How long should a piece of music be?

I apologize for asking a question with so many obvious answers ("As long as it needs to be!" "As long as you want it to be!" etc...) but this has been troubling me lately.

For reference, I have no formal music education (apart from a bit second-hand from my brother, who plays classical saxophone). I have primarily written pieces for piano, since I'm tolerably capable of playing it, and most of what I've written has been for my own satisfaction, though if I can ever wrap my head around SDL and graphics programming I hope to use some in videogames some day.

Getting back to my question, the reason I ask this is that the most consistent criticism I've gotten about my music is that it's too short (either as suggestions that a particular part be 'longer' or as a more general statement along the lines of 'I wish you would write something longer'). I don't usually set out to write short music, but I often reach a point where I've said everything I felt I needed to say, as it were, 2-3 minutes into a piece.

Another way to phrase the question I suppose would be something like: 'how much should I try to extend a piece before allowing myself to be satisfied with it?', with the related sub-question: 'if I find myself struggling to extend a piece, should I interpret that as a sign [of my inexperience as a composer/that my idea for the piece may have been overly simple] or as a sign that I've more or less finished writing it?'

Edit: Now that I've gotten some good general answers, I'll add some examples for people to comment on directly if they choose to. For the sake of completeness, I've included one short song that I consider complete, one short song I do not, and one longer song. Apologies for including raw Musescore exports and for unhelpful names- my ambition as a composer outstrips my skill as a player and namer at the moment.

Unknown 1- I consider this one to be pretty much finished, though I could see myself coming back to it if struck by a new idea on how to extend it. The most common criticism I get of it (from people who can tolerate the style) is its being too short. Also one of the few pieces I've written that I can competently play.

Music Box 3- As implied by the title, this is a piano arrangement of something I wrote for a music box. As such its short length is completely intentional. That said, I fully expect to at some point come back to it and either incorporate it into a larger piece or extend it (~:08-:25 are just too fun not to expand on...)

Something V2- This is my second-longest piece at the moment. I still need to tweak it a bit, but don't expect to add much to the length (may add a few measures to the third section, but apart from that need to experiment a bit more with that section's left hand and tweak a few places to make them physically possible to play. May rework parts of the first and last sections as well, as they're a bit freeform).

I find the music I listen to to have segments of the music be at least 8-16 measures long, sometimes shorter or longer. If you can extend segments of your pieces to fit in that range, it might help you. Here’s some examples of what I mean (all examples are in 4/4 time):

first example is a segment about 7.5 measures long

second example is a segment about 14 measures long

third example is exactly 8 measures long

Hi TSTwizby,

That's a very interesting question. A question every composer have to face...When I started composing about 15 years ago, most of my compositions where very short (meaning 1 minute or shorter). But with time and practice I learnt who the develop music ideas and give more solid structure to my pieces. Music Analysis, although it's sometimes though can help a lot of being self conscious of how it works.

The first idea of the Bagatelle I have already posted was A (bars 4-5) and then A' which is a varition of A with the same Alberti bass. Then in bar 8 I introduced the new idea (B), with an ascending octave scale.

From the idea A I grabbed the silence and the three eight notes, which are underlined on the screenshot and then Idea B, which can be seen all throught the 90 mesures.

If you reduce that to the essential, all the piece is about the three eight notes on the weak beat and the ascending octave in sixteenth notes. It's not a long piece at all (just 3:10 min), but I mean that just two very short music ideas consisting a few notes can give you all the raw material that you need.

Bagatelle in FM

It was just an exemple about how I think it works for a short composition lets say between 2 and 4 minutes. What I find difficult is to develop large scale structure, with unity and variety. For example Beethoven's fifth Symphony have the main music idea in all four movements, and so is how he achieves unity.

It would be great, if someone can share his/her own experience of how to create and develop a large scale structure.

Going back to your question, how long should be a piece is a very difficult answer, but I think it depends on the raw material you have (music ideas) and the formal structure you want to fit in. You can how an exemple of what you mean to be too short and let people give the own opinion.

PD: I don't want to seem pretentious by analysing my own music. I just wanted to share a few things about music analysis and I firmly invite other people to share the own piece analysis within this fórum.

You're right, TSTwizby, that there is no one answer to the question, but it's worth thinking about it from the point of view of the performers, listeners, and the conductor/director/teacher, and you, the composer.  If you wrote a piece for full orchestra that was two minutes long, it wouldn't be enough of a piece to be worth an orchestra's time.  They tend to have concerts built of symphony or concerto-sized chunks of music, so adding a two minute piece would feel odd.  If you wrote a two minute piece for high-level solo pianist, that would also probably be too short to be worth someone's time.  Recitals by good pianists are also generally composed of a few longer pieces, giving the audience and performer time to lose themselves in the music in between breaks for applause.  But two minutes for a beginner pianist at their recital is a great length.  It's about the limit of what they can prepare well and an audience of parents and grandparents can sit through if there is some fumbling.  Two minutes is also great for a musical interlude in, say, the middle of a church service, where the music isn't the main event, but it adds to the emotional content of the message of the day.  From your point of view as the composer, it's worth thinking about what kind of music you can write right now that will help you grow and keep you encouraged as a composer.  Writing something too long as a beginning composer makes it harder to get feedback, because the number of casual friends willing to sit and listen dwindles with the time commitment.  Long pieces can also get frustrating for you, because they may just be too much for you to handle well.  Better to write something short and polished than something long and ragged.  If you spend a few weeks working on a piece, and it's just okay, that's fine, and you can enthusiastically move on to the next piece without looking back, but if you spend 6 months working on a piece, and it's just okay, you're likely to feel like you have just wasted 6 months, and wonder if you should just give up on composing.  There is a reason that creative writing classes start with poetry or short stories, not novel writing.  Larger enterprises tend to expose the holes in our education quickly, and then we get disheartened.  So keep it short for now, and you'll be able to polish each piece more, experiment with a different musical concept with each one, and all that effort will help you build larger structures on an increasingly sound foundation as you go along.  Mainly, do whatever you need to do to keep composing exciting.  To learn and improve, you have to keep going, so whatever gets you going is a good thing.  

