# Keeping the Grim Reaper away from your favourite composers



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

By modern standards, lots of the great masters of the past died prematurely. Other lived but had medical conditions that influenced their lives and their work - think of Beethoven's deafness, for example. Imagine you had a time machine, and modern medical or other relevant knowledge.

Who do you save or treat, and how? And how sure are you that you would be doing music a favour? (Keep in mind the butterfly effect - saving one person may destroy another, or put music on a whole new path that may end up less great than the way things turned out in fact).

Thus, a fun thread for some historical speculation and inventing alternative histories.

E.g. we save Mozart and he lives to a ripe old age, and in the early 1800s we cure Beethoven of his deafness (something modern medicine may indeed have been capable of). Imagine just how profoundly different the musical landscape might have ended up. And would it necessarily have been any better? Suppose Beethoven, saved from deafness, kept on focusing on his career as concert pianist instead of devoting himself exclusively to composition. Or that Mozart burned out like Sibelius, or became an alcoholic. Furthermore, with a history thus changed, the vast majority of subsequent classical geniuses would in all probability never have been born in the first place, considering the very specific set of conditions necessary for the existence of Mendelssohn or Brahms or Wagner. 

One can never know what the result of such interventions may have been, but here's our chance for wild and fun speculation!


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Good point; I'd think twice about saving my favourite composer, Lully, because he had a stranglehold on French music that Rameau found hard to break. But I'd certainly ease his passing with some state-of-the-art painkillers.

Purcell, though - I'd come along with some antibiotics and cure his ?pneumonia, try and warn him off the heavy drinking, and send him and his wife to Marriage Guidance. Just think what lovely dances and extra operas we might have, and it would 'beef up' the reputation of Olde England a little... 

PS - Great thread! :tiphat: This seems 'buried' in the Community Forum. Couldn't it go in the main music forum and get some better answers than I've just given?


----------



## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Ingenue said:


> Good point; I'd think twice about saving my favourite composer, Lully, because he had a stranglehold on French music that Rameau found hard to break. But I'd certainly ease his passing with some state-of-the-art painkillers.


All the Italians were doing what many of the French did after Lully anyhow :lol:

If the Butterfly Effect is counted, I better not do anything, methinks.


----------



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

We should not breach the Prime Directive but ....

Given a time machine and suitable technology, I would try and recover as many of Bach's manuscripts a s possible and ensure that he never needed reviving by Brahms.

Goodness alone knows what that would do to the timeline! 

PS Never mind those who died early, what about all the other wastes of good music.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Cheyenne said:


> All the Italians were doing what many of the French did after Lully anyhow :lol:
> 
> If the Butterfly Effect is counted, I better not do anything, methinks.


:tiphat: Perhaps not surprising, as Lully was Italian originally; but my statement still stands, that the history of *French* music and *French fashions* in music would *undoubtedly* have been different if he'd lived longer. As it was, Rameau 'got going' later in life & had to fight against the Lullyites.


----------



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Staving off the "grim reaper" is of much less interest to me than trying to find a way to negate the social constrictions throughout history that tended to keep women from fully developing their potential as composers. The most interesting thing of all to me would be to see what might have come from a little encouragement for them at the right time.


----------



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Vesteralen said:


> Staving off the "grim reaper" is of much less interest to me than trying to find a way to negate the social constrictions throughout history that tended to keep women from fully developing their potential as composers. The most interesting thing of all to me would be to see what might have come from a little encouragement for them at the right time.


Great point, Vesteralen - the careers & work of Barbara Strozzi & Francesca Caccini, for example, might have been very different?


----------



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Ingenue said:


> Great point, Vesteralen - the careers & work of Barbara Strozzi & Francesca Caccini, for example, might have been very different?


Yes. I wasn't being cavalier with this answer. I really did try to think of a composer that I would like to have enabled to live longer - Bizet came to mind immediately. But, really, I can't think of any one composer's life extension that would satisfy my curiosity as to "what might have been" more than what I said.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

How about:

1. A library has copies of the works that Brahms destroyed?

2. Anton Webern never smoked?


----------



## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

I went back in time and told Tchaikovsky that future-Russia thinks he's straight. Oh how we laughed.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Ingenue said:


> Good point; I'd think twice about saving my favourite composer, Lully, because he had a stranglehold on French music that Rameau found hard to break. But I'd certainly ease his passing with some state-of-the-art painkillers.


