The following list gives some details of classical works written by composers working collaboratively.
Opera and operetta • In 1656,
The Siege of Rhodes was written in London, and is considered to be the first English
opera. The vocal music is by
Henry Lawes,
Matthew Locke, and Captain
Henry Cooke, and the instrumental music is by Charles Coleman and
George Hudson. • In 1721,
Filippo Amadei,
Giovanni Bononcini and
George Frideric Handel each wrote one act of the opera
Muzio Scevola. • Also in 1721,
Michel Richard Delalande and
André Cardinal Destouches jointly composed the opera-ballet
Les élémens. • Between the 1720s and the 1760s,
François Francoeur and
François Rebel collaborated on a number of operas. • In 1767,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Michael Haydn and
Anton Cajetan Adlgasser each wrote one act of
Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots. Only Mozart's music has survived. •
Luigi Ricci and his younger brother
Federico wrote a number of operas together, including
Crispino e la comare (1850). • In 1861, the
operetta ''Les musiciens de l'orchestre'' was written by
Léo Delibes, Erlanger,
Aristide Hignard and
Jacques Offenbach. • ''
Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre'' was an operetta produced in Paris in December 1867. One act each was written by
Georges Bizet, Léo Delibes,
Émile Jonas and
Isidore Legouix. •
Mlada (1872) is an opera-ballet by
Alexander Borodin,
César Cui,
Ludwig Minkus,
Modest Mussorgsky and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It was never staged, and much of the music is lost or known only in later versions. The only extant part of the original score is Act I, by Cui and Minkus. •
Federico Chueca and
Joaquín Valverde Durán collaborated on a number of
zarzuelas. Chueca provided most of the melodies and Valverde provided the orchestral polish. Their collaborations included
Un maestro de obra prima (1877),
La Canción de la Lola (1880),
Luces y sombras and
Fiesta Nacional (both 1882),
Cádiz (1886),
El año pasado por agua (1889), and other operas. Their masterpiece was
La gran vía (Madrid, 1886). Valverde Durán also collaborated with
Ruperto Chapí,
Tomás Bretón, his own son
Joaquín "Quinito" Valverde Sanjuán, and other composers. Quinito Valverde Sanjuán also collaborated with other composers, such as Tomás López Torregrosa, Ramón Estellés, Rafael Calleja and
José Serrano, however, his contribution to these works was more significant than his father's had been to his. • Other zarzuela composers collaborated in some important works:
Amadeu Vives with
Gerónimo Giménez in
El húsar de la guardia (1904),
La gatita blanca (1905) and other; Giménez with
Manuel Nieto in
El barbero de Sevilla (1901) and with
Ruperto Chapí in
La eterna revista (1908);
Pablo Luna with Tomás Barrera or Rafael Calleja; etc. • in 1913,
Maurice Ravel and
Igor Stravinsky together wrote a completion of Mussorgsky's opera
Khovanshchina for a production by
Sergei Diaghilev. Stravinsky's ending is sometimes still heard, but this joint realisation is otherwise unknown. • From 1919 to 1930,
Juan Vert and
Reveriano Soutullo collaborated on 21 zarzuelas, both providing music. These collaborations include some of the most known instances of the genre:
La del soto del Parral (1927),
La leyenda del beso (1924) or
El último romántico (1927). • In 1921,
Alberto Franchetti and
Umberto Giordano jointly wrote the opera
Giove a Pompei. • In 1929,
Paul Hindemith and
Kurt Weill collaborated on the opera
Der Lindberghflug (''Lindbergh's Flight
), based on the writing of American pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh. This was later changed by removal of Hindemith’s contribution, renaming it to Der Ozeanflug (The Flight across the Ocean''), and removal of Lindbergh’s name. The opening line was changed from "My name is Charles Lindbergh" to "My name is of no account". • In 1937,
Arthur Honegger and
Jacques Ibert wrote the opera ''
L'Aiglon. Ibert wrote Acts 1 and 5, Honegger the rest. In 1938, they again collaborated on an opera, this time Les petites cardinal''. • In 2000, the opera
The Age of Dreams was written by three Finnish composers:
Kalevi Aho,
Olli Kortekangas and
Herman Rechberger. It was premiered at the
Savonlinna Opera Festival that year. • In 2016, the hypnotic opera
Indigo was written by two Finnish composers:
Eicca Toppinen and
Perttu Kivilaakso.
