# Composers



## Souhayl (Jan 17, 2012)

Do you think that before starting composing, a composer must play a lot of pieces by other composers to gain technique and improve his skills ? I think at a certain level you have to choose your career, either you want to be a composer or an interpreter ! You can't spend all your life playing other composers' pieces when you want to be a composer and you can't spend too much time composing when you'd like to be an interpreter cuz you don't have really that much time ! I wanted to know if a composer should anyways play a lot to improve his technique or he can just improve that through his compositions and no need to play pieces from others.
(Talking about piano)


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Bernstein: composer/conductor. He wrote music and interpreted other people's music too.

I think that to improve compositional skills the composer has to _study_ the other compositions in detail rather than just play them. One thing I do is copy out note for note Bach fugues and I think my counterpoint has greatly improved since then. Wagner was amazed at the long melodies Palestrina was able to create so he copied out Palestrina's works note for note until he was able to write those long melodies that he wanted to write.


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## Souhayl (Jan 17, 2012)

How do you mean copy them out note for note ?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

The best way to learn to write books is to read them, and the best way to learn to write music is to listen to it (with a score). But don't set yourself any initial limits - never say, "I must listen to X amount of works before I can set pen to paper or mouse-cursor to Sibelius", instead you should be writing your own stuff _while_ learning, and learning never ends.


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## Souhayl (Jan 17, 2012)

Yeah, to learn writing books you should read books, but in music there are two ways, either you play them or you just listen to them, I prefer listening with scores but my teacher keeps saying that I must play a lor of pieces before I can write while I already wrote pieces more than I played for other composers.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I just listen to a lot of music and write as I go. I don't write in any particular tradition and don't pay much attention to technique; the only thing I strive for is to make music that sounds good to me.

If you want to write in a tradition, you should learn how it's done. If not, start writing.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Souhayl said:


> Yeah, to learn writing books you should read books, but in music there are two ways, either you play them or you just listen to them, I prefer listening with scores but my teacher keeps saying that I must play a lor of pieces before I can write while I already wrote pieces more than I played for other composers.


But are you resigned to writing only ever for the instrument that you play? Composers don't learn to write for an orchestra by learning every instrument in order to play the music written for them. Yes, it is very important to have a good knowledge of an instruments standard and extended techniques, but you learn just as much - if not more - from listening to music without the distraction of also having to learn a piece.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Souhayl said:


> How do you mean copy them out note for note ?


Get the score and literally copy it out into music manuscript paper. How else?


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Get the score and literally copy it out into music manuscript paper. How else?


Bach did this every now and then. Vivaldi is the one composer I can think of that he did most often, for example he turned a concerto from L'estro Armanico into a sonata for two organs.


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