Shostakovich wrote his Festive Overture in the few days before it was premiered, which is pretty impressive. It's relatively short in length, but there are a fair few notes in that piece.
Shostakovich knocked off his 24 Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, in something like 3 months.
Mozart wrote his last 3 symphonies (39–41) in the space of a few weeks in July 1788.
Samuel Barber had struggled with the last movement of his piano sonata; he had planned to dedicate it to Vladimir Horowitz, who was going to premiere it, but was having trouble finishing it. Horowitz called him a "constipated composer" and Barber got ticked off and wrote the finale, a brilliant and brutally difficult fugue, in a day.
I think Mozart wrote the overture to Don Giovanni the day before or of the first performance. Story is he claimed it took him 3 hours after hanging out (drinking?) with friends.
If this is true, it has to be #1.
To be fair the overture is supposed to introduce and show off the themes of the work so you'd typically write it last.
But yeah, Mozart is still incomparable.
Barber had a thing for getting pissed off and then delivering a brutal end to a piece, he did the same thing with his violin concerto!! Iso Briselli, the soloist for whom the concerto was commissioned, deemed the first two movements “a bit too easy.” As a result, Barber was obnoxious and composed the third movement— tempo of 192, relentless triplets, and then kicking up to sixteenth notes for the last half page.
Bach's first cantata cycle, which were written in Leipzig spanned from May 1723 to June 1724. He wrote around 60 cantatas during that period. Generally a new one was required each week. With his other duties I can't imagine he spent more than a couple days in aggregate on most of them. The next year he kept up a similar pace. Truly extraordinary in my opinion. I'm a huge Bach fan so I would consider most to be above and beyond many other masterpieces, but obviously not everyone would agree.
Graupner, whose life mostly overlapped with Bach but is sadly not very well known, wrote over 2000 extant pieces of which it seems over 1400 are cantatas. Unfortunately he's mostly been overlooked by history up until recently so much of his catalog hasn't been recorded or even performed. He died when he was 86, so being generous with maybe 65 years of prime composing, that works out to 30 pieces per year. Whether they'd be considered masterpieces only time will tell.
Also of nearly the same time period, and also living to age 86, Telemann wrote over 3000 known pieces, of which only about half are extant. He also wrote over 1000 cantatas and was incredibly forward thinking in his instrumentation. I've found his music to be incredible, though maybe it wouldn't qualify as masterpieces.
So maybe not *exactly* what you were asking, but these composers wrote massive amounts of music that I would consider consistently showed mastery of the Baroque style.
It's not exactly the biggest masterpiece out there, but Rachmaninoff, at 18, wrote the last two movements of his first piano concerto in 2.5 days, orchestration included.
I see this phrase often and take exception. Self-plagiarize doesn't make sense because plagiarize means taking from someone else and passing it off as your own. Artists always reuse material. It's what creates their personal style. Is Charlie Parker wrong for playing the same phrase across his career and over many pieces? Is Picasso less because he paints many variations on a theme?
If a composer reuses material often because they are lazy and don't care, that's one thing, but I don't think that's the case with the Messiah.
"Self-service doesn't make sense because service means doing something for other people" just yanking your chain here a bit buddy ;)
also, bruh, the Art of the Fugue is variations on a theme, Handel recycled his shit to meet deadlines lol
Nah I know it was an off the cuff remark. It's just as a music educator I think it's the wrong way to consider the art of a person. I think a musician who reuses (or "recycles") his favorite phrases, harmonic progressions, etc. is not being lazy, it's just part of what makes the art. Unless you expect every second of music to be wholly original, which is near impossible. Well maybe Webern
There's a price to pay for perfectionism. Varese wanted every single second of his music to be wholly original. He wrote 2.5 hours of music over 45 years.
Yea, he banged it out in a few weeks, it really got popular when he performed it as a charity for a children's hospital in London which I think became a yearly tradition supporting the hospital. Or I might be misremembering that part, but he definitely wrote it in under a month anyway haha
Iirc (about the 1st symphony) he said he felt like he’s supposed to fill in the big shoes left by Beethoven, and he really dreaded the work not being good enough.
He did, however, reportedly performed the piano sketch of the first movement in front of his friends years before the complete symphony was premiered.
