely tire of their music, while others I can only listen to in small doses. It depends on how much their music resonates with me, and on the "replay value" of the music. Chopin, for example, is absolutely magical in small doses, but I can't listen to him very often because it somehow ruins his music for me. Also I don't feel the need to explore all his music. I have the same thing with baroque composers in general. 
Some composers found their own very specific niche and excelled in that. Basically drawing inspiration from the same resource everytime. Chopin with his piano music. Bruckner with his symphonies. In ways, the Bruckner symphonies are pretty similar, but what he "mines from the same seam" each time is so great that I rarely tire of his music. I am exploring his music very carefully and very slowly and I like all of it. So why can I spend time on Bruckner's music more often than on Chopin's? I couldn't tell. It's a highly individual matter of taste.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Do composers and artists - pop/rock, classical, any genre - have a limited capacity to create new works? Or does the average listener have a limited capacity to appreciate the works of one artist?
> 
> Most artists mine the same seam. If you reall enjoy what they mine, you may hang around for quite a while, but I'd guess that for many of us, we run out of interest after a while and look for something else.


I can think of a number of groups that I used to listen to - Steeleye Span, Battlefield Band, Fairport, Chieftains - where I loved what they did. But .. the band changed. The band wanted to do something new or new members joined or the band broke up. The sound changed, usually for the worse, so I gave up. If the seam is rich enough, you can keep going for a long time. There are 300 odd Child Ballads, many of them with different versions or different tunes or both. That's several years worth of listening even if was just one person singing. Add orchestration and polyphony and the number of options goes up exponentially.



MacLeod said:


> I was pondering this for two reasons. One is that wrt most of those that I like listening to, I probably only appreciate a releatively small number - no more than a dozen, perhaps - compared to what some of the most prolific artists actually produce. I have no intention of listening to all Haydn's symphonies - I like the ones I like well enough, but he gets a bit samey.


I think this goes back to one's understanding of the period. I don't like much beyond the Baroque. What I like is the modern folk composers - Bizet, Greig, Vaughan Williams and so forth - because I understand the folk idiom. With Baroque, there is just so much, but as you get into it you get more out of it. I too have no intention of listening to all of Bach or Vivaldi or Handel. But the more I listen to other (baroque) composers, the more I understand of the era and the more I get out of the major composers.

To return to your question, the "average" listener is an odd beast. Do you mean the sort of person who listens to a little light classical music on the radio? Anybody who dips into any genre - the dilettante - will have a limited appreciation- jack of all trades and master of none. Anybody who makes an attempt to be a "serious" listener will develop their musical understanding (any genre) and improve their ability to understand an artist (or composer). In the same way, any serious, hard working composer will have a stock of ideas. If he is a genius like Bach, he will be able to reuse motifs to create unlimited quantities of good new music. If he is merely a run of the mill composer, he will either run out of steam or simply rehash his material in a samey sort of way.


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## Guest (Apr 28, 2019)

Larkenfield said:


> This might not be what you're looking for, but I would imagine that *most composers never expect their works to be played one after another*, like perhaps a sequence of Haydn symphonies. There's space intended between them and I believe that gives greater longevity to the appreciation of anyone. Composers can be worn out even if everything they're doing it is the peak of their creativity. *The only major compose that I know of who ran out of gas was Jean Sibelius*, who for the last 30 years of his life never did anything major that I know of. In any event, I'm sure others will have something more interesting to say.


You're right. I wasn't thinking about stamina or endurance, setting oneself a challenge to listen to the works of a prolific composer's entire oeuvre.

And Sibelius was one I had in mind. Perhaps 7-9 symphonies is enough for the particular 'voice' of an individual composer



Enthusiast said:


> To take a major composer, I expect his music to develop and change through his career and I might want to listen to music from all his "styles". And then composers tend to write very differently for different forms - sonatas, symphonies, quartets, oratorios, operas - and if I get tired of their voice in one form I have often been delighted to discover how "different and yet the same" it is in another form.


Yes, the ability to "mine different seams" would seem to be a mark of an outstanding individual.



Sid James said:


> I see creativity as a case of there basically being two very different stereotypes of composers: one who refines things as they go along, and the other who aims to do things differently with each new work they create.


