(No, not how to make spliffs.)

Composing seems a very personal thing to me.  And yet there must be examples of works written by 2 or more people.

I know there are suites with different movements written by different composers, but I was thinking more of collaborations on single works - perhaps Delius and Fenby count as this?

Do members know any decent joint compositions?

And for those composers on the board, what is the process of joint composition like?

Tommo

Tibor Serly.

If completions can count then what about those truely awful 2 piano arrangements Grieg made of some of the Mozart piano sonatas?

I know of 2 Exquisite Corpse-like projects, though I don't know of recordings of either.  Neither felt terribly successful to me, sonically or formally, though I suppose that's not terribly surprising.

I mentioned this one before back at TOP (in the Opera Quiz thread)...

The original (1872) version of MLADA was intended as a large-scale collaboration between the members of "the Five", plus the ballet composer Minkus.  (In fact even this was not the "original" version, as the libretto had originally been offered to Serov in 1870, who died without beginning the composition of the work). For intended reasons of practicality (which in fact solved nothing), Krylov's libretto was carved-up between the composers, each taking a different section to set to music, as follows:

Act I - Cui to compose the sung portions, and Minkus to provide an Act I opera-ballet finale.
Act II - Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov agreed privately to collaborate on joint composition
Act III - (same as Act II, although Geodonov had intended MM and NR-K to have a separate act each)
Act IV - Borodin to set the entire text "and incorporate his colleagues work into a grand finale".

This legendary operatic fiasco never saw the light of day.  Mussorgsky failed to finish any of what he was supposed to have written, and arrived at the final orchestral rehearsal with rehash of "Night On a Bare Mountain" reset (as a choral finale) to Act III.  The work got as far as the Dress Rehearsal, which began at 2pm, and was disbanded in disarray at 5am the following morning, having got no further than Act III.   The soloists protested that they'd been given their music to learn as late as the morning of the Dress Rehearsal itself.  Cui had a fight with Minkus and locked himself in his dressing-room.  Minkus enraged everyone by producing a score of the entire work as a ballet, saying there was no need for the music of the other composers - or of the advertised opera cast.  Mussorgsky and Rimsky retired to a nearby restaurant and refused to attend rehearsals of scenes they hadn't written. The wife of the conductor appeared in the building and accused him of having an affair with the prima ballerina.  Borodin furiously complained that he had been the only composer to have submitted his work by due date, yet the rehearsal finished without a note of it being played.  Geodonov, the impresario who had commissioned the work, and Director Of The Imperial Theatres, disappeared around 2am.

At 11am the following morning, the Organising Committee made an official announcement that the opera production was permanently cancelled.

Minkus went on to give his ballet-score version in full (and had a financial, if not critical success with it).  He also bought the colosally-expensive scenery and costumes for the original 1872 version for a pittance when they were sold at auction. Rimsky took the libretto of all four acts, and reset it,  retaining only Mussorgsky's contributions (although without the Night On A Bare Mountain).  Rimsky's version failed after just 2-3 performances and was withdrawn.   Rimsky later made a symphonic poem arrangement of Borodin's music for the Act IV finale, after Borodin's death, by way of a tribute to him.

Geodonov retired from the theatre after this experience, and took up employment in an entirely different branch of the Imperial Service.

ISTR that one of other of Salzedo and Lindup paid for the recording. If so, I think he deserves our thanks for the Seiber/Dankworth, and the de Peyer recording of the Ebony Concerto.

I wonder whether what Rimsky-Korsakov did with Mussorgsky's Night on a Bare Mountain would qualify. Not a joint composition but rewritten by RK in a number of ways, it's interesting to hear that version (the one that's usually played) with the original. I also like what Satie did in his Sonatine Bureaucratique with Clementi's Sonatine op 36 no 1. I know that neither is an example of two composers putting their heads together but it's fascinating to compare the versions. Perhaps there are examples of how Tchiakovsky reacted to advice from other composers.

There was a case which I mentioned on TOP in the "Tchaikovsky Experience" threads... related to "Swan Lake".  We tend to forget now that Swan Lake was a flop when it first appeared, and had such a poor reception that the Imperial Kamenny ("Stone") Theatre withdrew the work from the repertoire.

Tchaikovsky received advice from various sources about revisions, but wouldn't budge.  He even took his score to Prague, where a production to his liking was staged - however, financial considerations prevented this production touring to Russia to vindicate the work.  A star ballerina was roped-in to head-up the cast of a new production, but she clearly hated the work from the outset.  Being from St Petersburg (the production was being staged in Moscow at the Bolshoi) she skipped northwards for a short while, and had the choreographer Petipa design a new pas-de-deux, to replace Tchaikovsky's pas-de-quatre...  and to new music, which she persuaded Minkus (the pre-eminent ballet composer of the era) to write for her.  Tchaikovsky was enraged when he found out what had been hatched behind his back, and refused to allow Minkus's pas-de-deux to feature in his ballet. As a deadlock-breaker, he offered to write new music that would match Petipa's choreography perfectly, with the same number of bars and characteristics as Minkus's music.  This was in fact just piqued pride, as what Tchaikovsky then did was to take Minkus's melody, place in the 'cellos, and write a more attractive accompaniment for it.

Of course, we no longer hear Tchaikovsky's score of Swan Lake in ballet theatres, but an arranged version of it.  Tchaikovsky was collaborating with Petipa (the choreographer whose fame had eclipsed Tchaikovsky's by this stage) on a revival which would finally confirm the work's place in the repertoire, at the time of Tchaikovsky's death.  The conductor of this St Petersburg restaging (with all-new choreography by Petipa) was Riccardo Drigo,  who took it upon himself to "correct" the late composer's score, altering the order of numbers, the orchestration, and making extensive cuts...  primarily to make himself "useful" to the all-powerful Petipa.  Drigo always claimed that he was "acting on instructions and ideas made by Tchaikovsky himself during the rehearsals", but we only have his word for this.  This is the real "crunch" moment of tonybob's question...  did Tchaikovsky really accept all of Drigo's suggestions so very easily, when he'd put his foot down against any revisions for the previous 20 years?