Ballet •
La source (1866) is a
ballet with music by
Léo Delibes and
Ludwig Minkus. Minkus wrote Act I and Scene 2 of Act III; Delibes wrote Act II and Scene 1 of Act III. • In 1909,
Sergei Diaghilev commissioned orchestrations of some pieces by
Frédéric Chopin for the ballet
Les Sylphides, by
Alexander Glazunov,
Anatoly Lyadov,
Sergei Taneyev,
Nikolai Tcherepnin and
Igor Stravinsky. • In 1910,
Robert Schumann's
Carnaval, Op. 9, was choreographed for
a ballet for a production by Diaghilev, with orchestrations by
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,
Alexander Tcherepnin, Glazunov and Lyadov. • In 1921,
Georges Auric,
Arthur Honegger,
Darius Milhaud,
Francis Poulenc and
Germaine Tailleferre (all members of
Les Six; the remaining member
Louis Durey was unavailable) collectively wrote a ballet to
Jean Cocteau's
Les mariés de la tour Eiffel • ''
L'éventail de Jeanne'' (1927) is a ballet written by ten French composers: Georges Auric,
Marcel Delannoy,
Pierre-Octave Ferroud,
Jacques Ibert, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc,
Maurice Ravel,
Alexis Roland-Manuel,
Albert Roussel, and
Florent Schmitt. • In 1956 appeared
Don Perlimplin (also seen as
Perlimplinada), a collaboration between
Federico Mompou and
Xavier Montsalvatge. Most of the work was by Mompou, but Montsalvatge helped with the orchestration and linking passages, and added two numbers of his own.
Orchestral • Six of
Franz Liszt's
Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano solo (including the best known,
No. 2) were orchestrated by his pupil
Franz Doppler, with later minor touches by Liszt himself. •
Johann Strauss II collaborated on a number of pieces with his brothers
Josef and
Eduard, mostly famously
Pizzicato Polka (1870) with Josef. • In 1904,
Nikolai Artsybushev,
Alexander Glazunov,
Anatoly Lyadov,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,
Nikolai Sokolov and
Joseph Wihtol wrote
Variations on a Russian Theme. • In 1918, the
Variations on "Cadet Rousselle" were written as an encore piece for voice and piano by
Arnold Bax,
Frank Bridge,
Eugene Goossens and
John Ireland. In 1930 Goossens arranged this composite work for small orchestra, publishing it as his Op. 40. It is much better known in its orchestral form. •
Captions: Five Glimpses of an Anonymous Theme, published in 1923, is a suite of movements by
Herbert Bedford,
Arthur Bliss,
Eugene Goossens,
Felix Harold White and
Gerrard Williams. • In 1937, shortly after they first met at the
ISCM Festival in
Barcelona,
Benjamin Britten and
Lennox Berkeley together wrote
Mont Juic, a suite of Catalan dances. It was named after the Barcelona hill on which they had heard some popular tunes. For many years, it was not known which composer wrote which movement, but Berkeley later revealed he had written only the first two movements. It was published as Berkeley's Op. 9 and Britten's Op. 12. • In 1945 appeared
Variations on a Theme by Eugene Goossens. The variations were by
Ernest Bloch,
Aaron Copland,
Paul Creston,
Anis Fuleihan,
Howard Hanson,
Roy Harris,
Walter Piston,
Bernard Rogers and
Deems Taylor, with Goossens himself writing the finale. • In 1952 came the premiere of
La guirlande de Campra, a set of orchestral variations on a theme from
André Campra's 1717 opera
Camille, reine des Volsques. The composers were
Georges Auric,
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur,
Arthur Honegger,
Francis Poulenc,
Alexis Roland-Manuel,
Henri Sauguet and
Germaine Tailleferre. In 1966 it was choreographed as a
ballet. • In 1953, Lennox Berkeley, Benjamin Britten,
Arthur Oldham,
Humphrey Searle,
Michael Tippett, and
William Walton jointly wrote
Variations on an Elizabethan Theme. The theme (Sellinger's Round) was arranged by
Imogen Holst from a keyboard harmonisation by
William Byrd. Each of the composers also
quoted briefly from one of their own earlier compositions. At the first two performances, the audience was not told which composer had written which variation, but were invited to take part in a competition to match the variations to the composers, to raise funds for the Aldeburgh Festival. Nobody correctly guessed all six composers. • In 1956, in honour of the pianist
Marguerite Long, eight French composers wrote
Variations sur le nom de Marguerite Long (although only one of the eight sections was actually a set of variations). •
Variations on a Theme of Zoltán Kodály, a 1962 orchestral work, was written by
Antal Doráti,
Tibor Serly,
Ödön Pártos,
Géza Frid and
Sándor Veress,
Kodály's composition pupils, for his 80th birthday celebration. The theme is taken from Kodály's String Quartet No. 1, Op. 2. The score is published by
Boosey & Hawkes. • in 1966,
Severn Bridge Variations was jointly composed by
Malcolm Arnold,
Alun Hoddinott,
Daniel Jones,
Nicholas Maw, Michael Tippett and
Grace Williams. • The
Aldeburgh Festival Variations, also known as
Variations on "Sumer Is Icumen In", was premiered in 1987. It contains variations by
Oliver Knussen,
Robin Holloway,
Judith Weir,
Robert Saxton,
Alexander Goehr,
Colin Matthews and
David Bedford.