Perhaps its the refiners who more clearly exhibit their limited capacity for creativity - at least within a particular form, and Haydn is an obvious example. I have the London and Paris symphonies, and I have identified from a previous thread, about a dozen more I might like to hear. That's still less than half of his symphonic output. And if I think about those symphonies with which I am familiar, it's still only 7-9 that I return to with any enthusiasm.



Woodduck said:


> This has nothing to do with a limited capacity to appreciate anything, though. It's just that with age comes an appreciation of the limited time we have, and while that might give some people a greater urgency to complete such projects, it's the opposite with me.


I think with age comes the realisation that it doesn't matter. Enjoy what you will; no one will die satisfied in the knowledge that they've heard the "1001 pieces of music to hear before you die"? I'm trying the same with movies, but why force myself to watch movies I don't like - or, rather, movies about subjects, or by directors that don't interest me?



DeepR said:


> So why can I spend time on Bruckner's music more often than on Chopin's? I couldn't tell. It's a highly individual matter of taste.


Yes, indeed it is. But within one's tastes, isn't there still a limit? I'm not asserting that there is a limit, just wondering. My enthusiasm for Sibelius has waned recently, though that may be overfamiliarity and, in fact, I'm not listening to much classical at all. I daresay I will return to it, as I do Beethoven.



Taggart said:


> I can think of a number of groups that I used to listen to - Steeleye Span, Battlefield Band, Fairport, Chieftains - where I loved what they did. But .. the band changed. The band wanted to do something new or new members joined or the band broke up. The sound changed, usually for the worse, so I gave up. If the seam is rich enough, you can keep going for a long time. There are 300 odd Child Ballads, many of them with different versions or different tunes or both. That's several years worth of listening even if was just one person singing. Add orchestration and polyphony and the number of options goes up exponentially.
> 
> I think this goes back to one's understanding of the period. I don't like much beyond the Baroque. What I like is the modern folk composers - Bizet, Greig, Vaughan Williams and so forth - because I understand the folk idiom. With Baroque, there is just so much, but as you get into it you get more out of it. I too have no intention of listening to all of Bach or Vivaldi or Handel. But the more I listen to other (baroque) composers, the more I understand of the era and the more I get out of the major composers.
> 
> To return to your question, the "average" listener is an odd beast. Do you mean the sort of person who listens to a little light classical music on the radio? Anybody who dips into any genre - the dilettante - will have a limited appreciation- jack of all trades and master of none. Anybody who makes an attempt to be a "serious" listener will develop their musical understanding (any genre) and improve their ability to understand an artist (or composer). In the same way, any serious, hard working composer will have a stock of ideas. If he is a genius like Bach, he will be able to reuse motifs to create unlimited quantities of good new music. If he is merely a run of the mill composer, he will either run out of steam or simply rehash his material in a samey sort of way.





Taggart said:


> I can think of a number of groups that I used to listen to - Steeleye Span, Battlefield Band, Fairport, Chieftains - where I loved what they did. But .. the band changed. The band wanted to do something new or new members joined or the band broke up. The sound changed, usually for the worse, so I gave up.


Yes, I think those are some of the reasons I left behind some groups too - though neglect was another. I simply found something else to enthuse about.



Taggart said:


> To return to your question, the "average" listener is an odd beast. Do you mean the sort of person who listens to a little light classical music on the radio? Anybody who dips into any genre - the dilettante - will have a limited appreciation- jack of all trades and master of none. Anybody who makes an attempt to be a "serious" listener will develop their musical understanding (any genre) and improve their ability to understand an artist (or composer).


For the purposes of my OP, I had in mind the average enthusiast, whether for CM or any other genre, for whom listening to music is more than an incidental activity



Taggart said:


> In the same way, any serious, hard working composer will have a stock of ideas. If he is a genius like Bach, he will be able to reuse motifs to create unlimited quantities of good new music. If he is merely a run of the mill composer, he will either run out of steam or simply rehash his material in a samey sort of way.


I had also thought that one of the marks of an outstanding composer is one whose output is considerable - quality and quantity over several forms. In other words, they would be the exceptions that prove the rule.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*Sid James:* I see creativity as a case of there basically being two very different stereotypes of composers: one who refines things as they go along, and the other who aims to do things differently with each new work they create.



