# Something you wish your favorite composer had written, but did not.



## hapiper

My favorite composer is Beethoven and as much as I love his violin concerto, I really wish he had written a cello concerto. Same kind of goes for Brahms as well but he did write the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello so that gets him off the hook...sort of.


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## mmsbls

I'll say the same about Mozart. He wrote concertos for almost all major instruments including the viola (Sinfonia Concertante), but he never wrote one for the cello.


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## KenOC

I'll agree with the OP. Beethoven's failure to write a cello concerto is unforgivable (nonetheless I forgive him).

Mozart BTW is thought to have composed a cello concerto. Cello Concerto, K. 206a (1775, lost).


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## Art Rock

Let's see....

Bach: quite happy with his overall output.
Mahler: a string quartet from his final years.
Brahms: a clarinet concerto from his final years.


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## Sina

I so much wish Beethoven had written more violin concertos! Apparently his only violin concerto didn't enjoy much success so he got discouraged (what a pity, Ludwig! But you knew what you were doing!). I also wish he could've completed his tenth symphony (what could be the next symphony after the ninth, just blows my mind!).
I also wish Ravel would've just written more, just more! And Berg too, I wish he didn't like operas so we (I?) would enjoy more "music" from this great man.
Finally I wish that Cage and Feldman were just ******* immortals and would write (or invent, in case of Cage) just ANYTHING more and more.


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## Strange Magic

Sibelius: based on the triumph of the violin concerto, Sibelius should/could have given us so much more, especially a cello concerto. And one for piano too.


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## joen_cph

Though he is not my favourite composer, it´s a pity that _Pettersson_ didn´t write string quartets, or just more chamber music, or further solo concertos and piano music ...

Likewise, newly doscovered concertos by _Mahler, Magnard _and _Webern_ would have been interesting ...


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## arpeggio

I wished Beethoven had composed more wind music, chamber and concertos.

Most great 19th century composers avoided composing concertos for woodwinds or brass. One notable exception was Weber.

I second the idea of Brahms composing a clarinet concerto.


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## Weston

^A Beethoven horn concerto would be great! I often appreciate his use of horns in the orchestra.

I would have loved a symphony for wordless soprano and orchestra as in Hugo Alfven's Symphony No. 4 or Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antartica, but I suppose even Beethoven was 100 years too early for that.


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## DiesIraeCX

Beethoven: A late period String Quintet (with a second cello)
Debussy: This is easy, I just wish he completed his set of six sonatas "Six sonates pour divers instruments". 
Mahler: String Quartet or an opera


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## AClockworkOrange

Off the top of my head:
*Beethoven*: I'll echo the Cello Concerto
*Verdi*: I absolutely adore his one and only String Quartet, an unfairly overlooked jewel. To this end, more chamber works - such as a second String Quartet
*R. Strauss*: Another String Quartet to follow his wonderful sole example or perhaps a Piano Quartet/Quintet.
*Bruckner*: The same again here as Verdi - further chamber works such as another String Quartet or perhaps a Piano Quartet/Quintet.
*Schubert*: The obvious absence is naturally a Piano Concerto. Given the quality of Schubert's Piano Sonatas and I have great admiration for his Symphonies so a Piano Concerto would be most welcome.


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## Cosmos

From my favorite composers:

Bach: I guess I wish he would have finished the Art of Fugue, even if the unfinished contrapunctus is poetically beautiful that way
Mahler: Another symphony, perhaps? A legit completion of the 10 and maybe an 11th? I'm so greedy
Chopin: He had planned on writing a Concerto for 2 pianos and strings if he were to return to Poland. I would love to hear that.
Prokofiev: He had also planned on writing a Concerto for piano and strings, and that would be Piano Concerto 6
Beethoven: I wish he wrote more piano quartets and quintets, especially if they were from his late period
Bruckner: Even though I love the unfinished 9th, a final choral movement would be fantastic


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## realdealblues

More output from Mahler...I wouldn't have cared what. An Opera, String Quartet, Symphony 10, anything would be fine with me.


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## elgar's ghost

A second cello sonata from Shostakovich, if only to compliment the only ones he wrote for violin and viola in his later life.

At least one symphony by Max Reger. Maybe Reger was holding back before committing himself to writing one as Brahms did but his early death intervened.

Two bona fide string quartets from Stravinsky, one from the neoclassical era and the other from the 50s/60s when he was using serial methods.


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## Mahlerian

realdealblues said:


> More output from Mahler...I wouldn't have cared what. An Opera, String Quartet, Symphony 10, anything would be fine with me.