Concertante works • In 1833,
Felix Mendelssohn and
Ignaz Moscheles collaborated on a work for two pianos and orchestra, ''Fantasy and Variations on the "Gypsy March" from
Carl Maria von Weber's 'La Preziosa'''. Moscheles later made an arrangement for two pianos alone. The manuscript score of this arrangement, inscribed by both Moscheles and Mendelssohn, was presented by Moscheles's son to
Anton Rubinstein, and is in the library of the
Saint Petersburg Conservatory. •
Ungarische Zigeunerweisen is a piece for piano and orchestra, dating from 1885. It has a curious and still uncertain origin. The piano part was written either by
Sophie Menter or
Franz Liszt or possibly both had a hand in it. The piece was orchestrated by
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1892, and premiered under his baton in
Odessa in 1893, with Sophie Menter as the soloist.
Vocal and choral • In the early 1830s,
Felix Mendelssohn published two sets of 12 songs each, as Opp. 8 and 9. Three songs in each set were written by his sister
Fanny Mendelssohn. While each song was the product of one composer alone, as sets, they were collaborations. • In 1840, around the time of their marriage,
Robert Schumann and
Clara Schumann published a set of 12 songs called
Gedichte aus Liebesfruhling (''Love's Spring''). Clara wrote numbers 2, 4 and 11, while Robert wrote the rest. It was published as Robert's Op. 37, but Clara's songs were also given the opus number 12 in her own catalogue of works. • Shortly after
Gioachino Rossini's death in November 1868,
Giuseppe Verdi decided that a
Requiem Mass in his memory would be appropriate. He commissioned 12 composers to write a section each, and together with Verdi's own section,
Libera me, the
Messa per Rossini would be performed on 13 November 1869, the first anniversary of Rossini's death. The other composers were
Antonio Bazzini,
Raimondo Boucheron,
Antonio Buzzolla,
Antonio Cagnoni,
Carlo Coccia,
Gaetano Gaspari,
Teodulo Mabellini,
Alessandro Nini,
Carlo Pedrotti,
Pietro Platania,
Federico Ricci, and
Lauro Rossi. The performance was cancelled only a few days before it was due to take place. It did not have its premiere until 1988, in
Stuttgart. In the meantime, Verdi had taken his
Libera me and incorporated it into his
Requiem for
Alessandro Manzoni, this time a work written by himself alone, which was performed in May 1874, on the first anniversary of Manzoni's death. • In 1881,
Gabriel Fauré and
André Messager collaborated on
Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville (Mass of the Fishermen of Villerville). Messager wrote sections 1 and 4 (
Kyrie and
O Salutaris), and Fauré wrote sections 2, 3 and 5 (
Gloria Benedictus,
Sanctus and
Agnus Dei). The first performance was accompanied by a harmonium and a violin. For the second performance with orchestra the following year, Messager orchestrated the first four sections, and Fauré the last. • Also in 1881, shortly after
Modest Mussorgsky's death,
Alexander Glazunov and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov worked together on orchestrating Mussorgsky's song cycle
Songs and Dances of Death. Glazunov orchestrated Nos. 1 and 3; Rimsky-Korsakov Nos. 2 and 4. • In 1945 appeared
Genesis Suite, for narrator, chorus and orchestra, a collaboration between
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco,
Darius Milhaud,
Arnold Schoenberg,
Nathaniel Shilkret,
Igor Stravinsky,
Alexandre Tansman and
Ernst Toch. •
Mouvements du cœur: Un hommage à la mémoire de Frédéric Chopin, 1849–1949 is a collaborative Suite of songs for baritone or bass and piano on words of
Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin to commemorate the centennial of the death of
Frédéric Chopin in 1949. Contributing composers include
Henri Sauguet,
Francis Poulenc,
Georges Auric,
Jean Françaix, Léo Preger and
Darius Milhaud. • In 1992, a group of Italian composers including
Lorenzo Ferrero,
Giovanni Sollima,
Marco Tutino and others wrote a
Requiem per le vittime della mafia, which is a collaborative composition for soloists, choir and orchestra, on an Italian text by
Vincenzo Consolo. The requiem was first performed in the
Palermo Cathedral on 27 March 1993. • In 2015, the
Gallipoli Symphony for orchestra, chorus and instrumentalists had its first performance in
Istanbul. It was commissioned by the Australian
Department of Veterans' Affairs to celebrate the centenary of the
Gallipoli Campaign in
World War I. The composers were from
Australia (
Ross Edwards,
Elena Kats-Chernin,
Graeme Koehne,
Peter Sculthorpe and
Andrew Schultz),
New Zealand (
Gareth Farr,
Ross Harris and
Richard Nunns), and
Turkey (
Demir Demirkan,
Kamran Ince and
Omar Faruk Tekbilek).