MacLeod said:


> Perhaps its the refiners who more clearly exhibit their limited capacity for creativity - at least within a particular form, and Haydn is an obvious example. I have the London and Paris symphonies, and I have identified from a previous thread, about a dozen more I might like to hear. That's still less than half of his symphonic output. And if I think about those symphonies with which I am familiar, it's still only 7-9 that I return to with any enthusiasm.


Haydn was still enormously creative, and innovative, particularly in his symphonies and string quartets. The journey which Beethoven took in 9 symphonies was taken by Haydn in his 107 or so. Antal Dorati called it an enormous development, treading a path "not straight but unbroken." Of course unlike Dorati who recorded all of Haydn's symphonies, plus other works, I'm no expert but I can vouch for the innovations in the London symphonies (93-104). In those 12, Haydn anticipated developments in the genre at least a century beyond his time. A lot of what emerged later was explored by him in embryonic form.

So the composers I've labelled as refiners can be no less brilliant or innovative as the others on this spectrum. Its also occured to me how some composers are both, Richard Strauss being an example. He constantly changed and trod new paths until the 1910's, and then went into more of a refiner mode until his death in the 1940's. Its quite interesting.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Brilliant thread topic, if I may say so!

I think slight differences from work to work within a composer becomes dull and the whole "less is more" idea comes into mind as being quite important. I think all of Beethoven's Symphonies stand on their own legs, even if someone doesn't appreciate them all, they are all quite different from each other. That's dislike for a different reason than monotony.

That begs the question of, does repetition keep old fans coming back for that OG sound?

Mozart is a good example of an Artist that gets monotonous I think.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Brilliant thread topic, if I may say so!
> 
> I think slight differences from work to work within a composer becomes dull and the whole "less is more" idea comes into mind as being quite important. I think all of Beethoven's Symphonies stand on their own legs, even if someone doesn't appreciate them all, they are all quite different from each other. That's dislike for a different reason than monotony.
> 
> ...


the choral movement of the 9th symphony sounds like Choral Fantasia, overall Beethoven lacks variety in choral works compared to the other greats I think. 



 I believe Verdi commented on this too. Beethoven sounds 'instrumental' even in his vocal/choral works. 
And this section 



 from the 9th could sound like a continuation of the 5th symphony. 
I'm intrigued by how Mozart handles counterpoint differently in the final movements of 31th, 36th, 41th and Die Zauberflote Overture.
I think it all depends on how you look at it.


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## Guest (Apr 30, 2019)

Sid James said:


> Haydn was still enormously creative, and innovative,


Just to be clear. By "limited capacity to be creative", I'm not meaning to imply anything about whether artists are creative or not, just attempting to consider whether, amongst the majority of artists, there is a limit to their capacity. As an amateur, it's not for me to say who is and isn't creative and in what way, but I think it's reasonable to say that with some exceptions - the outliers on a continuum of small/average/large capacity - the majority will be spread across "capacity with limits". It's the less the business of "innovation" that interests me, more the mere "creation" of work that is of sufficient interest to engage the listener, without it sounding incresingly like a retread of previous material.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

MacLeod said:


> Just to be clear. By "limited capacity to be creative", I'm not meaning to imply anything about whether artists are creative or not, just attempting to consider whether, amongst the majority of artists, there is a limit to their capacity. As an amateur, it's not for me to say who is and isn't creative and in what way, but I think it's reasonable to say that with some exceptions - the outliers on a continuum of small/average/large capacity - the majority will be spread across "capacity with limits". It's the less the business of "innovation" that interests me, more the mere "creation" of work that is of sufficient interest to engage the listener, without it sounding incresingly like a retread of previous material.


So what you're trying to say in this thread is, "why ridicule pop/rock when even classical music composers also wrote derivative crap like them"? Obviously, each classical music composer only wrote in their own style that made them unique from others. If one views them in the 'nitpicky' mindset like yours, without going in depth to find out about all the intricacies and subtleties, they'll all sound samey. The irrefutable fact of the matter is, they actually had "musical" skills. unlike pop artists of today. 