I have had similar thoughts: go back to Bach and ease his last days by having him undergo modern eye surgery and getting proper glasses. It would have minimal impact on music history, but it seems like the least we could do, considering the joy he brought to us.

On other hand, I might be tempted to waylay him as he walked all those miles in his youth to go hear Buxtehude play, and then kill him, just to see what the effect would be. Perhaps today Silvius Leopold Weiss might have been considered the really hot talent of the German Baroque, and Mozart and Beethoven known for, among other things, fine concertos and chamber works for the lute. 



> PS - Great thread! :tiphat: This seems 'buried' in the Community Forum. Couldn't it go in the main music forum and get some better answers than I've just given?


It seemed too frivolous for the main forum, and more suited to this one, which is why I put it here. I was a bit surprised to see that it then virtually disappeared. Apparently this forum does not get as many visitors. Anyway, I wouldn't mind if it is moved to the main forum. I'll leave that to the infinite wisdom and technical genius of the moderators. 



Vesteralen said:


> Staving off the "grim reaper" is of much less interest to me than trying to find a way to negate the social constrictions throughout history that tended to keep women from fully developing their potential as composers. The most interesting thing of all to me would be to see what might have come from a little encouragement for them at the right time.


Yup, as is still being done in countries where women have no rights, our ancestors basically eliminated 50% of their potential brain power, not just in music, but in everything else as well. We must not judge them too harshly - _someone_ had to give birth and work in the kitchen, and men just don't have the strength for it. 



brotagonist said:


> How about:
> 1. A library has copies of the works that Brahms destroyed?


I have always been in two minds about that. Yes, such a library would have been fascinating - suppose Brahms did not destroy those works but specifically gave instruction that they were never to be performed because they are substandard. Of course, his wishes would not have been respected in the long term.

Now I have to wonder how many of those destroyed works may have ended up in the standard repertoire. On the other hand, perhaps Brahms was in fact right, and if all those works survived it may in fact have sullied his reputation a bit. At the moment, he seems to be one of those very rare composers who just never wrote a bad piece, but this was possibly because of his very strict quality control.

Perhaps he was wise not to allow anything substandard to survive. I am thinking here of examples from the visual arts, of what may have happened. After his death, Van Gogh became a legend, and suddenly every scribble he ever made became worth a fortune. But he himself was never very much focused on selling anything, so all manner of experimental works piled up in his studio. I suspect that many of those he probably would not have wanted to be publicly exhibited at all, and had he known that eventually the entire world would be looking at his work, he may well have destroyed plenty, and would have spared himself and us the embarrassment of some of his more hideous attempts.



> 2. Anton Webern never smoked?


His case just goes to show that smoking really will kill you. 

Of course, in his case, one could simply go and ask him to wear a bulletproof vest, just for that one time. We save him, he composes a full 45 seconds more of weirdly wonderful music, and then promptly dies of a heart attack brought on by smoking related cardiovascular disease.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

regressivetransphobe said:


> I went back in time and told Tchaikovsky that future-Russia thinks he's straight. Oh how we laughed.


Laugh alone :lol:

Whether Tchaikovsky was involved in homosexual behaviours is for his biographers to determine. It is preposterous to suggest that he was gay (identified as a gay), as Tchaikovsky died long before the social construction of the gay identity. Homosexual experiences don't turn a person gay. It's a conscious decision.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

brotagonist said:


> Laugh alone :lol:
> 
> Whether Tchaikovsky was involved in homosexual behaviours is for his biographers to determine. It is preposterous to suggest that he was gay (identified as a gay), as Tchaikovsky died long before the social construction of the gay identity. Homosexual experiences don't turn a person gay. It's a conscious decision.











Perhaps time to set up a group specially for the discussion of this topic...


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

brianvds said:


> Perhaps time to set up a group specially for the discussion of this topic...


