Have you ever noticed it seems quite frequently that those who are gifted at writing music can't always perform their own music with professionalism. Then there are those who are excellent at performing music but not gifted at composing music. Then there are those few exceptionally gifted people that can write great music and perform it professionally as well.

Why do you suppose it is that musicians tend to be either good composers or good performers but not typically both? This has always perplexed me.

I suspect it is because, in modern days, people are preconditioned to only be allowed to do one or the other...either they compose or they perform. There seems to be little middle ground, and if you want to find it, you have to do so on your own time. But I find that the opposite SHOULD be the case. With all the medical advances, speaking specifically to anatomy, and technological advances, today more than ever people should be able to do both. So why don't they?

Well, now we have to take into account the fact that classical music is not at the pinnacle of the music industry, so it receives far less attention. Large orchestrations and great pieces are reserved for movie scores, and less than 3% of the music industry ever hears from them. So, there is really less of a drive to be accomplished at both.

Of course, it is probably easier to go from pianist to composer than from composer to pianist, due to the fact that you would start as a pianist much younger than if you had been a composer first. So, I suspect that, as a child is developing, the teacher does not stress improvisation or composition at all, and the student is forever deprived of this avenue, being only able to reproduce what is given to them, but failing completely the depth of intuition of musical inclination necessary to compose.

As for me, I am neither a great pianist nor a great composer, but I can play what I write with no exceptions thus far...but I am trying to write something so difficult I can't play it, and yet still have some sense of musicality to it. We'll see how I do.

Well, it's news to me that those who compose may tend to not be great performers and visa versa. I guess I never really thought about it too much. I just tend to think about all of the pianist/composer/performers who seem to be doing both very well i.e. Kostia, Jim Brickman, John Boswell, David Nevue, Liz Story, Keiko Matsui, etc. They're all so called "new age" musicians BTW.

I just always think of them and that's what is typical.

Makes me feel a bit better if my beliefs were off a bit. I feel more of a composer than a performer, though I'm trying to get better at the latter.

I CAN play my own pieces. It's just it takes a whole lot of discipline to practice and practice till I get it right. And I'd much rather be composing than practising!

Jeanne W

As all my compositions arise from improvisation it follows that I write nothing I cannot play at once. However, this certainly does not imply that I can sit down and play from memory everything I have written over more than three decades of creating piano music.

Slacker. :p

Yes and no. A very small time published writer and photographer, I started playing four years ago at age 62. Approximately six weeks into it, in an Easy Piano arrangement of Duke Ellington's Don't Get Around Much Anymore, I came upon a five-chord-progression that I liked very much and started noodling around with it. The noodling became a song with two melodies, each with two variations, which will play a little over five minutes when it's finished in a month's time.

Here's what I learned: Playing and composing are different mindsets which intersect during improvisation. Many people can be taught how to play. Very few can be taught how to compose, because their teachers, themselves, don't know what is involved in composing.

Playing requires paying close attention to the tune as written. Composing requires a mindset that lets you play whatever what you just played makes you feel right now.

Conservatory education emphasizes rote. Creativity is essentially defined as how the written notes are played. A conservatory student told me that students can go thru their entire program without ever improvising one note. Yikes.

I think that the longer and more formally that people study playing, the less likely they are to ever compose.

When I started to compose, I had one chord progression. No theory, no reading ability, and no playing skill. But constant noodling with a five-chord progression---and noodling until that's all I wanted to do---is making me into a composer.

Different mindset. Tho I do often wish that I could play the bloody thing;-)

PS, Chopin said that his music sounded better when Lizt played it.

FogvilleLad...
Thanks for your fascinating analysis of this
process. You've said it very well for my
understanding.
Now theres another link...do you think that
the kind of mind that writes good prose is
more likely to write good music?

*laughs* Not if my music is any example! :p

But then, maybe my prose shouldn't be any example either... we'll have to see.

I've played piano for a long time, but never was particularly good. For a long time the most difficult opiece I could play was the Brahms Intermezzo in A (Op. 118 #2). I've also composed for a long time, the last 25+ years using computers to do the performing (my first music computer was an Apple II+ with 48K of RAM). For the last few years I've concentrated on learning my own pieces. I'm not quite there yet both the Fugue and the Rhapsody are proving a challenge to bring up to preferred tempo. I continue to make progress.

The bottom line is I believe the two are different skills that are at opposite ends of the way music is taught these days. That may be part of the problem of classical music's popularity. the good news is even an older guy like me can acquire the skill to play more challenging pieces (like my own Rhapsody).

I can play most of my stuff, but there's a couple pieces that I'm working on at the moment that are pretty tough. Not impossible, but I'd actually have to take some time to sit down and practice them to do them justice.

i did try to play a few compositions i had, but never got to the point that i could actually memorize any and play it through. even though pieces i composed are relatively uncomplicated, even a few 2-part fugue exercises, but still they are hard to play. so, i just let my computer play it for me, which is much easier.

A very interesting observation, Sarabande ... and one that I have wondered about too. This performance-versus-composition dichotomy has vexed me for years, and I have oscillated between two poles: writing music that I could not play -- especially orchestrated pieces that are sequenced -- and deciding at times that I would compose only [new] pieces that I could sit down at the piano and play from memory as a solo piano version.

