Direction in music

It's happened to me a couple of times: you are at a certain stage in your musical development, and you listen to lots of music that is stylistically in line with what you write or how you play. Then you develop the ideas your working on, which sparks some new ideas, and before you know it, you're doing something very different. You come up with some things that seem completely original, which you've never heard before. Only then, when you start listening to other music that fits your current tastes, you notice some other composer/musician X years ago already did the same thing you came up with on your own.

Has this happened to any of you? I'm sure it has. And not just in music, either.

What can this mean? Is there a certain (perhaps vague) direction that musical development usually follows? Is there sort of a micro- and macro-evolution thing going? Do the elements of a musical style imply a logical conclusion and succession? Or is it just unlikely you come up with anything that hasn't been done before, because so much has already been done?

I'm curious to your thoughts.

Example:

1.Mozart Symphony no 25 in G-Minor - the rising main theme...

2.Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 2 No. 1 - the rising main theme is essentially the same but in F-Minor

YouTube - Beethoven Piano Sonata #1 In F Minor, Op. 2, No. 1 - 1. Allegro by Daniel Barenboim

Did Beethoven copy Mozart or did he unconsciously/subconsciously write a motif that he heard and liked? What if it were true that he'd never heard the piece?

Every style behaves a certain way. While it's cool to switch between styles, doing so at random unintentionally probably wouldn't be musical. Thus, from the moment you selected the style of your piece, you've already limited the possibilities for it's development.

The rest is just coincidence. There are hundreds and hundreds (maybe one thousand?) years of written music so you're bound to run into something you've made.

I find that writing with a the title or form of the piece blank removes the box that a lot of composers put themselves in. Instead of saying, I'm going to write a sonata, or a fugue, or a symphony, or a requiem; that puts you in a box that has already been established by hundreds of dead and living composers. Just start writing...figure the form as you're writing and name it once you're done.

Every style behaves a certain way. While it's cool to switch between styles, doing so at random unintentionally probably wouldn't be musical. Thus, from the moment you selected the style of your piece, you've already limited the possibilities for it's development.

You must be misunderstanding. Or else I am. I'm not talking about selecting a style to write in. I'm talking about one's personal musical evolution, in which every stage is different (and maybe style is a bad word here, because it's not just about style the way you define it). I have noticed this evolution often seems somewhat consistent from person to person, even with music history as a whole. So it's not something you choose, it's something that happens.

You must be misunderstanding. Or else I am. I'm not talking about selecting a style to write in. I'm talking about one's personal musical evolution, in which every stage is different (and maybe style is a bad word here, because it's not just about style the way you define it). I have noticed this evolution often seems somewhat consistent from person to person, even with music history as a whole. So it's not something you choose, it's something that happens.

My bad. I didn't express that properly.

What I meant to say is that the evolution might be the same from person to person because both of you are in the same style, and thus, there are only so many different ways of developing a piece within said style.

How does that sound?

Eh... I don't buy progress in music.

Cynic.

Evolution only really means change. People change throughout their lives and so does their artistic output. The point is calling it "progress" I guess is only a matter of asking the person if they think they have made progress or not but I wouldn't assign this to anyone except for myself.