Chamber music • In 1832,
Frédéric Chopin and
Auguste Franchomme wrote a
Grand Duo Concertant for
cello and
piano, based on themes from
Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera
Robert le diable. Chopin sketched the broad structure of the work and wrote the piano part, and Franchomme wrote the cello part. • The
F-A-E Sonata is a
sonata for
violin and piano, written in 1853 as a gift for
Joseph Joachim by
Albert Dietrich (first movement),
Robert Schumann (second and fourth movements), and
Johannes Brahms (third movement). • In 1886, four composers wrote a
string quartet in honour of
Mitrofan Belyayev, each movement being based on the theme B-La-F. The four composers were
Alexander Borodin,
Alexander Glazunov,
Anatoly Lyadov and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. • In 1886, the suite for string quartet,
Fridays (
Les Vendredis), was written by
Nikolai Artsybushev, Borodin,
Felix Blumenfeld, Glazunov,
Alexander Kopylov, Lyadov, Maximilian D'Osten-Sacken, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Nikolai Sokolov and
Joseph Wihtol. Borodin later orchestrated his section as the Scherzo of his Symphony No. 3, which was left unfinished at his death and later completed by Glazunov. • In 1899, ten Russian composers wrote
Variations on a Russian Theme for string quartet. They were Artsybushev, Blumenfeld,
Victor Ewald, Glazunov, Lyadov, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Alexander Scriabin, Sokolov, Wihtol and
Alexander Winkler. • In 1908, the
Hambourg String Quartet commissioned
York Bowen,
Frank Bridge,
Eric Coates, J. D. Davis (
John David Davis) and
Hamilton Harty to each compose a movement of a work for string quartet which incorporated the Irish melody
Londonderry Air. The resulting
Suite on Londonderry Air was performed by the Quartet at
Aeolian Hall the same year. The Davis contribution was published in expanded form as his
Some variations on the Londonderry Air, Op. 43 (1910). Bridge's movement was published as
An Irish Melody in 1915. • On the occasion of
Paul Sacher's 70th birthday in 1976, twelve composer-friends of his (
Conrad Beck,
Luciano Berio,
Pierre Boulez,
Benjamin Britten,
Henri Dutilleux,
Wolfgang Fortner,
Alberto Ginastera,
Cristóbal Halffter,
Hans Werner Henze,
Heinz Holliger,
Klaus Huber and
Witold Lutosławski) were asked by Russian cellist
Mstislav Rostropovich to write compositions for cello solo using Sacher's name spelt out in musical notes as the theme (eS, A, C, H, E, Re). The complete set of pieces received its premiere in Prague in May 2011. • In 2009, the
Seraphim Trio commissioned
Variations on a Waltz by Schubert for piano trio, from 8 Australian composers:
Andrew Ford,
Ian Munro, Calvin Bowman, Raymond Chapman-Smith,
Joe Chindamo,
Andrea Keller,
Elena Kats-Chernin and
Roger Smalley. • In 2015, pianist Ashley Wass and violinist Matthew Trusler commissioned the suite
Wonderland, based on the popular children's story
Alice in Wonderland, from thirteen contemporary composers:
Sally Beamish,
Roxanna Panufnik,
Mark-Anthony Turnage,
Stuart MacRae,
Poul Ruders,
Howard Blake,
Carl Davis,
Stephen Hough, Richard Dubugnon,
Ilya Gringolts,
Colin Matthews,
Gwilym Simcock and
Augusta Read Thomas.
Guitar •
Stephen Dodgson and Hector Quine have jointly written a number of studies for solo guitar.
