Do you compose straight to sheet, or do you have to play it?

[tony]

I agree with max, its just all better to have one with you. Maybe, it would be possible to rite the rythm but, its harder with everything else.

[Fryderyk]

You're wrong!! My music teacher is always telling me how Mozart could just compose straight to score without any editing or playing through at the piano. However, he is famously quoted for having requested a piano for his room in Vienna one time, because "he couldn't compose a thing until he had one". So he couldn't.

And not all great masters could. Beethoven, for instance, spent AGES revising and replaying his pieces.

Duh. "Technicly" they could even though it had its limits... I know Mozart wasn´t in his bed with Salieri next to him taking notes as in "Amadeus", and Beethoven did fool around with the piano even though he went deaf.

[calebrw]

You're wrong!! My music teacher is always telling me how Mozart could just compose straight to score without any editing or playing through at the piano. However, he is famously quoted for having requested a piano for his room in Vienna one time, because "he couldn't compose a thing until he had one". So he couldn't.

Even from an early age, he could, but just because he had a piano doesn't mean you used it to compose in the usual sense. Perhaps its because he had to play the pieces he had in his head. For instance, when he went with his father to the Sistene Chapel during Holy Week to copy down the Allegri Miserere.