A possibly novel idea?

[ongaku_oniko]

There has been so many musicians who's done so many things that I'd never even think of, so I'm pretty sure this has at least been thought of before, but has any composer ever written a complete... recital?

What I mean is, instead of having musicians put together pieces for a recital, a composer writes a number of pieces that is DESIGNED so that they will all be played in a single recital, lasting the whole recital?

Like this way, the composer can sort of also ... control the flow of the recital, where he would like to have contrast, and what kind of a mood for the whole recital to be, instead of having people gather random pieces that have nothing to do with each other together for a performance?

Does that kind of make sense? I'm not sure if I explained it properly, but I think it would be a neat idea, and if someone has done this, I want to hear the result.

[djealnla]

A good sense of dramaturgy should suffice, methinks.

Sorabji composed his 4th Piano Sonata with the intention of it occupying an entire program. Mahler disliked the playing of several different works at concerts, which is one of the reasons why he went on to write such massive symphonies. I'm also pretty sure that many cycles (whether Schubert's song ones or Liszt's piano ones) are focused on some specific idea/mood and could be combined with "like-minded" pieces. Perhaps somebody could do a piano recital solely with Medtner's Opp. 38, 39 and 40.

I'm deliberately leaving out opera music out of this, as you can see.

[stevebob]

I'm deliberately leaving out opera music out of this, as you can see.

It's interesting that you mention that, as opera was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the original post as typifying a single, event-length musical program.

[ongaku_oniko]

Well, what I'm trying to say is, something like operas (which I admit, I did not think of), and really long pieces like the opus clavicembalisticum may take up the time of a whole recital, but is in essence, still the same "piece", but with different movements.

I was thinking of a thing where it's a combination of completely different and separate pieces in themselves, but are also not completely separate in that they were designed to fit in one single program.

Heck, even adding in someone else's pieces somewhere in that program would count.

In essence, what I was thinking is that a single piano performance, recital or whatever is supposedly to convey some musical idea, right? Well, a composer is also supposed to do this, so wouldn't it be interesting to have composers 'compose' programs, such that their ideas can be extended in the whole programs?