# The enigma of the last symphony



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Over the recent weeks I have spent time listening to a number of symphonies including the Sibelius 7th, Nielsen 6th, Prokofiev 7th and Vaughan Williams 9th. What is noteworthy about all of these symphonies is that they were the composer's last in that genre, done late in their active career, and represent either a noteworthy shift in their style (Sibelius/RVW) or were somewhat (shall we say) eccentric (Nielsen/Prokofiev). In the latter group we could also include the Shostakovich 15th. I find myself wondering what triggered the shift. Was a sense of looming mortality, although that doesn't work for Sibelius. Perhaps a desire to thumb their noses at the establishment? It could just be coincidental but that seems hard to swallow given we have 5 of the most significant 20th century symphonists. Any thoughts?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Prokofiev's 7th was written after his and others' browbeating by The Regime for their crimes of "formalism". Seeking to keep a lowered profile, P accepted a commission to write a symphony "for children". So he did, but sought to achieve a balance between the work being too simple and too difficult, but also avoiding yet another charge of formalism. Some critics don't feel it's up to Prokofiev's usual standard, but I like it, especially the first movement.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

The Nielsen was composed years before his death, and he wrote concertos afterwards. It was kind of lighthearted I thought. Yes, the VW was written only months before he died. It seemed kind of conventional to me, and not indicative of any kind of sense of foreboding.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Thank you for mentioning Shostakovich's 15th. For me, it is in the running for the greatest of all symphonies, or music in general, for that matter. A very enigmatic, introspective, profoundly personal masterpiece, that's for sure.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

AfterHours said:


> Thank you for mentioning Shostakovich's 15th. For me, it is in the running for the greatest of all symphonies, or music in general, for that matter. A very enigmatic, introspective, profoundly personal masterpiece, that's for sure.


DSCH's 15th is certainly one of his finer symphonies, and an especial favorite of mine.


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

AfterHours said:


> Thank you for mentioning Shostakovich's 15th. For me, it is in the running for the greatest of all symphonies, or music in general, for that matter. A very enigmatic, introspective, profoundly personal masterpiece, that's for sure.


supremely underrated. his best, especially the second movement.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I wouldn't say that Sibelius's 7th is any more of a departure from its predecessors than its predecessors are from each other (the 6th from the 5th, for example). It's four-movements-in-one structure is a natural outcome of his desire for integration: getting maximal mileage out of his material through thematic interrelationships. _Tapiola_ is a more radical move in this direction, being virtually monothematic. We can only wonder how much of a new direction his eighth symphony might have taken.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

mathisdermaler said:


> supremely underrated. his best, especially the second movement.


Yes, agreed. Shostakovich's 15th is just as inward and profound as, say, Beethoven's greatest String Quartets (#14, #15), yet not nearly as acclaimed (yet?).


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

As Per Nørgård is currently 84, I am curious how his final 9th symphony will play into this trend/observation.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

AfterHours said:


> Yes, agreed. Shostakovich's 15th is just as inward and profound as, say, Beethoven's greatest String Quartets (#14, #15), *yet not nearly as acclaimed (yet?)*.


It never will be.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> It never will be.


Probably not, but it _should_ be.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

AfterHours said:


> Probably not, but it _should_ be.


Beethoven, in the inwardness of his deafness and his imagination, somehow, paradoxically, opens his spirit outward to the stars, embraces "alle Menschen," and composes a music of incomprehensible variety that accepts life as it is and shatters with laughter the boundaries of the subjective self. Shostakovich, in the end, closes off his battered spirit and retreats into the haunted theater of his own memory, where the dancing shades of life's ironies, terrors, and tragedies dissolve into premonitions of death. The Shostakovich 15th may be inward and profound and a great work, but it inhabits a much smaller psychic space than Beethoven's late quartets - for many, I would guess, a claustrophobic space.

I think both composers get the acclaim they deserve.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

I agree with everything you said ... except the last line. I do think Shostakovich's acclaim, for his 15th and many other works, will only continue to grow in the coming decades. There might be only 3 or 4 other composers that produced so many masterpieces (the obvious 3 + Brahms). I do not think he will ever surpass Beethoven in the minds of most (myself included), but I've often wondered if I might put him in the same company as those 4, extending the invitation to 5.


