How Many Times You Rework Your Composition

A very important issue for any composer is to know when he/she will be satisfied with his work.Because it determines how his piece will finally sound.Every composer have their own compositional method.But I think reworking is a essential part of everybody's method.As such I have some question regarding this issue.

1.Does reworking your ideas have any major effect on your composition or is it just some minor corrections?

2.From my personal experience changing things after composing often make the piece more finer.And this makes the whole piece more accessible.What usually happens with you?

3.Also if you know about the compositional method of some renowned composer then you know that they revised their work many times.Does it have something to do with the success of their composition?

4.What actually is your target when you do revise your piece?

Forgive my English for it's not my first language.

Let me try:

1. Depends on potential size of the composition. More frequently there are minor corrections, but occasionally I need larger ones as well. I am intending to have a larger revision of my new choral piece "Svetla pesem". I am not happy with it at all. :)

2. Mostly the changing things are for easier performance (technical reasons).

3. I am not really sucker for later revisions. Once the composition is performed, it should have remained untouched, unless there are serious problems in it. For example: Sibelius was unhappy with his composition Kullervo and forbade its performance during his living. That was a stupid thing to do since it has turned out to be a very mature and fine composition in his opus. And Rautavaara has three or four versions of his first symphony, with the most used two-movement version being relatively strange with long slow movement and short scherzo finale. I prefer to use the experience in future works while being aware of weaknesses of performed work.

4. My targer is usually to make the form a bit longer - I often make the first version too short. But I don't give the score out until I am satisfied.

1. Minor corrections, normally, ranging from just cosmetic corrections (score layout, notation issues) to changes, insertions, deletions or rearranging of material.

2. Revisions make the piece finer (at least, that is the general goal). I don't know what you mean by accesibility. If you mean playability, some of the revisions deal with technical matters

3. Ravel and Brahms are well know hardcore, finicky, and extremely self-critical revisors of their works. I don't know if they revised after publication or performance, but at least they invested lot of time revising and polishing before releasing their works. Dutilleux forbade performance of some of his earlier works. I don't think obsessive revisions and polishing had much to do with the success of their works; I guess their first crude sketches and the content of their musical waste bins were good enough.

4. My goals when revising: clarify notation, improve transitions, improve proportions of form inserting or deleting bars, improve rhythmic flow if I happen to detect unnatural pauses. Normally I end up with a slightly longer work, because I usually figure out new possibilities of development or organization of the core material, but sometimes, in order to achieve formal balance and coherence, I have ended up with a more streamlined, concise version, due to removal of superfluous passages or segments that are out of character (say, a sonata movement, or a free form piece that is not good, too rambling or too long or I never bring myself to finish it or whatever, but perhaps just one theme or a couple of themes can be reworked into a simpler, self-contained ABA form).

1. it's either minor technical details or substantial rewrites. most of the ordinary revision process takes place for me long before the piece is over, since my average attention span for a single piece is about two weeks

2. revisions make things easier to play. i don't really buy notions of "accessibility". music either has the expressive force to convince, & to grab one's attention for its entire duration, or it doesn't. if a piece doesn't have that expressive force you can't add it in revisions. you have to scrap it and start over.

3. no

4. playability is the only thing i'd go back to a piece for. once i've written the final bar, my part in it is over. if i tried to revise everything to make it perfect i'd never finish a single piece; instead i just write fast and sloppy and trust my first instincts. i probably discard four-fifths of my compositions as a result (and would discard most of the remaining fifth as well if i had the option)

I don't tend to go through and do wholesale rewrites. There are two reasons for this; first that I find it more constructive and less problematic to begin a new work with the knowledge of how to improve upon the methods used in the old, and second because I tend to revise ideas in the course of writing the work anyway. I am fortunate that Sibelius keeps an archive of previous file versions and from these I can see how much I have changed a piece in the course of its creation. Sometimes this is quite drastic; whole sections are moved around, deleted, re-written, but this is part of the inital process and not after the piece is fully formed. Mostly, as others have said, the main purpose of any revisions is to solve any technical difficulties or make minor changes to tempi or interpretation markings.

The only major works I can bring to mind that were drastically revised from a workable original are the Violin Concerto and the Fifth Symphony of Sibelius. In the case of the latter, the revisions (adding several important bars to the opening, linking two movements together) arguably elevate the quality of the work and produce a more concentrated argument, but the original versions remain technically accomplished and coherant. This is less so in the case of music such as Vaughan Williams' London Symphony, of which the original version is noticibly inferior to the revised.

Pierre Boulez notes that he considers many of his works revisions of earlier ones, even though the length and content may be very different, and that a composition is never truly finished.