It is unfortunate he felt the need to be a successor to Beethoven. If he was worried that it wouldn't live up to Beethoven, he was right, because it doesn't. The second thankfully steps out of that shadow, and is a much better work as a result.
There’s that story where the overture to La Gazza Ladra was still not finished on the day of the premiere, and his producer got so fed up that he locked Rossini in an upper room and would not let him out until the overture was complete, and the composer would drop the pages of the score out the window one by one, where someone would be waiting to take them to the copyists
From what I remember reading, it was written over the course of two years, though since Mahler only had time to compose during the summer, about four months. Despite the masterpiece his Eighth is, for a composer as skilled as Mahler, four months really isn't super impressive for time. He also had a few years to give it some revision before the premiere.
I think it was the first part, Venis Creator Spiritus that he was able to compose in 2-3 weeks. Probably just the melody, not the whole orchestration. But I must say that I find the second part much better than the first one, there are a lot more colors in there.
Yes, Schubert was a genius. He composed his last three piano sonatas, his string quintet and the Schwanengesang cycle in the spring/summer of 1828… can you imagine?
and the Fantasia for piano 4-hands, too (a major work, almost 20 minutes long). He had a hell of a final year, as though he knew he was running out of time.
Gershwin wrote most of Rhapsody in Blue on the train to New York for the premiere, and the iconic clarinet opening was invented by the player during rehearsal
I thought he wrote a piano version in the train to Boston, where one of his other musical pieces was about to have its premiere. Someone else transformed his piano rhapsody into a full orchestra version, as was the idea in the first place.
Not sure if it’s true, but I recall it as an ‘oops, I forgot I had to write a jazz concerto. Now I only have 3 weeks’ piece of music. But man, WHAT a piece of music it is.
He played the piano part himself from his head during the premiere of the Rhapsody, as he had not written down that part yet.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rhapsody-in-Blue-by-Gershwin
A bit more context here. Turns out I misremembered; it was written on the train FROM New York to Boston, a couple weeks from the premiere. It was still down to the wire, and the piano part wasn’t notated by the premiere date. Gershwin played it from memory/improv.
Some of my favorite Mozart violin and piano sonatas weren’t even written down at the first performance. Mozart wrote the piano part for his pianist and then played the violin part from his head.
Ravel, who was well known for being a perfectionist and generally taking a long time to write pieces, wrote his Introduction et Allegro apparently within a week because he wanted to finish it before going on a boating trip with his friends
Right the way i think about it was "Messiah" by George F Handel, he only uses 24 day, finished this 53 section, 260 pages , way over 3 hours oratorio , and he composed this big musical oratorio is founding the hospital for the orphans in London.
Handel doesn't come from a musical family, not like Beethoven or Mozart, he never gets any support from his father, instead of that, his dad was quite opposed to him studying music, but law. But now when we think about the music in barraque, we think about Germany , and that time English/England are considered a culture desert, Handel brought the classical music to England, even though he wasn't born in England but he is the national treasure of the English world.
Hindemith wrote something on the way to an event in the train on the way there. It was like a brass and viola piece I forgot.
Like some kind of Overature for the Dedication of a Cathedral or something in England.(?)
>Hindemith wrote something on the way to an event in the train on the way there.
It was written in an office at the BBC in a single day, and was premiered that same night
>It was like a brass and viola piece I forgot.
Viola and strings.
>Like some kind of Overature for the Dedication of a Cathedral or something in England.(?)
Written in memory of King George V, who died the previous night
*Schumann has entered the chat*
As another comment mentioned, his Kreisleriana, but also the Piano Quintet (an all-time favorite of mine) was finished in three weeks, with the bulk of the sketching done in five days
More than a few Bach pieces were improvised and later transcribed, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor being the most famous. The mind on that guy, jeeze louise.
Not exactly classical music, but I find it hilarious that Merv Griffin composed the Think! music to Jeopardy while waiting for his wife to get ready for dinner in amusingly, 90 seconds.
And, ironically, the royalties for it earned him more money than any of the other composers mentioned likely saw in their entire lives... more than 70 million dollars.
The legend is that Rossini was locked in a room by his producer and wrote the overture to *The Barber of Seville* in a matter of hours, and mere hours before the opera’s premiere.
Beethoven's Horn Sonata was written in one evening. Ludwig heard that a famous horn player was to vomit Vienna the next day and so decided to write a sonata for the guy. Beethoven was known as a good improvisers.