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## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

AfterHours said:


> I agree with everything you said ... except the last line. I do think Shostakovich's acclaim, for his 15th and many other works, will only continue to grow in the coming decades. There might be only 3 or 4 other composers that produced so many masterpieces (the obvious 3 + Brahms). I do not think he will ever surpass Beethoven in the minds of most (myself included), but I've often wondered if I might put him in the same company as those 4, extending the invitation to 5.


Well said. I'd put him in the company of LVB, but I may be getting off topic here. His 15th is unlike any of his others. Not in a good or bad way, but in my mind, it certainly breaks with his other symphonies.

For Sibelius, I think his most unusual (and my fave) symphony is the 4th. The 7th still sounds like it came from Sibelius, but the 4th not so much. I think he was taking some big compositional chances with 4, and I suspect there is more deeply personal content there than in his others, but this is just my own pet theory.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

So let me get this straight, you quote some Wagner Ring fate motif, and Rossini's William Tell and you get a great symphony?

For me, the Shostakovich 15 is a major disappointment after the profound 4, 8 and even 5 and 10, just from his purely orchestral symphonies, not to mention Babi Yar and 14 that include voices.

For me, the 15th sounds like Shostakovich ran out of creative ideas and I remember how disappointed critics were after its premiere. Me too!


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

hpowders said:


> So let me get this straight, you quote some Wagner Ring fate motif, and Rossini's William Tell and you get a great symphony?


Sure, because this _almost 50-minute work_ is made of nothing else than the goddamn William Tell quote that everybody seems to be obsessed about when talking about this work.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I've noticed that Shostakovich remains a controversial composer even among people of considerable musical sophistication. In the recent past there have been very knowledgeable people on this forum very critical of him, partly for the quality of his output, but partly, I suspect, because he stood outside the 20th century's "progressive" trends. I see no reason why the controversy won't continue, but surely he's generally accepted as one of his century's major composers, and speculation on how generations to come will see him are merely that. 

As to his 15th symphony, I find it a striking and visionary dream of death, unconventional but powerful. Comparing it to the best of his earlier work is to miss its uniqueness.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Bracketing of Sibelius' and VW's last symphonies is problematic. Sibelius had plenty of time to write an 8th symphony (and 9th through 13th!) but didn't or couldn't. VW's 9th was completed towards the end of 1957, only a few months before he died. Had VW lived on, and given his productivity in his last decade, I have no doubt he would have composed a 10th symphony. So Sibelius' 7th was a final statement but VW's 9th wasn't. 

Another significant last symphony is Malcolm Arnold's 9th, a thin, fragile piece unlike its predecessors. Arnold had been through serious treatment for his mental illness, probably including ECT. His 9th symphony is the last word of a man who was hardly ever 'in is right mind' but by then was in the late stages of a psychological disintegration. Sad in every way.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Pat Fairlea said:


> So Sibelius' 7th was a final statement but VW's 9th wasn't.


Final only in that we will (probably) never see the 8th which, unlike others who left parts of a symphony, had been finished.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

hpowders said:


> So let me get this straight, you quote some Wagner Ring fate motif, and Rossini's William Tell and you get a great symphony?


Yes, this is all that happens, if I remember correctly


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Phil , the Nielsen 6th was written about six years before his death , and the composer was suffering from the heart ailment which eventually killed him at the time of its composition . 
There is a highly dissonant, chaotic passage in the first movement which is apparently a programmatic portrayal of one of his heart attacks . 
This symphony is a rather enigmatic work, and you might call it tragicomic . The slow movement is very dark and brooding , but the second movement is truly bizarre, a sort of parody of the music of Schoenberg and his second Viennese school . 
The finale is a theme and variations, and one of the most bizarre examples of this venerable form , filled with sarcastic humor of the wackiest kind , and it ends with a bassoon raspberry . 
The symphony may baffle many listeners on first hearings, but with repeated hearings one realizes what an original masterpiece it is .


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

You think any of the above composers thought, "Since this will be my last symphony, I better make this one really different" (or really good or whatever?)

I think not. It is simply where they were developmentally, given the experiences of composing the other symphonies that came before.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hpowders said:


> You think any of the above composers thought, "Since this will be my last symphony, I better make this one really different" (or really good or whatever?)
> 
> I think not. It is simply where they were developmentally, given the experiences of composing the other symphonies that came before.