Piano solo • In 1819, the publisher
Anton Diabelli invited a large number of Austrian composers to each write a variation on a little
waltz (or
ländler) he had composed, to go into an anthology to be called
Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, and 51 of them responded.
Ludwig van Beethoven composed not one but 33 variations, which were originally published as his
Diabelli Variations, Op. 120, and later as Part I of the anthology. Part II comprised the single variations by each of the 50 other composers. These people are mostly now forgotten, but they include such names as
Carl Czerny,
Franz Schubert,
Franz Liszt and
Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Part II has long since become a musical footnote, while Beethoven's set quickly acquired a life of its own and is considered one of the greatest achievements of the piano literature. •
Hexameron (1837) is a set of variations on a theme from
Vincenzo Bellini's opera
I puritani, written on a commission given to Franz Liszt, who invited other composers to participate. The others were
Frédéric Chopin, Carl Czerny,
Henri Herz,
Johann Peter Pixis and
Sigismond Thalberg. • In 1879,
Alexander Borodin,
César Cui, Franz Liszt,
Anatoly Lyadov and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a series of paraphrases on
Chopsticks. • In 1885,
Nikolai Artsybushev,
Alexander Glazunov, Lyadov,
Nikolai Sokolov, Rimsky-Korsakov and
Joseph Wihtol wrote a
Joke Quadrille for piano. • In 1896,
Anton Arensky, Glazunov,
Sergei Rachmaninoff and
Sergei Taneyev jointly wrote
Four Improvisations. • In 1900,
Felix Blumenfeld, Glazunov, Lyadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sokolov, Wihtol and
Alexander Winkler wrote
Variations on a Russian Theme. • In 1941, 17 composers were commissioned to write a piece each for a collection to be called
Homage to Paderewski, in honour of the 50th jubilee of
Ignacy Jan Paderewski's 1891 American debut. However, he died in June 1941 and the album was published in 1942 to commemorate his entire life and work. The composers were:
Béla Bartók,
Arthur Benjamin,
Benjamin Britten,
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco,
Theodore Chanler,
Eugene Goossens,
Richard Hammond,
Felix Labunski,
Bohuslav Martinů,
Darius Milhaud,
Joaquín Nin-Culmell,
Karol Rathaus,
Vittorio Rieti,
Ernest Schelling,
Zygmunt Stojowski,
Jaromír Weinberger and
Emerson Whithorne. •
Round Midnight Variations is a collection of variations on the song "
'Round Midnight " by
Thelonious Monk, composed by Roberto Andreoni,
Milton Babbitt, Alberto Barbero, Carlo Boccadoro,
William Bolcom,
David Crumb.
George Crumb,
Michael Daugherty, Filippo Del Corno,
John Harbison,
Joel Hoffman,
Aaron Jay Kernis,
Gerald Levinson,
Tobias Picker, Matthew Quayle,
Frederic Rzewski,
Augusta Read Thomas and
Michael Torke.
Piano four-hands • In c. 1888, remembering their 1883 trip to the
Bayreuth Festival to hear
Richard Wagner's
Ring Cycle,
Gabriel Fauré and
André Messager wrote a piece for piano four-hands called
Souvenir de Bayreuth (subtitled ''Fantaisie en forme de quadrille sur les thèmes favoris de L'Anneau Du Nibelung de Richard Wagner''). It was not published during their lifetimes and appeared in print only in 1930.
Electroacoustic music • Collaboration has been a constant feature of
Electroacoustic music, due to the complexity of the technology. Since the beginning, all laboratories and electronic music studios have involved the presence of different individuals with diverse but intertwined competencies. In particular, the embedding of technological tools into the process of musical creation resulted in the emergence of a new agent with new expertise: the musical assistant, the technician, the tutor, the computer music designer, the music mediator (a profession that has been described and defined in different ways over the years) – who can work in the phase of writing, creating new instruments, recording and/or performance. He or she explains the possibilities of the various instruments and applications, as well as the potential sound effects to the composer (when the latter did not have sufficient knowledge of the programme or a clear idea of what he or she could obtain from it). The musical assistant also explains the most recent results in musical research and translates artistic ideas into programming languages. Finally, he or she transforms those ideas into a score or a computer program and often performs the musical piece during the concerts. Examples of collaboration are numerous:
Pierre Boulez and Andrew Gerzso, Alvise Vidolin and
Luigi Nono,
Jonathan Harvey and Gilbert Nouno, among others. Composers remain the sole authors of this music works, whereas musical assistants are mentioned within the musical documentation (scores, press, program notes) as music assistants or computer music designers. ==Other forms of musical collaboration==