# Which composers were the fastest in composing quality music?



## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Vivaldi, Telemann, Bach, Mozart, and Schubert were all statistically very fast. 

Shostakovich was proud of his speed as well.

Williams has always been a greased lightning.

Who else competes?


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## visionquest1972 (Mar 20, 2019)

Rossini and Donizetti were pretty quick. You DEFINITELY can't put Wagner in this category. He's the George R. Martin of composers


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Well, as Mike H mentioned a couple of times, Benjamin Britten could write 12 pages of full score in a day. I think the more contrapuntal voices a piece has, the slower the process would be all things equal.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

J.S. Bach had to write a cantata for church services weekly.

Haydn worked for an aristocrat who told him the music he needed for each event. Haydn also composed for regular concerts at Esterhazy.

Mozart wrote lawn music (divertimentos and serenades) for aristocratic gatherings when asked. He previously worked for religious leaders that requested music from him.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Olivier Messiaen was a very prolific composer. It's amazing how fast he composed his only opera, St. Francis of Assisi, in seven years: 2500 pages, weighing in at over twenty kilos!


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

Max Reger usually composed at a fast lick, but he was something of a workaholic - teaching, conducting and playing the organ must have made huge demands on his time and energy yet he still managed to compose an enormous amount of music in a relatively short period of 25 years. And Reger didn't just bang his work out on autopilot, either - he was a craftsman who strongly believed in attention to detail.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

larold said:


> Mozart wrote *lawn music* (divertimentos and serenades) for aristocratic gatherings when asked. He previously worked for religious leaders that requested music from him.


Ha ha! Lawn music! I like that! :lol:

"Divertimento for Mesquite-Smoked Chicken Drummettes"

"The Barbecue Quartets"

"Serenade for a Prime Rib"


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

It's said that Paul Hindemith could compose extremely quickly. There's a story that while he was in London in 1936 for the premiere of his _Der Schwanendreher_, King George V died and Hindemith composed the _Trauermusik_ in only one day.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Haydn could clearly crank out Baryton trios while in his sleep.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

There's that famous anecdote of Rossini composing while lying down in bed, the sheet falls on the floor and instead of picking it up he started over and wrote something completely different.

Now, whether Rossini's music is quality or not is a different matter.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I'm impressed that nobody cited Handel yet. He composed many oratorios and operas in his lifetime, some of them regarded as masterpieces by some. The _Messiah_ is said to have been composed in only 24 days!


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Darius Milhaud and Heitor Villa-Lobos


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

I would say Bach. In a three year period he turned out quite a few cantatas of a quality that no other composer could probably match, not even Mozart. And you can think of all the great instrumental music he turned out in his 5 years or so at Köthen. The Musical Offering was composed over a couple of months in 1747. AND throughout most of the time he had a houseful of kids.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Schumann composed Kreisleriana in 4 days(!). That's one of the quickest I've ever heard of anybody composing something that is widely recognized as a masterpiece.

But then, Schumann was also bipolar and thus had bouts of extreme creativity intermingled with periods of depressive nothingness. So can't really say he's one of the fastest composers since he wasn't at all consistent. When he felt like composing, he could compose very fast. When he didn't feel like composing, he couldn't compose anything at all.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Once in a class Schönberg asked a student to give him a theme, saying "we'll all sit down and write a set of six variations on that theme. And I don't just want a melodic line, I want a whole thing set for strings!" After he got the theme, Schönberg wrote the entire work in twenty minutes, whereas all his students were still working at their efforts two hours later.

Schönberg was always a speedster and most of his works were composed with very little preliminary sketching. For example, in a few months he turned out the fifteen-part song cycle _Das Buch der hängenden Gärten_, the _Three Piano Pieces Op, 11_, and the _Five Orchestral Pieces Op. 16_. The complex and and unprecedented _Erwartung_ was begun and completed in 17 days. He claimed to have composed three quarters of the finale of _String Quartet No. 2_ in a day and a half. When he worked on _Pierrot lunaire_ he often wrote 2 or 3 separate numbers in a day. _A Survivor from Warsaw_ was composed in nine days, and some of that time was spent perfecting the text. When talking about Schönberg's facility, the composer and conductor Karl Rankl said, "For a moment there would be nothing. He would just sit and concentrate. And then he would write and that was it."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Shostakovich, on a bet, wrote his Tahiti Trot in 45 minutes, fully orchestrated. The tune, of course, is from an American musical...


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

chu42 said:


> Schumann composed Kreisleriana in 4 days(!). That's one of the quickest I've ever heard of anybody composing something that is widely recognized as a masterpiece. ...


Mozart composed his Symphony no. 36 in four days, I believe.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

consuono said:


> Mozart composed his Symphony no. 36 in four days, I believe.


To compare: that's just one more day than it took Shostakovich to compose the Festive Overture.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Once in a class Schönberg asked a student to give him a theme, saying "we'll all sit down and write a set of six variations on that theme. And I don't just want a melodic line, I want a whole thing set for strings!" After he got the theme, Schönberg wrote the entire work in twenty minutes, whereas all his students were still working at their efforts two hours later.
> 
> Schönberg was always a speedster and most of his works were composed with very little preliminary sketching. For example, in a few months he turned out the fifteen-part song cycle _Das Buch der hängenden Gärten_, the _Three Piano Pieces Op, 11_, and the _Five Orchestral Pieces Op. 16_. The complex and and unprecedented _Erwartung_ was begun and completed in 17 days. He claimed to have composed three quarters of the finale of _String Quartet No. 2_ in a day and a half. When he worked on _Pierrot lunaire_ he often wrote 2 or 3 separate numbers in a day. _A Survivor from Warsaw_ was composed in nine days, and some of that time was spent perfecting the text. When talking about Schönberg's facility, the composer and conductor Karl Rankl said, "For a moment there would be nothing. He would just sit and concentrate. And then he would write and that was it."