Currently I'm in the former state of mind, having gone through a year of I'm-going-to work-this-out-as-a-solo-piano-piece-first during which I produced numerous unfinished pieces, all with orchestration or thematic developments still swimming in my head while I fall out of practice with respect to playing the existing "to-date" work in progress. Lately, though, I've been having a blast composing and orchestrating new works on the fly, and not caring if I could go back and play the piece straight through. This I find much more pleasing, as I have for most of my musical life. Soon I will start going back to last year's unfinished works that exist in an incomplete piano version, and developing them without the self-imposed "performability" pressure. (Yes, they all exist as sequenced versions that I would "record" from time to time to aid my finger-memory!)

I also believe that the technical demands of performance often demand a different mindset than those of creative (compositional) development. For those of us who enjoy musical composition and performance as a hobby, I think it is practically impossible to feel that we excel at both (or frankly, excel at **either**) ... and for those who are professionally engaged in music, although their skills are likely at a much higher level of development the same mindset-environments would still apply to most individuals.

To draw ananlogy to my own professional (that is, "day job") field, which is science-oriented, there are those who follow a career path that emphasizes the "practice" of specialized techniques and those who are more acclimated to "creative" research activities.

And paradoxically, my career away from music is on the "technical-excution" side of things!

It all boils down to ... what is more satisfying to you as a musician? Everybody will find a different balance....

Based only on personal experience, I'd say---with some astonishment---that the two are not necessarily related at all.

... although there are many interesting parallels between prose composition and musical composition ... for example, the most effective artists are able to envision and mentally encompass the work as a whole ("macro"), as well as execute the technical details ("micro") of effective sentence structure, word choice, thematic development, harmony, orchestral "color" choices ...

Depends on how you mean that, I think. Composers must have more than one *thing* going on to be considered good, don't they?

1-Creativity. Don't know if creativity for writing necessarily equates to creativity for musical ideas, BUT I CAN tell you one thing...

2-Musical Form/Structure: I KNOW that having the ability to form, structure, edit written notes, letters, articles, etc. WELL, does not necessarily mean you can do the same with music form/structure. I said this somewhere here... When called for, I DO have the ability to stucture/edit/hone down written words to a tight, coherant format; I am not so confident I have the same ability to do the same with musical structure. I believe it is much more *intuitive* for most all of us to be able to write the written words well, since all of us verbalize, all of us speak with words. All day. Every day. However, most of us don't go around humming music all day long. Music without lyrics (which is what I do), I find especially difficult to structure/edit/hone down to *perfection* the way I do with *words*.

If ONLY I worked half as hard on my music compositions as on things I WRITE... I mean, like a "Letter To The Editor" to a newspaper, or an article for the newsletter where I work... I will work on it and cut and slash and edit and work until I know "THAT'S IT! I GOT IT! FINAL! DONE!" Unfortunately, I don't work that hard on my music compositions.

Jeanne W

This reminds me of something that REALLY gets to me. I think of, for instance, Chopin's music. You have to be one helluva pianist to play some of Chopin's pieces. When I hear a TERRIFIC pianist who is playing light years ahead of me, I sometimes find myself thinking: "Just IMAGINE what he/she could be composing!"

I have a difficult time understanding those who do NOT compose. It is so alien a thought to me.

I DO agree that those who take formal lessons may devote so much time to performance that there is precious little time to explore the composing part of it. And formal training seems not to much encourage composing.

I believe I read in Rubenstein's biography that, at one point in his life, early in his career, he was forced to make a decision --- whether to be a composer or a performer. It was not possible for him to be both. What an excrutiating decision that must have been. We have Rubenstein's recordings before us for posterity; but I have to wonder what his music might have been like had he been a composer!!!

Jeanne W

I learn my compositions just enough to get by. I don't really care to "master" them, and I don't practice them. I usually write it, and if I like the piece enough, I'll learn it. Sometimes I don't bother learning my smaller compositions, but almost all of my works I can play.

I am a good performer and an "O.K." composer. If I get off my lazy butt to write something important, then it will be good. Playing it is like learning a new piece but a WHOLE lot easier.

-The T

Hmmm . . . good point about playing one's own composition like learning a new piece but a whole lot easier. I never thought of it that way. It does make sense that one would be so much more familiar with a piece and know exactly how it was intended to sound being the one who wrote it.

I can't play most of my compositions, because my piano is missing an octave or more at the top and bottom. (the piano only has 88 keys, from A0 (27.5Hz) to C8 (4186.009Hz), and is missing keys down to C-1 (~8Hz) and up to G9 (~12.5kHz) (although for a while I think C0 (16.35Hz) would be about the minimum I could get by with.))

Note to piano designers and the like who may read this (ex: Del, KawaiDon) - I picked that range (C-1 8Hz to G9 12.5kHz) because that's the MIDI range. It'd be nice to be able to have a piano that plays the entire MIDI note range (128 notes). I'd like another octave lower, but I'd probably only be using it for extra "depth" in double/triple octaves (and my hands aren't that big), and also might like a little bit higher notes too, but my hearing tops out at 16KHz, between B9 and C10. So I think I should be able to live with C-1 to G9. (but, minimum is C0 to C8.)