He did write a Symphony No. 10, it's just that he didn't complete the orchestration.


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## quack

elgars ghost said:


> Two bona fide string quartets from Stravinsky, one from the neoclassical era and the other from the 50s/60s when he was using serial methods.


This thread is going to make me sad. I didn't even know I needed this, but now I do.


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## superhorn

I don't have one single favorite composer . But I wish Nielsen had lived long enough to complete the cycle of concertos for wind instruments he was planning write for the Copenhagen woodwind quintet, for whom he wrote his wonderful quintet .
As a former horn player , it's hard for me to forgive Nielsen for not writing a horn concerto .
Bassoon and oboe concertos might have also been wonderful, as there aren't a lot of them for these instruments . However, I have a feeling a Nielsen horn concerto might have been horrendously difficult to play ,just as the great clarinet concerto is for clarinetists .
Unfortunately, Wagner did not live long enough to write his planned opera "Die Sieger", (the victors ) which would have been based on Buddhism, in which he was seriously interested .
He was also planning to write symphonies . His early symphony is not bad at all for a budding 19 year old composer , and there is an unfinished second one.
Apparently , Ravel had plans to write an opera about Joan of Arc , but his disability rendered him incapable of putting notes on paper . This was no doubt terribly frustrating for him, as he had all kinds of musical ideas in his head .
Prokofiev apparently left sketches for an opera about the Kazakh steppe nomads of central Asia using Kazakh folk music .
Verdi never got around to writing an opera based on Shakespeare's King Lear, which he so much wanted to do . An opera based on this play had to wait until the 1970s with "Lear" by German composer 
Aribert Reimann , written for Dietrich Fischer -Dieskau . 
What might have been with all these composers !


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## Sloe

I wish all composers that had composed concertos had made them as concertos for orchestras instead.


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## Richannes Wrahms

I've had this idea of a series of orchestral pictures:

1.(The) Pool of blood: a nocturne like movement with ligetian currents of chalumeau clarinets, flutes, double basses, violas and cellos each flowing at a different metric with 'creatures' (most probably arch melodies) evolving from underground and reflected in the thin upper registers and harmonics.
2.(The) Village: a series of colourful Bartokian-Boulezian dances changing time signatures intercalated with organum-like church music.
3.(The) Rain: a Webernian take full of variation and symmetries in light to torrential counterpoint. 
4.(The) River: a Sibelian movement of constant development mirroring but contrasting The pool of blood 
5.(The) Moon: a crystalline Debussian-Takemitsu weight-weightless contrast ending the whole cycle in stillness.

Possible addition of Mahlerian songs between or inside some of the pictures.


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## Sherkel

Probably a 10th or 000th symphony from Bruckner.


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## SeptimalTritone

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I've had this idea of a series of orchestral pictures:
> 
> 1.(The) Pool of blood: a nocturne like movement with ligetian currents of chalumeau clarinets, flutes, double basses, violas and cellos each flowing at a different metric with 'creatures' (most probably arch melodies) evolving from underground and reflected in the thin upper registers and harmonics.
> 2.(The) Village: a series of colourful Bartokian-Boulezian dances changing time signatures intercalated with organum-like church music.
> 3.(The) Rain: a Webernian take full of variation and symmetries in light to torrential counterpoint.
> 4.(The) River: a Sibelian movement of constant development mirroring but contrasting The pool of blood
> 5.(The) Moon: a crystalline Debussian-Takemitsu weight-weightless contrast ending the whole cycle in stillness.
> 
> Possible addition of Mahlerian songs between or inside some of the pictures.


You should compose one of these orchestral pictures yourself! We would love to hear it!!!


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## Richannes Wrahms

I have my own stuff to deal with. I keep those ideas in the drawer for If I ever run out of inspiration, a la 'Le tombeau de Couperin', but anybody familiar with those styles can take them.


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## PlaySalieri

I wish Mozart had composed a ballet in his mature years - something big in scale as important as one of his great operas.
Also a mature violin concerto up to the standard of the clarinet concerto or one of the great piano concertos.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

stomanek said:


> I wish Mozart had composed a ballet in his mature years - something big in scale as important as one of his great operas.
> Also a mature violin concerto up to the standard of the clarinet concerto or one of the great piano concertos.


Like Les petits riens, but something that goes for 2 hours or so and written when he was older than 25?


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## Woodduck

Mozart should have lived to hear Beethoven's symphonies and written more music in minor keys.