1. Does reworking your ideas have any major effect on your composition or is it just some minor corrections?

Only minor things at best. I tend to compose quite methodically and meticulously so everything gets written almost exactly as it should be from start to end *while* I'm writing it. Doing everything at once (so to speak) allows me to get pieces done faster so I don't have to do several drafts of a work before its finished. However, for larger-scale works (like a symphony or tone poem etc.) I will have to revise a few times because its easier to lose the larger scope of the work while micromanaging. This rarely causes drastic changes to the work, however, since the motives/themes/forms are usually decided beforehand.

2. From my personal experience changing things after composing often make the piece more finer.And this makes the whole piece more accessible.What usually happens with you?

Refining a work will always make it better, otherwise there would be no point. Sometimes I over-refine something to the point that it just sounds stupid, but often its small changes here and there that will make all the difference between a good piece and a great piece. i.e.: It takes many small cuts to make a diamond glisten in light.

3. Also if you know about the compositional method of some renowned composer then you know that they revised their work many times. Does it have something to do with the success of their composition?

Depends but I venture to say not really. Some composers rewrote their pieces hundreds of times until they became "perfect". That's their own style of writing and editing. Mahler, for example, was rarely satisfied with his symphonies and was constantly updating them, sometimes three or four times. Sometimes these changes were for the better (Symph. 1 and 2 for example), sometimes not (Symph. 6). So it really depends. Over-refining something is a danger for any composer, famous or not.

4. What actually is your target when you do revise your piece?

Technical perfection. Any part should be playable and readable from the score at an instant by the players. The artistic thing stuff comes natural (or instinctively) with the writing and can be less absolute. But it is the technical that has no excuse for being perfect because it is almost always an absolute aspect of music.

Composing for me is an iterative process usually involving a particular set of circumstances or musical problems that I have to solve. These become clearer over time. The toughest part is the very beginning. It's torture. You know, the blank canvas horror. I wouldn't call it re-working, you're shaping marble, it's that hard. Once it coalesces into something you can envision with a beginning middle and end, then you work out the details (which is really the fun part) but still not re-working. If if gets to the point that I think it needs re-working (re-conceiving) I'll just throw it in the trash and move on to the next idea. However, from a technical standpoint I will re-record music as I acquire better instruments, and if I happen across an additional idea, I'll add it.

Tokke pretty much summed it up for me!

I don't rework my pieces. Ever, really.

If I do, I usually just scrap the whole thing and start over.

I don't count "minor edits" in that. I always shift small things.

"Reworking" to me seems to be a necessary part of the composition process for me. I compose the same way an artist would sketch a drawing or a painting. Start with very basic melodic lines and chords, then I go back and refine it by making rhythms and harmonies more complicated and interesting. I rarely ever make huge changes such as removing or changing whole sections unless I'm in the process of writing a section and I decide it simply doesn't fit the piece as a whole. Many times, though, I might rewrite certain melodies, but I rarely go back and change them once they're "set in stone" and I like their role in the piece. Once I become more experienced with composing and educated in music theory, I may never have to rework anything, because I'll know exactly how to express what I want to write. Who knows!

I don't "rework", but I never let a piece of music solidify and stagnate.

It helps that I work with music and musicians that are comfortable with working without a net; reworking my stuff in rehearsal (occasionally in the air) - rarely is anything so complete that we get to "read the ink" ...

;)

Melodic/harmonic content will rarely change; Orchestration may change; however, it's usually structural changes that are easiest to do. I like to have cued sections, conduction, or loose frameworks that are easily reconfigured to suit the situation.

In a word: lots. In a few more words: upwards of 20, often quite significant. I just can't stop fiddling, for no particular grand or musicological reason.

1.  Usually this involves minor corrections after listening to playbacks, but sometimes listening to the piece too often 'numbs' potential problems. In these cases, I tend to sleep on it and do a major rework later.

2.   I find that making slight alterations might one section work better,  but this tends to require a lot of re-balancing in other sections. A  whole heap of extra work!

3.  Well, I know that Mozart made some alterations to some works, such as adding clarinet parts to works after he had been exposed to the instruments.

4.  I'm of the opinion that if I am to rework something then it needs to be worth the time. It is often the case that I'll see what didn't quite work, and then start a new piece with this in mind.

I have a collection of themes that I've used before but the final project was terrible.  I rework them until I love it...or at least live with it.

Continuously, until it's recorded. I find the best way is to compose it to death for a few days, then leave it a week at least before coming back and having another listen and a go. You have to hear it as someone whose not heard it before, or you get used to things and your creativity freezes. Once it's recorded, it's done, warts and all!