I think this issue deals with FORM.

You can take Form as a more or less "rigid" structures where you can develop your composition. In this sense classical Forms will help you. What you need to know here the work with motives, phrases, sections, modulation, etc... With just a few material you can build an entire symphony. That's what classic composers did. This is a good point to start, for example writing a rondó.

But with romanticism, and the explosion of styles in the 20th century (not to mention what academic music is right now), many other Forms are available. I love Mosaic Form, by the way.

At last, the length of a piece is inherent to what you want to say. Simply making nice music (where a classic Form with its repetitions and etc is a safe place), or trying to express something in your musical words (where Form must be taken freely).

There are many many ways to work with material, a phrase or anything.

Finally, I never care about the how long my piece is. Sometimes it takes a minute and I feel there's nothing to add. I think it's a nonsense when people says "you have to make it long"... why? I don't think good music must be longer...

Thank you all for the responses! I'm glad to see differing perspectives on the matter.

@Luis Hernández : To briefly comment on your point, I rarely (intentionally at any rate) use a well-defined form in my music writing. I'm not really opposed to them or anything, it's just that most of the ideas I've had that I've been able to expand on haven't fit into a proper form.

@Guillem82: I didn't post any examples at first, since I didn't want to taint people's answers with reactions to anything specific. That said, now that I've gotten a few, I'll add some examples to my first post. I'll probably post a few more in the 'upload your compositions' section as well; I've finally managed to get myself to go and join one of these communities, so why not make good use of it?

On 7/30/2019 at 8:22 AM, TSTwizby said:

I apologize for asking a question with so many obvious answers ("As long as it needs to be!" "As long as you want it to be!" etc...) but this has been troubling me lately.

For reference, I have no formal music education (apart from a bit second-hand from my brother, who plays classical saxophone). I have primarily written pieces for piano, since I'm tolerably capable of playing it, and most of what I've written has been for my own satisfaction, though if I can ever wrap my head around SDL and graphics programming I hope to use some in videogames some day.

Getting back to my question, the reason I ask this is that the most consistent criticism I've gotten about my music is that it's too short (either as suggestions that a particular part be 'longer' or as a more general statement along the lines of 'I wish you would write something longer'). I don't usually set out to write short music, but I often reach a point where I've said everything I felt I needed to say, as it were, 2-3 minutes into a piece.

Another way to phrase the question I suppose would be something like: 'how much should I try to extend a piece before allowing myself to be satisfied with it?', with the related sub-question: 'if I find myself struggling to extend a piece, should I interpret that as a sign [of my inexperience as a composer/that my idea for the piece may have been overly simple] or as a sign that I've more or less finished writing it?'

 

Edit: Now that I've gotten some good general answers, I'll add some examples for people to comment on directly if they choose to. For the sake of completeness, I've included one short song that I consider complete, one short song I do not, and one longer song. Apologies for including raw Musescore exports and for unhelpful names- my ambition as a composer outstrips my skill as a player and namer at the moment.

Unknown 1- I consider this one to be pretty much finished, though I could see myself coming back to it if struck by a new idea on how to extend it. The most common criticism I get of it (from people who can tolerate the style) is its being too short. Also one of the few pieces I've written that I can competently play.

Music Box 3- As implied by the title, this is a piano arrangement of something I wrote for a music box. As such its short length is completely intentional. That said, I fully expect to at some point come back to it and either incorporate it into a larger piece or extend it (~:08-:25 are just too fun not to expand on...)

Something V2- This is my second-longest piece at the moment. I still need to tweak it a bit, but don't expect to add much to the length (may add a few measures to the third section, but apart from that need to experiment a bit more with that section's left hand and tweak a few places to make them physically possible to play. May rework parts of the first and last sections as well, as they're a bit freeform).

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The length of a musical composition is a complex and subjective matter. There's no universal answer, as it depends on your artistic intent, the message you want to convey, and the genre you're working in.

For most, I'd say no longer than the 4:00 mark. Few songs and compositions longer than 4 are good all the way through, imo.

IMO a lot of people focus way too much on the length of the piece and trying to make it long. It's better to have a shorter piece that is really great, than a long one which is meh. I've read before that for most songs, 2:45 is an ideal length to have the right amount of repetition and variation. 

If you compose specifically for length, you will probably start adding a lot of needless "filler" or repeating ideas that have overstayed their welcome, etc. At a certain point, you just have to compose a whole new tune. Plus, the longer something goes, the more components it has, and the more things that can go wrong.

I have never thought about the length of a piece unless it's for a competition when you will have to meet the time requirement. I just let the music compose themselves and see how long is required to say what I want to say. Even for that 1 hour Clarinet Quintet in C minor I have never planned to write 1 hour long, or write long pieces to show off myself. 

18 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

For most, I'd say no longer than the 4:00 mark. Few songs and compositions longer than 4 are good all the way through, imo.

I find it real hard to write under 4 minutes! The only time I have done this is in the 2nd movement of my 2nd Piano Sonata which is only a half and a minute long. I always find it much easier to write longer pieces when you have more time and space for the developments of the themes and materials.

Henry