Walter Meyer wrote:

>For starters, what's all this about the "S curve"? Described above as the
>growth of a product, what does that mean? Obviously not the product's size.
>If not its size, is it its popularity? Its quality? Something else?
>
>And, having decided what is meant by a product's growth, what is the basis
>for analogizing it to the quality of a composer's output?

For a given product type which succeeds there are generally three phases:

1.  Introduction - Ridiculously expensive and sold to people who must, or
think they must have it.

2.  Goes Mainstream - price drops to the point where people who merely want
it go out and buy the product - it starts appearing everywhere, economies
of scale kick in.

3.  Stability - everyone who wants one basically has one, a few makers
consolidate their hold over the market and buy up or drive out of business
the rest.

This generates an "S" shaped curve.  It works not because of any built in
law - one can point to many products that never get out of the first phase
- but because of the dynamics of marketing and manufacturing.

What this has to do with creativity is hard to ascertain, while the average
worker in a field does go through an S curve of productivity, when one
deals with composition and other art works, one is generally dealing with
people who are, for a variety of reasons, exceptions to the norm.
Consider:

Rossini did almost all of his work early, and then stopped.

Verdi composed about half of his operas before writing "The Three" which
set him on the road to fame and fortune.

When he was in his forties, one writer said of Beethoven "The Writing of
Great Works seems behind him."

Several composers have had late flowerings - in their 60's, 70's and even
80's.

Since creativity is really dependant on the inner urge, the ability, the
technique and - most importantly - the personal organisation to sit down
and do the thing - it is hard to predict futures of dead people in the
past...

Stirling S Newberry
[log in to unmask]