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Famously, Paul McCartney awoke from a dream one day with the melody to “Yesterday” already in his head, and completed the tune (albeit with “scrambled eggs” used as a placeholder lyric) that same morning. Freddie Mercury wrote “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in around ten minutes while taking a bath. And David Bowie wrote “Life on Mars?” in a single afternoon, having come up with the riff while buying a pair of shoes in central London.
But it’s not just in the world of rock and pop that new compositions can come together remarkably quickly when inspiration calls. Even in the world of classical music, there are numerous tales of composers penning some of their greatest, grandest, and best-known works remarkably (if relatively) quickly.
Mozart was a notoriously precocious and prolific composer, finishing his earliest compositions when he was just a child, writing his first symphony at the age of eight, and (allegedly, at least) writing out the entirety of Allegri’s Miserere from memory in a single night, having heard a performance of it in the Vatican.
Of all the tales of his astonishing musical creativity, however, perhaps the most remarkable of all is the completion of his thirty-sixth symphony, known as “The Linz,” which he wrote in a flurry of creative activity over just four days in the summer of 1783.
Scored for oboes, bassoons, horns, trumpets, kettle drums, and an entire string section, Mozart began the piece on his arrival in the city of Linz, in northern Austria, while on his way home to Vienna from Salzburg. On hearing of Mozart’s arrival, the local count promptly announced a concert in his honor—for which Mozart decided to compose an entirely new piece of music.
Incredibly, the entire four-movement work, which takes about half an hour to perform, was written, rehearsed, and prepared for its premiere on November 4, 1783, less than a week after his arrival in the city.
For much of his early career, Joseph Haydn was employed as musical director of the wealthy Esterházy family in Hungary. On the death of Prince Esterházy in 1790, however, Haydn—whose work in Hungary had earned him considerable fame across Europe—was finally free to work elsewhere, and on New Year’s Day, 1791, he arrived in London on the invitation of his friend, the German-born violinist Johann Peter Salomon.
Haydn so enjoyed his time in England that he remained for over a year (and returned for another 18-month sojourn in 1794). It was during his first trip, though, that he composed a string of twelve symphonies that would become known as his “London” symphonies, premiering each one to rave reviews in the city that gave them their name.
Of all the “London” works, though, perhaps the most famous is the second (and Haydn’s ninety-fourth overall), which has become known as the “Surprise” Symphony, due to a sudden and explosive dynamic change in the second movement. according to the data musical legend, Haydn added this abrupt fortissimo note to the “Surprise” symphony spontaneously while conducting the premiere performance in an attempt to wake up an audience member he could hear snoring in the front row behind him.
Whether that story is true or not remains a matter of debate—but the fact that Haydn appears to have composed the “Surprise” in a matter of just a few weeks, or even days, appears far more likely. according to the data his letters and diaries, Haydn seemingly wrote the “Surprise” Symphony at some point during a five-week stay in the Hertfordshire countryside, on the outskirts of London, in the summer of 1791.
The German composer Robert Schumann claimed to have written all eight movements of his solo piano suite Kreisleriana in just four days amid a sudden flush of creativity in the April of 1838. He himself thought it one of his greatest compositions, and it has since gone on to be considered one of the staple works of 19th-century romantic piano music, as well as one of Schumann’s many masterpieces.
1909 was an immensely creative year for the notoriously fast writer Arnold Schoenberg, as it was in this year that he completed several of his most famous and acclaimed pieces—among them, his bizarre single-voice opera, Erwartung.
Although described as an opera, Erwartung (which essentially means “Expectation” in English) is really more of a sung monologue for a single soprano, accompanied by a full orchestra of strings, brass, woodwind, celesta, and a robust percussion section including timpani, a glockenspiel, rattles, and tam-tams.
Despite its size and notorious musical complexity and intensity, Schoenberg finished the entire half-hour work in a matter of days—yet it took a staggering fifteen years for it to receive its debut performance, which took place in Prague in 1924.
In January of 1936, the German composer Paul Hindemith was invited to London for the British premiere of his concerto for viola, known as Der Schwanendreher (“The Swan Turner”), with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at Queen’s Hall.
The performance was due to be broadcast live on January 22. Hindemith arrived on January 19, but just before midnight on January 20, King George V died, and the concert was abruptly yet understandably canceled.
Not wanting to waste Hindemith’s journey nor the opportunity of having one of Europe’s greatest living composers in London, however, the BBC producers requested Hindemith’s involvement in arranging an alternative broadcast that would be more suitable given the somberness of the occasion.
Doubtless to their surprise, Hindemith instead composed an entire suite of new music, scored for a viola and string orchestra, which he called Trauermusik, or “Mourning Music.” Incredibly, he wrote the four-movement composition in a single afternoon, reportedly starting at 11 o’clock in the morning on January 21, and finishing it just six hours later.
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