Beethoven should have turned to opera again after the 9th and _Missa Solemnis_, setting Goethe's _Faust_ or a play by Schiller.

Weber should have lived to meet Wagner (who admired him, was a pall-bearer at his funeral, and composed a memorial piece for him). He should have heard _Der Fliegende Hollander_, and written more operas on German folk tales. His _Euryanthe_ is quite forward-looking harmonically.

Wagner should have turned to instrumental works after _Parsifal_. Based on his lifelong admiration for Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, his lukewarm attitude toward his contemporaries, and some random remarks he made about the difference between operatic and symphonic writing, I suspect he would have worked more "classically" than his operas would suggest. Would a late Wagner symphony have been a bridge between Bruckner and Mahler?

Sibelius should have kept composing symphonies and written more chamber music and vocal works, including an orchestral song cycle and a full-length opera.

Rachmaninoff should have had a guaranteed income like Sibelius so that he could have spent less time playing concerts and more time composing.

Hermann Goetz and Ludwig Thuille shouldn't have died young and should have written more chamber works.

Puccini should have finished _Turandot._ He died when his music was getting really interesting.

Richard Strauss should have spent less time writing pretentious, inflated tone poems and more time on chamber works and concertos.


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## nncortes

I wish Sibelius was able to finish the eighth symphony and publish it.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Woodduck said:


> Rachmaninoff should have had a guaranteed income like Sibelius so that he could have spent less time playing concerts and more time composing.


Yeah, but look who didn't



Woodduck said:


> Sibelius should have kept composing symphonies and written more chamber music and vocal works, including an orchestral song cycle and a full-length opera.


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## Woodduck

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Yeah, but look who didn't


Maybe Sibelius should have given his money to Rachmaninoff.


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## DeepR

Scriabin should have toned down his ambitions to play god and transform the world and instead turn The Mysterium into a 1 hour orchestral poem.


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## Dim7

Woodduck said:


> Richard Strauss should have spent less time writing pretentious, inflated tone poems and more time on chamber works and concertos.


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## Guest

He's still alive, so maybe there's still hope for a large-scale piano sonata from Pendercki.


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## Ilarion

I really wish that Rachmaninov would have written music for organ...


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## Bayreuth

Taking into account how each of Brahms' symphonies outclasses its predecessor I can only imagine that a 5th Symphony would have been simply extraordinary


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## Classical Music Fan

He's not really known for his classical music but I would like to see a piano concerto from film composer John Williams. I would also like to hear his forgotten symphony from the 1960s that Andre Previn premiered. Also on a funny note he should write a Guitar Concerto so the premiere can have him conducting and the Guitarist John Williams as Soloist.


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## LHB

Bartok and Murail Cello Concertos.


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## Guest

hapiper said:


> My favorite composer is Beethoven and as much as I love his violin concerto, *I really wish he had written a cello concerto*. Same kind of goes for Brahms as well but he did write the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello so that gets him off the hook...sort of.


Hello Happier ! May I say at this juncture that *I always vote for Beethoven*? (When not voting for Xenakis, Scelsi, Boulez, Cage, Harvey, Ligeti...). But yeah, a Beethoven cello concerto? That would have been something !!! Still, Haydn left us two of 'em which ain't half bad so the pain is somewhat alleviated.


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## Dim7

TalkingHead said:


> Hello Happier ! May I say at this juncture that *I always vote for Beethoven*?


What if the question is "Who is the worst composer ever"?


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## Guest

Dim7 said:


> What if the question is "Who is the worst composer ever"?


Then I vote for Biber.


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## TurnaboutVox

Cosmos said:


> From my favorite composers:
> 
> Beethoven: I wish he wrote more piano quartets and quintets, especially if they were from his late period


But they would have been from his late period, though, wouldn't they? 



DiesIraeCX said:


> Beethoven: A late period String Quintet (with a second cello)
> Debussy: This is easy, I just wish he completed his set of six sonatas "Six sonates pour divers instruments".
> Mahler: String Quartet or an opera


You both took the words right out of my mind...

...and a mature string quintet from Beethoven, a symphony and a viola sonata from Frank Bridge, a string quartet from Poulenc and Joseph Haydn to complete his Op. 77 "Lobkowitz" quartets


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## Guest

I wish Mahler had written concertos for piano, violin, and cello (separately!). A piano and/or cello concerto from Sibelius would have been nice, too.


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## Gordontrek

Tchaikovsky- I wish he had not died in his early 50s, and could have written more symphonies. As amazing as his latter 3 symphonies are, I feel like he was just starting to come into his own as a composer when he died. He started kind of late after all. Imagine what he might have done if he had been influenced by impressionism. 