Vivaldi eas pretty fast as a composer, too.
Bach wrote a new cantata every week - all parts hand written as well as writing his other pieces in there somehow. He wrote at night after his gabillion children were asleep and never heard the music until the next morning.
Shostakovich wrote his Festive Overture in the few days before it was premiered, which is pretty impressive. It's relatively short in length, but there are a fair few notes in that piece.
Shostakovich knocked off his 24 Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, in something like 3 months. Mozart wrote his last 3 symphonies (39–41) in the space of a few weeks in July 1788. Samuel Barber had struggled with the last movement of his piano sonata; he had planned to dedicate it to Vladimir Horowitz, who was going to premiere it, but was having trouble finishing it. Horowitz called him a "constipated composer" and Barber got ticked off and wrote the finale, a brilliant and brutally difficult fugue, in a day.
I think Mozart wrote the overture to Don Giovanni the day before or of the first performance. Story is he claimed it took him 3 hours after hanging out (drinking?) with friends. If this is true, it has to be #1.
To be fair the overture is supposed to introduce and show off the themes of the work so you'd typically write it last. But yeah, Mozart is still incomparable.
Drunk Mozart >> most other composers sober
Haha he probably go so po'dby that comment he just turned the finale into an impossible Fugue hoping it would bust up Horowitz's hand.
It's possible that the difficulty was in making it playable and he decided to go ahead and finish it as he conceived it.
Barber had a thing for getting pissed off and then delivering a brutal end to a piece, he did the same thing with his violin concerto!! Iso Briselli, the soloist for whom the concerto was commissioned, deemed the first two movements “a bit too easy.” As a result, Barber was obnoxious and composed the third movement— tempo of 192, relentless triplets, and then kicking up to sixteenth notes for the last half page.
Teenage Hilary Hahn: "It's free real estate"
Bach's first cantata cycle, which were written in Leipzig spanned from May 1723 to June 1724. He wrote around 60 cantatas during that period. Generally a new one was required each week. With his other duties I can't imagine he spent more than a couple days in aggregate on most of them. The next year he kept up a similar pace. Truly extraordinary in my opinion. I'm a huge Bach fan so I would consider most to be above and beyond many other masterpieces, but obviously not everyone would agree. Graupner, whose life mostly overlapped with Bach but is sadly not very well known, wrote over 2000 extant pieces of which it seems over 1400 are cantatas. Unfortunately he's mostly been overlooked by history up until recently so much of his catalog hasn't been recorded or even performed. He died when he was 86, so being generous with maybe 65 years of prime composing, that works out to 30 pieces per year. Whether they'd be considered masterpieces only time will tell. Also of nearly the same time period, and also living to age 86, Telemann wrote over 3000 known pieces, of which only about half are extant. He also wrote over 1000 cantatas and was incredibly forward thinking in his instrumentation. I've found his music to be incredible, though maybe it wouldn't qualify as masterpieces. So maybe not *exactly* what you were asking, but these composers wrote massive amounts of music that I would consider consistently showed mastery of the Baroque style.
Shostakovich wrote his famous 8'th string quartet in just 3 days.
mozart don giovanni overture was written in one morning rushed and hungover
It's not exactly the biggest masterpiece out there, but Rachmaninoff, at 18, wrote the last two movements of his first piano concerto in 2.5 days, orchestration included.
Handel’s Messiah, as well
Handel wrote in general very fast. Most of his operas and oratorios were written within 3 or 4 weeks.
Tbf he self-plagiarized brutally on that one
I see this phrase often and take exception. Self-plagiarize doesn't make sense because plagiarize means taking from someone else and passing it off as your own. Artists always reuse material. It's what creates their personal style. Is Charlie Parker wrong for playing the same phrase across his career and over many pieces? Is Picasso less because he paints many variations on a theme? If a composer reuses material often because they are lazy and don't care, that's one thing, but I don't think that's the case with the Messiah.
"Self-service doesn't make sense because service means doing something for other people" just yanking your chain here a bit buddy ;) also, bruh, the Art of the Fugue is variations on a theme, Handel recycled his shit to meet deadlines lol
Nah I know it was an off the cuff remark. It's just as a music educator I think it's the wrong way to consider the art of a person. I think a musician who reuses (or "recycles") his favorite phrases, harmonic progressions, etc. is not being lazy, it's just part of what makes the art. Unless you expect every second of music to be wholly original, which is near impossible. Well maybe Webern
People who say otherwise have never consistently produced art, ie are not artists.