Basically, I agree. Composers aren't typically thinking of crowning their life's work and bowing out. If they are old, though, they're apt to be more conscious of their mortality - perhaps they're ill or lonely, or are simply slowing down - and that awareness could certainly affect the tone of their work. In the field of opera, I doubt that Verdi's _Falstaff_ would have the same mellow magic, or Wagner's _Parsifal_ its death-haunted radiance, if these composers had been younger and more vigorous. In fact, both of them considered the operas in question to be their final efforts. Bruckner sounds as if he was bound for the pearly gates long before his 9th Symphony, but I do hear in that work a confrontation with his soul's doubts and terrors which seems likely to have come from an awareness of the nearness of death. No doubt he would have liked to sweep away those doubts and terrors in a blazing final movement, but he found instead that life is forever an unfinished business.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Basically, I agree. Composers aren't typically thinking of crowning their life's work and bowing out. If they are old, though, they're apt to be more conscious of their mortality - perhaps they're ill or lonely, or are simply slowing down - and that awareness could certainly affect the tone of their work. In the field of opera, I doubt that Verdi's _Falstaff_ would have the same mellow magic, or Wagner's _Parsifal_ its death-haunted radiance, if these composers had been younger and more vigorous. In fact, both of them considered the operas in question to be their final efforts. Bruckner sounds as if he was bound for the pearly gates long before his 9th Symphony, but I do hear in that work a confrontation with his soul's doubts and terrors which seems likely to have come from an awareness of the nearness of death. No doubt he would have liked to sweep away those doubts and terrors in a blazing final movement, but he found instead that life is forever an unfinished business.


Okay. You agreed with one of my 16,573 posts. I will have two pieces of rum cake to celebrate...now where did I put Notung, my slicing tool? In the middle of the marital bed....just where I left it!!

Well, taken literally, the published Bruckner Ninth final movement adagio does sound like a world-weary abschied. But lately I've been reading that there were sketches left of a fourth movement, so the adagio was not meant as a final farewell.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It occurs to me just now that both Bruckner's 9th and Mahler's 10th contain an extraordinary fortissimo (at least) chord consisting of a pileup of screaming, grinding dissonances. Bruckner's occurs at the climax of the third movement before the coda. Mahler's occurs in the first movement. I wonder if the later composer was inspired by the earlier to create this shocking effect.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> It occurs to me just now that both Bruckner's 9th and Mahler's 10th contain an extraordinary fortissimo (at least) chord consisting of a pileup of screaming, grinding dissonances. Bruckner's occurs at the climax of the third movement before the coda. Mahler's occurs in the first movement. I wonder if the later composer was inspired by the earlier to create this shocking effect.


Yes. For me that striking Mahler adagio with those fff dissonant shrieks-almost forecasting the impending misery of humanity with the Great War to come very soon, is for me, the single finest piece of music Mahler ever composed. Just devastating. An adagio for our time too, unfortunately. When will they ever learn?


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

Janspe said:


> Sure, because this _almost 50-minute work_ is made of nothing else than the goddamn William Tell quote that everybody seems to be obsessed about when talking about this work.


:tiphat:
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

hpowders said:


> You think any of the above composers thought, "Since this will be my last symphony, I better make this one really different" (or really good or whatever?)
> 
> I think not. It is simply where they were developmentally, given the experiences of composing the other symphonies that came before.


Not the Composers on this thread. One work that comes to my mind is Brahms 4. There seems to be a defiant sort of kiss off to the world in the last movement, and Brahms knew that his time was limited


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Well, why _is_ Willie Tell in there? Is it just because Dmitri suddenly realized, "Hey, this rhythm I've got going sounds like Willie Tell, so why the heck not?" The Wagner bit I understand, because it's what we hear when Brunnhilde appears to Siegmund and announces his imminent death. Did Shostakovich ever explain his purpose here?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Shostakovich also made use of the 'longing' motive from Tristan at the end of the 4th movement.

_"I don't myself quite know why the quotations are there, but I could not, could not, not include them"_ - Shostakovich to a friend


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> Shostakovich also made use of the 'longing' motive from Tristan at the end of the 4th movement.
> 
> _"I don't myself quite know why the quotations are there, but I could not, could not, not include them"_ - Shostakovich to a friend


I guess his wicked sense of humor (did he have one?) got the better of him.


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