composer
Pluralcomposers
- 1A person who composes music, creating original works for performance.
The composer spent two years writing the symphony's final movement.
Several contemporary composers blend electronic sounds with orchestral instruments.
- 2A person who composes or puts together a work; an author of written or artistic material.
The composer of the treatise arranged each argument with great care.
As composers of dense legal documents, the clerks chose every word deliberately.
Similarauthor, writer, creator, drafter
Note
The broad agent noun, built simply from compose plus -er, names anyone who puts a work together. Because the musical meaning narrowed out of this one, a bare "composer" now tends to be heard as a musician. To keep the general sense clear, name the work with an of-phrase, as in "the composer of the treatise" or "composers of dense legal documents."
- 3A person or thing that quiets or calms, settling whatever is agitated or disturbed.
Where, mighty Anna, will thy Glories end. Thou Great Composer of distracted states.
1713, Joseph Trapp, Musicus Apparatus Academicus set to music by William CroftThe exertion necessary to soothe and subdue Lucy's passionate sorrow was the best composer to Francesca's own agitation.
1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca CarraraNote
Here the noun comes from the other compose, the one behind composed and composure, meaning to settle or calm. Its object is whatever is agitated. Joseph Trapp's verses of 1713 hail Queen Anne as "Great Composer of distracted states." In Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Francesca Carrara (1834), the composer is an effort rather than a person, "the best composer to Francesca's own agitation." It can take either of or to.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from the verb "compose" combined with the suffix "-er".