What Is The Meaning Of Composition?

Does it constitute the creation of art of universal value? Or does it constitute spiritual revelation? Or is it an intellectual act with an intellectual rather than an artistic product? Does it constitute a message to humanity? Does it constitute a manifestation of human civilization, of human culture?

More negatively perhaps, do composers via their compositions seek their own glory, attention, and praise? Does composition at some level constitute an instance of the vain human motivation of seeking recognition and praise?

On the other hand, what is the contribution of composition - that a composer makes via composition - to life, to society, and to human history?

None, all, or any of the above.

Composition is simply "creating" or "putting together". On some rudimentary level, it may just be part of a biological need to create something that "goes beyond" the creator. Not unlike humanitiy's need to precreate in order to continue the species we build buildings, and monuments, and create social systems, and works of art, and so on. It would be nice if everything were done for completely altruistic reasons but certainly, any of these things can be done as much for personal gain as societal gain. I suppose, in a free society, it's up to each person to discover what drives them to create. Actually, I take that back. For some, it really doesn't matter why, it's that they *must*, so they do.

 In common because of that   always there is demand on new  music works and as it is known demand gives rise to supply.  By the way  I have read that very little part of people who learn composition become composers. That must increase demand on composers.

Greetings

Yuri Vilenkin

I think every human being has a need for self-expression. Some of us do this by practicing some kind of art. I have tried writing, drawing, painting--and now composing, and I find that they are very much alike. To do them they all need some sense of art, and some knowledge about craft, but via them we all do the same: try to express our feelings, our inner workings, and make ourselves feel that we created something; something that's new and different from the things that were already there.

When I read a book, and see how well it's written, I instantly feel an urge to write something--I just want to make my own. The same is happening with music--I just want to try and create something that is mine and that I can listen to, and pretend that it has any kind of artistic value :P Anyway, as far as I see, a symphony tells the same things as a poem, or a painting or a novel--it's a bit of the author's soul crafted into something considered "a piece of art."

I've thought about this question a lot of times before. At this point I've dropped the pretense of some poetic drive for self expression. Composition is just something I do. I do it because I can. I don't care if people tell me that I shouldn't, and if I'm honest I really don't care if they tell me that I should keep doing it. I'm doing it because I just feel a compulsion to do it. For me, composition was always the primary purpose to study music. I knew nothing about music of course, but when I started to learn it wasn't to learn an instrument and be good at it. It was to get myself to the point where I could compose. No one told me I could do it. No one told me I should do it. No one knew I would ever do it. I didn't even know I would do it until I finally said "Ok I wanna do this" and started taking lessons. I don't know why exactly I'm compelled to compose, and it's not even a compulsion that I feel all that deeply. I'm not being driven forward by passion or anything. I have passion of course, but it's not what's keeping me going, because it waxes and wanes independently from my composition. If there's something driving me, it's not obvious and hasn't shown itself in any form that I can recognize. If anything, I do hope that I end up creating some work that touches people's lives in some way even if it's small. That might be the only thing I'm truly certain about when it comes to my goals with music. As for my motivations though, I'm not sure I have any clear goal that would suffice to explain why I suddenly decided to become a composer. It just happened. Call it the hand of God, if you will as others have done. It just might be. I don't know. That's all I have to say about this.

Oh look! It's a bunch of trick/loaded questions, what a surprise!

So here's some bullet points:

1. No, you're not saving the world by writing your sonata in B minor.
2. No, it probably won't change anyone's life if you can get it performed/recorded/whatever.
3. No, it probably will not even matter in a grand cultural scale unless you already matter in such a scale yourself.
4. No, most of what you're doing has been done before in much the same exact way so your claim to originality is tenuous at best.
5. No, you'll probably starve to death if you try to make a living out of composing.
6. No, you're not better than anyone because you can put some notes together and feel smug about it.
7. No, thinking about it in some grand scale only highlights how masturbatory an exercise creating art really is regardless of whatever superficial motives you think you have.
8. No, regardless of how you think you can dress your gibberish as intellectual, none of it matters since that word has lost basically any significance since people started using it to describe gibberish they didn't like but had to put up with to look smart.
9. No, you're not going to incite some great revival of some music style because you write in it, nobody could give two poo poos about the fact you can write music that sounds like the music someone much more famous and important (and most likely dead) than you wrote.
10. No, you can dress your discussion of composition in any way you want to, but it won't convince anyone that what matters isn't just the end product on the dance floor, so to speak.
11. No, you shouldn't stop writing music for any of the reasons mentioned above, but if you want to stop it won't be a great loss and there are millions of others that will appreciate having less competition. After all, there is only so many ears and only so much time in the world.

Depressing? Nah.

I like challenges.

Composing music is the Godliest thing we can do. I imagine an emissary - a composer - sent to a far off galaxy in the distant future to demonstrate to whatever life form is there, music. And God says, you see this man, you see his instrument and you hear it. This is the gift I gave him, my proudest acheivement.