How did the composers write all that stuff!?

[plunkyplink]

When I do searches for sheet music or songs, I'm just in awe of how much music these classical composers wrote! Sonatas, concertos, inventions, fugues, symphonies, for piano, for violin, etc... How much can a human write in one day? I wonder how they did it. Did they sit down every day, in a regular, routine of work? Or did they write a few bars and get apprentices to fill out the rest? Did anyone write by sitting at the piano, zoning out improvising and catch something they liked and filled that out into a sonata or something? I'm just baffled by the composing process. I bet it was 20% talent and 80% discipline, as that seems to be how today's prolific and successful writers, and artists, do it.

[mikey6]

There were no TV's, computers, video games, pornography etc. to  distract them.
Nah... well, yeh ..but nah.  They were geniuses remember!
I think most of them sat at the piano and worked things out even if they didn't write for the piano (eg. Mahler and Elgar).  Chopin used to improvise at the piano I think and order what he could from that.  I think most of Mozart and Beethoven's variations would have been improvised and then re-thought out and ordered afterwards - they used to have competitions.
Mendelssohn wrote the 1st piano concerto on a train trip, so probably when they had nothing else to do.
I think the biggest myth is Handel writing the Messiah in 14 days - near 3 hours of music in fulls score boggles the mind!  apparently it's true.

[rc]

I bet it was 20% talent and 80% discipline

You got it there. That's where the old cliche "10% inspiration, 90% perspiration" comes from. Remember, a composer wrote music for a living... It was their job as well as their love, and for the most part they dedicated their lives to it. Think of your own job; it might not be so grand as writing timeless music, but you go in to work every day and over time you accomplish a lot.

We do have a lot more entertainment to distract in this affluent society of ours. But then, it's just as easy to turn off the computer, advice I should take more often . Actually, we have access to so much more information than ever, sometimes the problem is information overload.

[emmdoubleew]

It completely depends.

Composer like Liszt who just went through pages and pages like it was some frantic race could do it without a piano and just compose as fast as they could write (that's why, although he wrote some truly fantastic work, there's a lot of crap). Others like Beethoven, who wrote significantly less than Liszt, actually took a lot of time to write (Look at his orignal drafts, crossouts galore).