How Do A Composer And His/her Music "develop"?

A composer's music usually develops throughout their composing career. How do you characterize such development? Does all composers' music undergo such development? How does it happen?

I think such development is clearest in Beethoven whose music is generally divided into three periods. But it is not as clear in Bach for example.

What are the characteristics of such development? I think that one such characteristic is that their music becomes more mature and possibly deeper (relying on the case of Beethoven whose last period produced profound masterpieces).

What are your thoughts?

I think it's difficult to generalize, though often the music becomes more complex and their style is more refined and distinctive as time goes on, and sometimes less compromising. If they live long enough, there's sometimes a decrease in intensity in later music. I think it partly mirrors life experiences...you know, you "think" differently at 50 than you do as a 20 year old.

I think what composers are living through at the time can also have a profound effect on how/what they compose. For example, listen to Mozart's Salzburg works compared to his Vienna ones. He wrote some great works in Salzburg toward the end, but they are still quite different from the Vienna music, which is rather more theatrical. Some composers seem to be able to rise above their circumstances, though.

There isn't always the guarantee that your later music will be "better" than your earlier music, however (which is somewhat of a debatable idea anyway). Some composers, especially ones who pushed the envelope in their youth, might lose their edge as time goes on and write increasingly bland music. I guess Richard Strauss would be the most obvious example of that, but you could say the same for Mendelssohn and maybe Berlioz (though Berlioz's later music is still great...it just isn't as revolutionary as his early stuff). Some modern composers who were at the fringes of the avant-garde in their youth became more mainstream as they aged.

I think in other cases, you'll have people who, I suspect, just get bored with what they're writing and push forward into new territores, never (or very rarely) to return to what they had done previously. Think of Stravinsky or Schoenberg here....

For me, it's all about progression. You have to be constantly moving forward; the moment you let your music stagnate and harden into a 'style', you lose that forward developmental momentum.

A composer's music usually develops throughout their composing career. How do you characterize such development? Does all composers' music undergo such development? How does it happen?

What are the characteristics of such development? I think that one such characteristic is that their music becomes more mature and possibly deeper (relying on the case of Beethoven whose last period produced profound masterpieces).

Excellent topic. I would start by saying that everything you hear, music or otherwise, gets stored in your subconscious. With enough repetition and enough motivation, we are able to reproduce and arrange those sounds to our liking, in the form of language and music. With language, the first motivation is survival and a sense of connectedness, and with music, the motivation can vary, but usually is motivated by the pleasure that comes from arranging tones in a certain fashion. This explains why the "elites" in most any field of discipline were exposed to and instructed in their area of expertise from a very young age when the neural plasticity is at its highest.

Because everything we hear is stored in our subconscious, our styles as composers are constantly being formed based on what we listen to from others and what we play ourselves. It's interesting to me to consider how different the development process is for us as modern-day composers compared to the likes of Bach and Handel and Brahms. We have thousands or millions of times the capabilities to add to our subconscious arsenal than they did so it's quite possible our ability to progress as composers can happen on a shorter time-scale than theirs.