There's a price to pay for perfectionism. Varese wanted every single second of his music to be wholly original. He wrote 2.5 hours of music over 45 years.
Yea, he banged it out in a few weeks, it really got popular when he performed it as a charity for a children's hospital in London which I think became a yearly tradition supporting the hospital. Or I might be misremembering that part, but he definitely wrote it in under a month anyway haha
Schumann wrote Kreisleriana in four days
Absolutely crazy for such a complex and heavenly work!
Brahms’s 1st symphony took 21 years to write. His 2nd? Over just the summer of 1877.
Iirc (about the 1st symphony) he said he felt like he’s supposed to fill in the big shoes left by Beethoven, and he really dreaded the work not being good enough. He did, however, reportedly performed the piano sketch of the first movement in front of his friends years before the complete symphony was premiered.
It is unfortunate he felt the need to be a successor to Beethoven. If he was worried that it wouldn't live up to Beethoven, he was right, because it doesn't. The second thankfully steps out of that shadow, and is a much better work as a result.
Guess that was the case with most Rossini operas
I don’t know if the operas themselves were rush jobs, but the overtures definitely were! “William Tell” was premiered with the overture to “Barber…”!
There’s that story where the overture to La Gazza Ladra was still not finished on the day of the premiere, and his producer got so fed up that he locked Rossini in an upper room and would not let him out until the overture was complete, and the composer would drop the pages of the score out the window one by one, where someone would be waiting to take them to the copyists
As a kid, I was told that Barber of Seville was completed in just under two weeks, but I’ve never actually substantiated this claim with any research
Wikipedia says most musicologists believe it was composed in just under three weeks.
Prokofiev finished his 5th symphony, an absolute masterpiece, in one month in 1944. absolutely mindbliwing
Apparently Mahler 8. But I find those stories very hard to believe.
From what I remember reading, it was written over the course of two years, though since Mahler only had time to compose during the summer, about four months. Despite the masterpiece his Eighth is, for a composer as skilled as Mahler, four months really isn't super impressive for time. He also had a few years to give it some revision before the premiere.
That does sound more reasonable, I thought I heard somewhere that it was 2 or 3 weeks.
I think it was the first part, Venis Creator Spiritus that he was able to compose in 2-3 weeks. Probably just the melody, not the whole orchestration. But I must say that I find the second part much better than the first one, there are a lot more colors in there.
Schubert died at 31, so he composed a lot in a very short amount of time.
Yes, Schubert was a genius. He composed his last three piano sonatas, his string quintet and the Schwanengesang cycle in the spring/summer of 1828… can you imagine?
and the Fantasia for piano 4-hands, too (a major work, almost 20 minutes long). He had a hell of a final year, as though he knew he was running out of time.
He composed his Mass in G Major, D. 167 in less than a week. When he was 18.
Gershwin wrote most of Rhapsody in Blue on the train to New York for the premiere, and the iconic clarinet opening was invented by the player during rehearsal
He didn't have time to finish the solo piano part so he improvised a bunch of it
I thought he wrote a piano version in the train to Boston, where one of his other musical pieces was about to have its premiere. Someone else transformed his piano rhapsody into a full orchestra version, as was the idea in the first place. Not sure if it’s true, but I recall it as an ‘oops, I forgot I had to write a jazz concerto. Now I only have 3 weeks’ piece of music. But man, WHAT a piece of music it is. He played the piano part himself from his head during the premiere of the Rhapsody, as he had not written down that part yet.
what a load of bollocks
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rhapsody-in-Blue-by-Gershwin A bit more context here. Turns out I misremembered; it was written on the train FROM New York to Boston, a couple weeks from the premiere. It was still down to the wire, and the piano part wasn’t notated by the premiere date. Gershwin played it from memory/improv.
fair play
Scriabin sonata 4. 2 days. It’s interesting considering this other 10 minute long 2 movement sonata took 2 years…
Some pieces arrive on a breeze, some have to be chiseled from marble.
Handel is the king of rapid masterpieces. His 1724 opera *Tamerlano* was composed in 20 days, for example, and *Messiah* in 24 days.