Don't use this as an excuse to put down classical music composers in attempts to make pop look like there's actually some creativity in that genre. I don't even consider pop artists' talents and skills "musical". They are clowns who can play guitar, drums, write 4 chords and sing. Many of them are musical illiterates who can't even read music. Stuff like "great symphony" by Muse is just ridiculous at best. By adding electric guitar riffs to orchestral tutti, they actually believe they're following the classical music tradition and it's just funny.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> So what you're trying to say in this thread is, "why ridicule pop/rock when even classical music composers also wrote derivative crap like them"? Obviously, each classical music composer only wrote in their own style that made them unique from others. If one views them in the 'nitpicky' mindset like yours, without going in depth to find out about all the intricacies and subtleties, they'll all sound samey. The irrefutable fact of the matter is, they actually had "musical" skills. unlike pop artists of today.
> 
> 
> 
> Don't use this as an excuse to put down classical music composers in attempts to make pop look like there's actually some creativity in that genre. I don't even consider pop artists' talents and skills "musical". They are clowns who can play guitar, drums, write 4 chords and sing. Many of them are musical illiterates who can't even read music. Stuff like "great symphony" by Muse is just ridiculous at best. By adding electric guitar riffs to orchestral tutti, they actually believe they're following the classical music tradition and it's just funny.


My top ten of music pieces would all be classical but your dismissal of pop/rock as 'crap', 'unskilled', 'unmusical' and it's musicians as 'clowns' is pure exaggeration. If you analyse the harmonic language of classical era music (for example), much of it is very samey - so it has a lot in common with the blandness of some pop/rock you criticize. Of course there are exceptions, but you shouldn't be surprised that it's not to every one's liking. Some folk are okay with familiar sounding chord progressions, which is fine; others aren't though.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> So what you're trying to say in this thread is, "why ridicule pop/rock when even classical music composers also wrote derivative crap like them"? Obviously, each classical music composer only wrote in their own style that made them unique from others. If one views them in the 'nitpicky' mindset like yours, without going in depth to find out about all the intricacies and subtleties, they'll all sound samey. The irrefutable fact of the matter is, they actually had "musical" skills. unlike pop artists of today.
> 
> 
> 
> Don't use this as an excuse to put down classical music composers in attempts to make pop look like there's actually some creativity in that genre. I don't even consider pop artists' talents and skills "musical". They are clowns who can play guitar, drums, write 4 chords and sing. Many of them are musical illiterates who can't even read music. Stuff like "great symphony" by Muse is just ridiculous at best. By adding electric guitar riffs to orchestral tutti, they actually believe they're following the classical music tradition and it's just funny.


Unmusical crap performed by unskilled clowns? You're joking aren't you?


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## Guest (Apr 30, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> So what you're trying to say in this thread is, "why ridicule pop/rock when even classical music composers also wrote derivative crap like them"? Obviously, each classical music composer only wrote in their own style that made them unique from others. If one views them in the 'nitpicky' mindset like yours [etc]


I'm saying no such thing. Try to respond to the words I wrote (taking into account the context of the whole thread), not to what you think I'm "trying to say".

Thanks.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

"Do composers and artists - pop/rock, classical, any genre - have a limited capacity to create new works? Or does the average listener have a limited capacity to appreciate the works of one artist?"

Artists have different capacities and limitations the way I see it. I like some of AC/DC's songs, but their albums over the years are probably most limited in scope of any well known artist, they know only how to do one thing, but they do it well at least with their audience. Beethoven obviously had a greater scope and range of expression in his output than most composers, and he excelled in all of the different genres. I think Chopin obviously had a much more limited scope and range of expression. 

I think the average listener probably also has a more limited range they appreciate, but sometimes it's the artist sucking at certain phases. Dylan's Christian phase isn't really his most popular or acclaimed, there may or may not be a good reason for it. Some folk purists hated his electric phase, which is most acclaimed.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I'm trying to think of a major composer who wrote the same major work more than once and haven't come up with an example, yet. I suppose Bruckner might fit? But Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Schumann, Bach even ... I hear each work as being itself rather than a repeat of an earlier one.


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## Guest (Apr 30, 2019)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm trying to think of a major composer who wrote the same major work more than once


And you're trying to do this...why?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

MacLeod said:


> Just to be clear. By "limited capacity to be creative", I'm not meaning to imply anything about whether artists are creative or not, just attempting to consider whether, amongst the majority of artists, there is a limit to their capacity.


