[JasonFruit]

In music, at least, I've reluctantly concluded that time is an almost infallible judge. I'm a violist, and we have very little repertoire, so we're always excited when we discover a viola piece among the works of a forgotten or little-known composer from the 19th century or earlier, but almost invariably, it's either mediocre or outright trash. Zelter, Sitt, Ritter, Zitterbart, Firket, Rougnon, — it sounds like I'm making these names up, but I'm not — mediocrities all. As a professor of mine was fond of pointing out to me, "There's a reason we haven't heard _x_," where _x_ is the new find of the day.

[hedora]

I think that was more true when less stuff was being produced, and the cost of keeping a copy was non-zero.

Those things stopped being true ~ 100 years ago, so now we end up with strange filters. For example, a large number of high-value film masters were lost in a single warehouse fire. (Arguably, shorter copyright terms would have prevented that, since distributors and fans would have had geographically distributed backups that the film studio had little financial incentive to maintain).

[JasonFruit]

Those are all good points.

[WalterBright]

As a musician, perhaps you can answer this for me.

It seems that people who play a guitar try their hand at composing music. But the people who play violins and other orchestral instruments appear to be satisfied playing other peoples' compositions.

Why is that? Have you tried to compose new viola pieces?

[JasonFruit]

I do compose and make arrangements — and am firmly a mediocrity. In fact, lots of the great composers were violists: Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Britten, Dvorak, and others. Most of them also played a keyboard instrument, which is a useful tool for a composer, but a violist is perfectly placed to understand the orchestra as a whole, and is usually not saddled with too difficult a part, so they can spare some attention.

Also, violinists who composed were very common, but their works tend to display skill rather than profundity. Paganini is a good example: delightful melody, amazing technical displays, but not a lot to sink your teeth into.

[tzs]

I don't play viola or any other orchestra instrument, but do play some guitar, so much of this is just a guess.

I'd guess that a big factor is that guitar is a good solo instrument. It can do melody and chords well. You can get a good full sounding piece of music out of a guitar. Also if you want you can sing while you play so it works great if you want to add words to your composition.

Most orchestra instruments don't really work nearly as well solo. Yes, many classical pieces include solos for various instruments but those solos are meant to be in the context of the orchestra or string quartet or whatever. If all you've got is a lone violinist while that can be beautify it is not going to have the richness that you can get from a lone guitar (or a lone piano). Also for many orchestra instruments singing while playing them might be hard or annoying.

So if I want to try composing for my guitar, I only have to get good enough at composing to compose decent guitar music.

A violist would probably need to get good enough to compose for viola and for at least the rest of a string quartet.

[WalterBright]

While it's true you cannot sing while playing the trumpet, Herp Alpert could make his trumpet sing!

But still, he played covers of other peoples' songs.

[theresistor]

Lots of violin players do composition (and even improvisation!) they just call it a fiddle when they do so!

Less cheekily, the difference you're pointing out is about folk vs classical traditions. Many instruments are strongly associated with one or the other, but the violin is one of few that exists in both.

[yamtaddle]

I think it's a genre thing. I bet you can find plenty of violinists, at least, composing music, in the bluegrass scene, for example.

Instruments that rarely feature as regular parts of more folk-derived genres, sure, probably not so much. Viola, French Horn, that kind of thing.