I have neither interest in nor connection to your topic. If you and like-minded others wish to diverge, it is your prerogative. You don't require my permission


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

brotagonist said:


> I have neither interest in nor connection to your topic. If you and like-minded others wish to diverge, it is your prerogative. You don't require my permission


Perhaps you didn't notice it: two other threads about Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation were closed down because they rapidly spiraled into politics and mud slinging. Thus it is a topic that is perhaps best not discussed here.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

brianvds said:


> Perhaps you didn't notice it: two other threads about Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation were closed down because they rapidly spiraled into politics and mud slinging. Thus it is a topic that is perhaps best not discussed here.


We don't know anything about his sexual preferences. I didn't bring the subject up, so don't talk to me about it!


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I think everyone's favourite thought experiment is to make Mozart live longer. So let's do that.

In 1791, as Mozart lies seriously ill with rheumatic fever, a strangely dressed person, speaking with a strange accent and carrying decidedly strange equipment arrives at his doorstep and convinces a desperate Frau Mozart that he is a doctor. She lets him in and within days is glad she did so: Wolfie is much better.

They soon forget about the stranger, and Mozart continues his career. He writes one ghastly comic opera after the other, most of which become hailed as masterpieces later on. Especially the comic opera "Noah," which turns the Biblical story of the Flood into a comedy. The controversy surrounding the scene with Noah getting drunk after the flood, staggering across the stage and singing some of the most vulgar stuff ever found in a libretto even briefly lands Mozart in prison. He is soon released by popular demand.

On the positive side: in our own timeline, Mozart died just too soon to live through the vogue for the guitar that hit Vienna in the 1790s and early 1800s. In our alternative timeline, he composes a great concerto for the instrument, the premier of which is performed by none other than Giuliani.

In the 1790s, a young upstart pianist from Bonn enters the scene. He becomes Mozart's great rival, because he has a fragile ego and cannot stand anyone else being even half as brilliant as himself. In a famous piano duel between the two in 1797, he plays a piano to pieces (instead of just breaking a few strings, as often happened when he played, the piano's one leg actually gave way, causing the whole instrument to cave in). Unsurprisingly, most members of the audience consider Mozart to be the winner of this particular duel, and in his next comic opera, "The magic piano", Mozart includes a scene in which a buffoonish musician named Luigi Barbabietole plays a piano to pieces. The scene is a masterpiece of set design: a specially designed trick piano spectacularly flies apart, bits of it bursting into flame, while the music (a comic parody of the Pathetique sonata) is provided by a keyboard glockenspiel in the background. 

The aforementioned upstart pianist promptly sues Mozart for defamation. All rather sad really, because Mozart is said to actually greatly admire his abilities as both pianist and composer.

In the early 1800s, the pianist's career is threatened when he notices that he is losing his hearing. But the problem seems transitory; in a document discovered in his house after his death, that was apparently written during a stay in Heiligenstadt, he relates the visit by a mysterious stranger, who wore strange clothes and spoke with a strange accent, who offered to cure his deafness. Whatever really happened (historians have long speculated about this strange document, which became known as the Heiligenstadt Testimony, with explanations ranging from alien physicians and time traveling doctors, to the more sensible notion that it was just a whimsical bit of literature or that Beethoven possibly used drugs), the controversial pianist soon regained full hearing and went on to make a successful career.

It is nowadays often speculated whether he may have had success as a composer, if he had focused on it. His two symphonies are very fine examples of the form, for example, and his 8 piano sonatas are also noteworthy for their originality. As it turned out, he was so busy as touring pianist that he composed very little after 1802, and his career was cut short when he died in a coach accident in 1806. 

As Mozart became older, his personality seems to become more settled, and he becomes more spiritual. His comic operas begin increasingly to make room for religious works. However, many of these are considered to be too self-consciously serious, and he never seems to quite reach the same heights again as he did during the 1890s. By 1830, he is widely respected and quite famous, but music has moved on, in the form of a young composer who survived a nasty bout with typhoid fever in 1828 (said to have been cured by a mysterious doctor wearing strange clothes and speaking weirdly).