So if we take Haydn as an example, you mean looking at how creative he was relative to others?



> As an amateur, it's not for me to say who is and isn't creative and in what way, but I think it's reasonable to say that with some exceptions - the outliers on a continuum of small/average/large capacity - the majority will be spread across "capacity with limits". It's the less the business of "innovation" that interests me, more the mere "creation" of work that is of sufficient interest to engage the listener, without it sounding incresingly like a retread of previous material.


That sounds a bit like variety. So again with Haydn as an example, a factor could be the variety of genres he composed in, e.g. orchestral, chamber, choral, and so on.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm trying to think of a major composer who wrote the same major work more than once and haven't come up with an example, yet. I suppose Bruckner might fit? But Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Schumann, Bach even ... I hear each work as being itself rather than a repeat of an earlier one.


Stravinsky accused Vivaldi of it, and Vivaldi didn't even try to defend himself.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Do composers and artists - pop/rock, classical, any genre - have a limited capacity to create new works? Or does the average listener have a limited capacity to appreciate the works of one artist?
> 
> I was pondering this for two reasons. One is that wrt most of those that I like listening to, I probably only appreciate a releatively small number - no more than a dozen, perhaps - compared to what some of the most prolific artists actually produce. I have no intention of listening to all Haydn's symphonies - I like the ones I like well enough, but he gets a bit samey. And that brings me to the second reason. Most artists mine the same seam. If you reall enjoy what they mine, you may hang around for quite a while, but I'd guess that for many of us, we run out of interest after a while and look for something else. So, I bought the first three Depeche Mode albums and then didn't bother with the rest until very much later. And while I've got all Radiohead's albums, I wonder whether the next will be the one where I decide I'm done.
> 
> By the way, this is not meant to be a discussion about Depeche Mode or Haydn or Radiohead, I used them as examples for illustration only. I could as easily have used Shostakovich (I know I'm not going to love all 15 of his symphonies - I don't even love all of Beethoven's, Sibelius's or Prokofiev's and they wrote notably fewer) or Sigur Ros (I've stopped trying to keep up with their output).


The variety of the classical music tradition amazes me, from plainchant to whatever the young'uns are doing these days. I'm not just surprised when people get so excited about a single composer or genre, I'm a little surprised people can limit their interests to about 3 historical periods from the western end of one continent.

But things appear this way to me because of the variety that is available to me. I would probably be very impressed with the variety in Haydn's symphonies if I were in England in 1800 and I had the privilege of hearing many of them. It's only by comparison with gamelan, eRikm, Nono, Led Zeppelin, and Byzantine chant that Haydn's symphonies can seem so similar.

I sometimes wonder how much any of us can appreciate the arts of history without knowing a poopton about history. By analogy, Descartes really isn't a very impressive thinker if you read him as if he were writing in 2019. But if you learn a lot about the sixteenth century and read him in that context, he's just brilliant. Thinking like that about Pérotin really helps me, at least. Imagine being in one of the first gothic churches, having heard Gregorian chant all your life, and then hearing _that_. And so on, all the way up and down the timeline.


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## Guest (May 1, 2019)

I would agree that Haydn wrote a lot of stuff that's pretty samey, e.g. many of his earlier symphonies, and the innumerable works for baryton. But I'm inclined to forgive him for that because he had a very long career and much of this work was produced to "order" under the terms of his service with his employer. Allowing for that, I think that Haydn achieved some very high quality works with considerable variety of form and style. He is one of my favourite composers for that reason.

I would also say that most of the other major composers produced a wide range of different types of music, much of it high quality. Indeed, that's what makes them "great". Just to mention a few, Mozart was very prolific and varied. In the case of Beethoven, each of his symphonies offered something different and new as they rolled off the press. Schubert switched around all over the place from choral to chamber to orchestral to lieder. Wagner's rather more limited range might be the exception that proves the rule here.

Outside classical music, the field is so vast and varied that it's difficult to generalise. I would say that in one area I like, progressive rock, Pink Floyd's albums were very varied as time went by. I'm not saying that their albums got better and better, only that each new one as they came along offered something different and worthwhile. My Pink Floyd "set" is something I value a lot, and would not wish to be (here!) without any of them.


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