Didn't he just throw silverware down the stairs and jot down what he heard?


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## Sequentia (Nov 23, 2011)

consuono said:


> Mozart composed his Symphony no. 36 in four days, I believe.


That one is a feat that is hard to top and easily one of the most impressive achievements in music history. There is also Shostakovich, who wrote his Symphony No. 8 in about three weeks.

Surprised to see no mention of Mahler yet; he was not particularly prolific, but was very consistent in producing quality music (which, after all, is mentioned in the thread title) and usually produced his major works during his summer breaks.

Sorabji could also compose at ungodly speeds, which shows in how untidy his manuscripts are. I believe he composed the piano part of _Opus clavisymphonicum_ (circa 100 minutes, a little over 100 A3 pages) in about a month and a half, and completed the full orchestral score (333 large pages with about 40 staves per page) not long after. Mind you, he wrote it as "relief" from the task of writing his most massive score, the _Messa grande sinfonica_ (1,001 pages for orchestral forces that rival those in Mahler's 8th or the _Gothic_).

Strictly speaking, the "winner" of this thread should be the best improviser, so...


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Couchie said:


> Didn't he just throw silverware down the stairs and jot down what he heard?


_Jeder sieht die Grenzen seines Gesichtsfeldes als die Grenzen der Welt._
~Schopenhauer

_L' appréciation est une chose merveilleuse : il fait ce qui est excellent dans d' autres qui nous appartiennent aussi._
~Voltaire


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Definitely not Ravel, but I would take his smaller oeuvre over the complete works of most of the composers mentioned in this thread.


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## Beebert (Jan 3, 2019)

Nothing in history beats what Schubert did the last 18 months before he died.

Winterreise, 2nd Piano Trio, Impromptus, last three Piano Sonatas, String Quintet, Schwanengesang, and much much more... And also the 9th symphony, although it is said he perhaps started working on it earlier. Benjamin Britten called it the "richest and most productive 18 months in our music history”.


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## NLAdriaan (Feb 6, 2019)

Judged by efficiency, Mahler sure deserves a place on this list. He composed his complex symphonies off-season in his summer cottages. Mahler 3 alone probably contains more notes than Schubert's entire 18 months output.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Another heads up for Händel. Read your text books. His speed of composition was remarkable even taking into account his recycling.


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## Caesura (Apr 5, 2020)

KRoad said:


> Another heads up for Händel. Read your text books. His speed of composition was remarkable even taking into account his recycling.


Yep, the fastest thing I heard he did was that he composed Messiah in only 24 days.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

KRoad said:


> Another heads up for Händel. Read your text books. His speed of composition was remarkable even taking into account his recycling.


It's OK, in those days they all recycled.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Händel composed Rodelinda (his first opera for London audiences) in two weeks! A superb opera it is, too. Admittedly, he did go a little heavy on the recycling with this particular one. But as already has been pointed out, so did most of the Baroquers.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

consuono said:


> Mozart composed his Symphony no. 36 in four days, I believe.


Do you know what the definition of "composed" was for Mozart? It isn't the standard definition.


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## DaddyGeorge (Mar 16, 2020)

Chopin composed Waltz in a minute. But maybe I'm such a scatterbrain...


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

EdwardBast said:


> Do you know what the definition of "composed" was for Mozart? It isn't the standard definition.


In this case I believe circumstances dictated that it did have to be created pretty quickly. At any rate it's remarkable.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

DaddyGeorge said:


> Chopin composed Waltz in a minute. But maybe I'm such a scatterbrain...


Liberace's version reduces the time to 37 seconds by "cutting out the dull parts".


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Once in a class Schönberg asked a student to give him a theme, saying "we'll all sit down and write a set of six variations on that theme. And I don't just want a melodic line, I want a whole thing set for strings!" After he got the theme, Schönberg wrote the entire work in twenty minutes, whereas all his students were still working at their efforts two hours later. Schönberg was always a speedster and most of his works were composed with very little preliminary sketching. For example, in a few months he turned out the fifteen-part song cycle _Das Buch der hängenden Gärten_, the _Three Piano Pieces Op, 11_, and the _Five Orchestral Pieces Op. 16_.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Beebert said:


> Nothing in history beats what Schubert did the last 18 months before he died.


492	Le nozze di Figaro	1 May 1786
493	Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat	3 June 1786
497	Sonata in F for Piano Four-Hands	1 August 1786
498	Trio in E-flat for Piano, Clarinet and Viola, "Kegelstatt"	5 August 1786
499	String Quartet No. 20 in D, "Hoffmeister"	19 August 1786
503	Piano Concerto No. 25 in C	4 December 1786
504	Symphony No. 38 in D, "Prague"	6 December 1786
511	Rondo for Piano in A minor	11 March 1787
515	String Quintet No. 3 in C	19 April 1787
516	String Quintet No. 4 in G minor	16 May 1787
521	Sonata in C for Piano Four-Hands	29 May 1787
525	Serenade No. 13 in G, Eine kleine Nachtmusik	10 August 1787
526	Violin Sonata No. 35 in A	24 August 1787
527	Don Giovanni	28 October 1787


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