# One Hour Compositions...



## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

After Vivaldi, what?

I propose K379, composed in April 1781 between 11 o'clock and midnight and performed the next day for the emperor.

Any other great music bashed out between supper and bedtime that you know of?


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## Kleinzeit (May 15, 2013)

Oooh! Oooh! Hindemith's Trauermusik. Only one I know, get it in first.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Shostakovich's _Tahiti Trot_ - an arrangement of Vincent Youmans' _Tea for Two_. As a student, Shostakovich's teacher, Nikolai Malko bet his gifted student that he couldn't make a full-orchestra arrangement of _Tea for Two_ overnight after only one hearing. Shostakovich won the bet.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Kleinzeit said:


> Oooh! Oooh! Hindemith's Trauermusik. Only one I know, get it in first.


It took Hindemith longer than an hour to compose _Trauermusik_. More like 7-8 hours.


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## maestro267 (Jul 25, 2009)

Stephen Montague's "Four Hours to Midnight: The Last Piece of the 20th Century", written and performed during the evening of 31st December 1999.


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## Kleinzeit (May 15, 2013)

Neo Romanza said:


> It took Hindemith longer than an hour to compose _Trauermusik_. More like 7-8 hours.


Ach! And I knew about Turkey Trot too...!


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## Kleinzeit (May 15, 2013)

Obviously not.... TAHITI trot.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Longer than an hour? The overture to Don Giovanni was supposedly composed the night before the first performance. Two things on that: there are conflicting tales, though none contradict the fact that it was written in one sittin'. And also, I think the idea and key and a lot of the music must have already been in his mind, given the Supper scene music, and all...


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Kieran said:


> Longer than an hour? The overture to Don Giovanni was supposedly composed the night before the first performance. Two things on that: there are conflicting tales, though none contradict the fact that it was written in one sittin'. And also, I think the idea and key and a lot of the music must have already been in his mind, given the Supper scene music, and all...


Apparently, he also wrote out the parts straight from his head without first writing down a master score.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

brianvds said:


> Apparently, he also wrote out the parts straight from his head without first writing down a master score.


I don't know about that. I think the writing in his head stuff is largely exaggerated. Sketches exist and he made corrections. I think he'd have an advanced idea of what he was going to do, however, if that looks like the same thing...


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Apparently Rossini had a propensity to compose at VERY short notice - he admitted with devilish self-satisfaction that promoters, directors, copyists and conductors would occasionally have kittens as a result. This from a Madison SO program page from 2011:

'...Barber's overture has a convoluted history. Rossini typically wrote his operas in unbelievably short stretches of time-depending on which account you believe, he spent between 13 and 21 days composing the whole of the Barber of Seville-and the overture was saved until last. [Note: There is a well-known story concerning his overture to The Thieving Magpie, which was composed the day of the premiere. It seems that the management, panicked about his procrastination, finally locked him in an upstairs room with a few hulking bodyguards. Rossini tossed the hastily-composed pages of overture one by one out the window to a group of copyists waiting below. - M.A.] The original overture to the Barber, composed-undoubtedly at the last minute-for the disastrous Rome performance, has not survived...'


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I like that in Rossini. I read here somewhere that he was so lazy that when he composed in bed, if a music sheet fell on the floor he'd be too lazy to pick it up: he'd just stay put and write another page instead of it...


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Kieran said:


> I like that in Rossini. I read here somewhere that he was so lazy that when he composed in bed, if a music sheet fell on the floor he'd be too lazy to pick it up: he'd just stay put and write another page instead of it...


Excellent! He was so wealthy I'm surprised he didn't have a flunky standing by to retrieve any dropped pages and save himself the effort of re-writing.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

elgars ghost said:


> Excellent! He was so wealthy I'm surprised he didn't have a flunky standing by to retrieve any dropped pages and save himself the effort of re-writing.


First opera, age 18, 38th Opera, age 38. I just can not in any way imagine calling that lazy


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## StevenOBrien (Jun 27, 2011)

Kieran said:


> After Vivaldi, what?
> 
> I propose K379, composed in April 1781 between 11 o'clock and midnight and performed the next day for the emperor.
> 
> Any other great music bashed out between supper and bedtime that you know of?


If that's entirely true, that's actually an astonishing feat (even in terms of physically writing out the entire violin part to the sonata in under an hour, let alone composing the damn thing). I wonder how much the sonata changed between the time he hastily wrote out the violin part and actually wrote out the entire sonata for publication.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

StevenOBrien said:


> If that's entirely true, that's actually an astonishing feat (even in terms of physically writing out the entire violin part to the sonata in under an hour, let alone composing the damn thing). I wonder how much the sonata changed between the time he hastily wrote out the violin part and actually wrote out the entire sonata for publication.


He wrote a letter to his dad where he states that "a sonata with accompaniment for a violin, which I composed last night between 11 o'clock and midnight, but to be ready in time, I wrote out only Brunetti's accompanying part, keeping my own part in my head." According to Neal Zaslaw, an examination of the score shows that the piano part was squashed onto the page much later.

At the performance of this sonata, the emperor was keen to see the score...and Wolfie's sheet was blank. It's one of my favourite sonatas, alongside K377...


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