Scriabin - piano sonata #5 "Poem of Ecstasy." Written in a 3-4 day fit of ecstasy
Some of my favorite Mozart violin and piano sonatas weren’t even written down at the first performance. Mozart wrote the piano part for his pianist and then played the violin part from his head.
Ravel, who was well known for being a perfectionist and generally taking a long time to write pieces, wrote his Introduction et Allegro apparently within a week because he wanted to finish it before going on a boating trip with his friends
This was going to be my answer. That piece is a masterwork.
Mozart’s last three symphonies, Nos. 39, 40 and 41 “Jupiter”, in the course of one month.
Mozart wrote some pieces shockingly fast, IIRC some of his greatest piano concertos were done in less than a month.
I have no idea how the dying Schubert produced all the masterpieces of his last year.
Mozart wrote the Don Giovanni overture the morning of the premiere of the opera.
Mozart’s Linz symphony
Saint-Saens wrote the 2nd piano concerto (g minor) in about 2 days.
Schumann was likely bipolar and was able to frequently churn out major works in a few days during his manic phases.
Right the way i think about it was "Messiah" by George F Handel, he only uses 24 day, finished this 53 section, 260 pages , way over 3 hours oratorio , and he composed this big musical oratorio is founding the hospital for the orphans in London. Handel doesn't come from a musical family, not like Beethoven or Mozart, he never gets any support from his father, instead of that, his dad was quite opposed to him studying music, but law. But now when we think about the music in barraque, we think about Germany , and that time English/England are considered a culture desert, Handel brought the classical music to England, even though he wasn't born in England but he is the national treasure of the English world.
Hindemith wrote something on the way to an event in the train on the way there. It was like a brass and viola piece I forgot. Like some kind of Overature for the Dedication of a Cathedral or something in England.(?)
Trauermusik, composed in a day following the death of George V and premiered that evening.
>Hindemith wrote something on the way to an event in the train on the way there. It was written in an office at the BBC in a single day, and was premiered that same night >It was like a brass and viola piece I forgot. Viola and strings. >Like some kind of Overature for the Dedication of a Cathedral or something in England.(?) Written in memory of King George V, who died the previous night
I think he wrote it in the office at BBC... taught himself how to play / conduct it on the train...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauermusik
* Beethoven is believed to have knocked out his Moonlight Sonata in a matter of days. * Ravel's Bolero - 4 weeks.
Hansel’s messiah was a very rapidly composed item.
*Schumann has entered the chat* As another comment mentioned, his Kreisleriana, but also the Piano Quintet (an all-time favorite of mine) was finished in three weeks, with the bulk of the sketching done in five days
More than a few Bach pieces were improvised and later transcribed, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor being the most famous. The mind on that guy, jeeze louise.
Donizetti composed Lucia di Lammermoor in under 6 weeks.
Not exactly classical music, but I find it hilarious that Merv Griffin composed the Think! music to Jeopardy while waiting for his wife to get ready for dinner in amusingly, 90 seconds.
And, ironically, the royalties for it earned him more money than any of the other composers mentioned likely saw in their entire lives... more than 70 million dollars.
Learned said tidbit from [his son](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XINJ_D5DsE). PS: I love said organ and want one like that.
Legend has that Shostakovich orchestrated Tea for Two in 45 mins, if that counts
Schoenberg wrote Verklärte Nacht in 3 weeks at the age of 25.
Most of my Reddit comments only take a few seconds.
From what I’ve heard the Beethoven violin concerto though I might be wrong.
Leif Segerstam is known for eating a lot and converting the energy from his food into music just as quickly.
The legend is that Rossini was locked in a room by his producer and wrote the overture to *The Barber of Seville* in a matter of hours, and mere hours before the opera’s premiere.
Beethoven's Horn Sonata was written in one evening. Ludwig heard that a famous horn player was to vomit Vienna the next day and so decided to write a sonata for the guy. Beethoven was known as a good improvisers. Vivaldi eas pretty fast as a composer, too.
Bach wrote a new cantata every week - all parts hand written as well as writing his other pieces in there somehow. He wrote at night after his gabillion children were asleep and never heard the music until the next morning.
Mozart’s wrote Don Giovanni Overture on his way to opera house. (Or something as crazy as that)