Also, I'd like to do some of my own compositions, but right now I can't afford the Roland RD-700SX or the Casio PX-555r so I can be the only one hearing myself play while I work on the piece(s).

I'm struggling more with them than my rep but I'll find out at the next composers concert in march whether I can or not I guess! (PS - I'm going to make sure this one gets recorded so i can post it with the score for feedback!)

I still can't play my Piano Concerto No. 1 as well as I want to. Maybe in a month or two.

Very interesting topic. I would love to write stuff harder than I can play but hesitate to, because then I have to wonder if it is really playable at all (besides by finale). What I really am agog about is how orchestral composers and the like "know" if their stuf is playable. Assuming they've not mastered every orchestral instrument, how do you know the ins and outs of the quirks of every instrument, where it sounds best (range-wise) and all the special techniques? Like, say, flutes: I just accompanied flautists (sp?) for the fist time this year and discovered double tonguing. Who knew???

I can play a few of my piano pieces. With one or two exceptions anything I've written in the last 10 years is too hard for me. That doesn't bother me because I don't want to be tied to the limits of my personal technique.

Well that's what studying orchestration is for. Seriously, orchestration is a subject that is deep and wide, so much so that one is never done learning about it. A good college level music education includes experiences such as yours for this very reason, exposure to other instruments and their potentials.
Amen to that! Here's something I've learned about writing for the piano, if fingers can reach it somebody can play it. The only problem is that for lesser known composers there may not be a reason for better performers to take up your music. In my case I learned my most difficult piece (my Rhapsody), because I wanted people to hear it. Like you it was far beyond my abilities when I wrote it. In the process of learning it I made some minor changes that made playing it easier, but no more than a few notes. Learning that piece did wonders for my technique. By all means write beyond your abilities, you may very well end up stretching your abilities to make your music heard. Good luck.

Well up to a point I could play what I wrote in piano. I wrote them while playing. Later on I started writting my stuff on manuscript first, and not on the piano, in which case I started needing to study my own pieces (they were rather difficult I think). When I did my masters in music, I wrote a piano piece, which I simply didn't have the courage, and time to work on. Right now it would take me months and months to learn, thus I never studied it! I hired a pianist instead to do this work! And he is doing a splendid job!

Knowing the quircks of the instruments is called "instrumentation" and the how it sounds in the orchestra "orchestration". It takes both studying and experience! It's not really impossible to know the techniques that each instrument has, it is the first step after the range. What is more difficult is to write idiomatically for each instrument! And it is clearely evident to any performer if you don't know their instrument!

Wanting to play everything I write would limit me (as Scott and Steve says), but it would also reduce my creativity! My creativity comes from my brain, not my hands while playing the piano!

I feel far better playing my own composition than anybody else's. Probably because my music is designed to fit my hands and because "composing" the next note on the fly is faster to me that reading (even-though sight-reading used to be my specialty).

I compose directly on the piano but the structure/melody is always in my head first. I like this method because the songs sound mostly the same to a listener from interpretation to interpretation but, the little addition I do on the fly makes it more... can't find the word... alive.

The only song I composed that I couldn't play was an electronic song with layered samples and was not intended to be played by an instrument.

Being good at everything without being very good at anything, that's the story of my life. That may not be what the world needs but that's what I am. (And it's quite useful in a manager job)

I think that I write music which is too difficult for me to play (unless I spend a lot of practice time) because I am trying to produce something with complexity and meaning. If I can immediately play it, than it most likely is superficial (to me at least). The compositions I am most proud of required quite a bit of work to rehearse, memorize, and perform. I do acknowledge, however, that there are many pianists who have more talent or skill and may enjoy my compositions without the effort.

I think my opinion is based on the fact that my compositional background is much more classical than improvisational.
For my undergrad degree I combined Music Education, and Music Theory/Composition. Two pieces I composed and performed in recital were: Sonata No. 1 in D Major, and The Fruit of the Spirit Suite (I-IX), both for solo piano.

I improvise (spontaneously compose) all of my music so yes, I do play my compositions. Once played however, I generally am not able to play them back note for note. Since I record them, I have a vast repertoire of improvised pieces that I could transcribe should anyone indicate enough interest in learning them. I think it'd be a bit conceited to assume anyone would want to learn my music though so I'm content to be an amateur and enjoy making sounds for myself, and any friends or family or myspace browsers who wish to listen.

Similar for me Zom. Don't you just love it when you create something with clear references to favourite composers style. I've been working on my own composition for years and improvise around its theme all the time. The problem is because its my own work I don't create anything that pushes the limits or uses techniques unfamiliar to me. Infact I noticed recently it doesn't use the LH digit 2 at all.

Another problem is I don't play well when I'm recording myself. My fingers become clammy which causes them to slip and I'm concious of trying to play without mistakes instead of thinking ahead. One evening this week I was very focused while playing my own stuff and spontaniously came up with a passage that made me think "wow that really works". Had I been recording it would never have happened. Now I've forgotten it!