Around the same time, people begin to notice that Mozart's phenomenal memory for music seems to be fading. He begins to act in increasingly bizarre manner, and often seems to forget people's names, including eventually his own and that of his wife. He withdraws ever further into his own world; the last rumour that reaches the public is that he is said to have confessed to murdering Beethoven. Today's historians have no trouble recognizing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. This time round, even the strange visitor with the strange clothes and accent seemed unable to help.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Doh, wrong thread. apologies.


----------



## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

brianvds said:


> Perhaps you didn't notice it: two other threads about Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation were closed down because they rapidly spiraled into politics and mud slinging. Thus it is a topic that is perhaps best not discussed here.


Hey, I suggest we get a Handel on this... right now!


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

If only Bruckner had been able to live a few years longer and put the finale of his 9th in definitive shape !
Contrary to what had been believed for so long, most of the finale ws pretty much complete ,
except for the coda , and the completions so far have been fascinating, but no doubt he would have made
further alterttions which might have led to who knows what ?


----------



## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

regressivetransphobe said:


> I went back in time and told Tchaikovsky that future-Russia thinks he's straight. Oh how we laughed.


If I were you I'd go back in time and tell him in future Russia some people are fighting for the right to prance around wearing nothing but pink speedos on the streets and are using his own name and talent somehow as an argument. Except that I am not sure this 19th-century Russian would laugh.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Will the homophobes please stop trying to kill my thread!

Now let's make this game a bit more grim by introducing a new rule: you can add years to a composer's life, but you have to take them off the life of some other composer. E.g. you can be sensible and add 30 years to Mozart's life which you took off that of Sibelius (which would cause little musical damage). Or you could be controversial by chopping Schoenberg's life in half to add years to Schubert's.

Etc. etc. - let the Grim Games begin!


----------



## Guest (Sep 24, 2013)

Step 1) Take time machine to the future.
Step 2) Acquire technology required to make a man live centuries.
Step 3) Take time machine to the past.
Step 4) Make Beethoven live forevar.
Step 5) Take time machine back to the present.
Step 6) Buy Beethoven lunch and laugh with him about how amateur his first dozen symphonies were.





What. You said we had a time machine.


----------



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

brotagonist said:


> Laugh alone :lol:
> 
> Whether Tchaikovsky was involved in homosexual behaviours is for his biographers to determine. It is preposterous to suggest that he was gay (identified as a gay), as Tchaikovsky died long before the social construction of the gay identity. Homosexual experiences don't turn a person gay. It's a conscious decision.


Homosexual experiences turn a person homosexual or at least bisexual. That's by definition. Tchaikovsky had homosexual experiences (there's plenty of evidence of this). Ergo, Tchaikovsky _was_ homosexual or at least bisexual.


----------



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

SiegendesLicht said:


> If I were you I'd go back in time and tell him in future Russia some people are fighting for the right to prance around wearing nothing but pink speedos on the streets and are using his own name and talent somehow as an argument. Except that I am not sure this 19th-century Russian would laugh.


Your banalization of the gay's rights is worrying, to say the least.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Split, everybody. I see a moderator coming.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Split, everybody. I see a moderator coming.


And I can only repeat:









Which is a pity, because this is a fun thread.

Now some more speculation: suppose we could cut years off the lives of composers like Dittersdorf, and add them to those of the great masters. Would we necessarily want to do so? Is life more boring or more interesting when there are only great composers, and no average ones or bad ones?


----------



## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

My hobbies are long walks on the beach, collecting vintage baseball cards and destroying threads


----------



## Dustin (Mar 30, 2012)

I don't need to keep the grim reaper away from Schubert, just that certain notorious lady!


----------



## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I'd go back in time to save Scriabin (surprise!), by giving him a lifetime supply of modern razorblades before he made the cut, or even better an electric razor.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

DeepR said:


> I'd go back in time to save Scriabin (surprise!), by giving him a lifetime supply of modern razorblades before he made the cut, or even better an electric razor.


And while you were at it, you could have saved his son Julian, who was a spectacularly promising musician and composer, but drowned aged 11.

And how about giving Lully a stronger pair of shoes...


----------



## JCarmel (Feb 3, 2013)

I also immediately thought of Bizet, too........


----------

