What makes a successful composition

[cygnusdei]

This is an attempt to establish fundamental principles behind a successful composition. I posit that for a composition to be successful:

1. It has to be original. The opposite: appropriating work of other composer's as one's own.
2. It has to be unique. The opposite: renaming an existing work and passing it off as a new work.
3. It has to be available to audience. The opposite: Kept hidden/lost/destroyed.
4. It has to generate admiration from audience. The opposite: audience perceives no value.

Your thoughts?

[jabbz]

I think lots of successful compositions are both unoriginal and non-unique. Don't get me wrong, they should be! Just, lots aren't.

[cygnusdei]

LOL, that's a good point

[counterpoint]

I wonder if the Sonata facile is really Mozart's best piano composition and if the Träumerei is really the best composition of Schumann. Not to talk about some other guy from Bonn who wrote a piece named Für Elise.

Success is a strange thing 

[bob3.1415926]

Success and greatness are definitely distinct. Success is (to an extent) measurable. If they weren't, Pharrell Williams (pop song writer en masse) or someone like him, would currently be the greatest living composer.
Even Mozart was largely unappreciated in his time. His music was viewed as too complex, and frequently had mediocre receptions at performances. But hey, the living generation rarely seems to like its own composers, and prefer the ones who play it safe/boring and hark back to the past, whom history will no doubt forget. (Kalkbrenner anybody? He was a much more popular contemporary of Chopin's)

[cygnusdei]

If nos. 1 & 2 (intrinsic qualities) are not required for success (not greatness), does it mean that only 3 & 4 (public reception) are required?

[schartmanovich]

It depends on what you mean by successful. If you mean commercially or distributively so, often any old sh*t will do. If you mean musically successful you're going to need a lot more than what you've postulated.

[cygnusdei]

Yes, what I had in mind was more like the minimum requirements. For example, a piece could be fantastic, but if it's lost in a fire, then it can't be successful, whatever the definition of success would be. Am I making sense at all