(p.s. Side note- Tchaikovsky discussions on here tend to drift towards everyone saying "He was my favorite when I was young, now I think he's just meh." Am I probably doomed to the same course??)


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## hpowders

SweetJesus said:


> Taking into account how each of Brahms' symphonies outclasses its predecessor I can only imagine that a 5th Symphony would have been simply extraordinary


You believe Brahms' Second and Third Symphonies are greater than the mighty First? Interesting.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Sibelius should have written more for organ. Maybe Monsieur _La cathédrale engloutie_ should have taken a chance with the real thing, he'd already sneaked parallel harmony into piano and orchestral writing.


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## Woodduck

TalkingHead said:


> Then I vote for Biber.


I thought I was peculiar, not liking Biber and not understanding the level of interest in his thin musical gruel. The Mystery Sonatas are OK, but the only piece of his I really enjoy is the one where the violin makes animal noises. Set his Passacaglia for violin alongside Bach's Chaconne and the contrast is almost laughable.

Something I wish Biber had written? Some really substantial music.


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## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> I thought I was peculiar, not liking Biber and not understanding the level of interest in his thin musical gruel.


Reminds me of Berwald, complaining about his economics: "Music makes a thin soup." He decided to make artificial limbs instead and by some reports was pretty good at it.


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## Rhombic

Myaskovsky. Concerto for horn and orchestra.


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## Bevo

With how great he wrote for them in his symphonies, a Horn or Clarinet Concerto by Tchaikovsky would be interesting. A fully completed and orchestrated Cello Concerto would also have been great! (And I mean all by him, not this "arranged from an early idea" that we have now).

I'll also second the Beethoven Cello Concerto. But a specific type of work that I wish more composers had wrote are Double Bass Concertos. I know most didn't attempt it because it was harder to hear that instrument over an orchestra, but nonetheless, there were still some composed. I actually believe the Classical Era was when the most were composed because the orchestras and instrumentations were smaller. Dittersdorf, Hoffmeister, and Vanhal were some of the more famous ones. I just wish Beethoven, Mozart, or Haydn had wrote just one!!

And finally, granted you can't go out with much more of bang than Mozart's 41st (unless you're Beethoven), but I would be interested to hear one more Symphony by Mozart. Just to hear how he would follow up after such an amazing Finale in his Jupiter Symphony!


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## EDaddy

I'm so not trying to be a fly in the ointment here, but help me understand... Why would you want want your favorite composer to have written something you love that he/she didn't write? Maybe it's just me but I so cannot wrap my head around that concept.

I can understand if you, yourself, are a composer and covet a brilliant piece of music someone else wrote. Being a composer myself, I know that feeling. That "Damn I wish I had written that!" feeling.

But who cares if Mozart didn't write Beethoven's 9th or Haydn didn't write Schubert's "Trout" ??? And why would you wish they did???

Someone... _anyone?_


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## Art Rock

Did you look at the other posts? The suggestions are for (as an example) a clarinet concerto by Brahms, not (as an example) Nielsen's clarinet concerto composed by Brahms. All the suggestions are works that do not exist, but that we expect to have been brilliant if the mentioned composer would have tried his/her hand on it.


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## EDaddy

Art Rock said:


> Did you look at the other posts? The suggestions are for (as an example) a clarinet concerto by Brahms, not (as an example) Nielsen's clarinet concerto composed by Brahms. All the suggestions are works that do not exist, but that we expect to have been brilliant if the mentioned composer would have tried his/her hand on it.


Ah! That is indeed an entirely different affair altogether and explains why I was so utterly baffled. Thanks for the clarification and no, I did _not_ properly grok the concept. Apologies!

(Clearly not the sharpest knife in the shed sometimes, I!) 

Frank Zappa - Requiem (or Sacred Music)


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## hpowders

Beethoven: Wellington Surrenders. WoO 81.


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## elgar's ghost

^
^

.......................
:lol:


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## Ivanbeeth

A Beethoven requiem would be interesting, hearing the funeral march in his third symphony. Also, I would love another fantasia for piano, orchestra and chorus. And is it too much to ask for Berlioz to have composed piano sonatas? I wouldn't mind some more sonatas of Liszt as well.


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## KenOC

Beethoven spoke in passing of a requiem mass. "Among all the composers alive Cherubini is the most worthy of respect. I am in complete agreement, too, with his conception of the 'Requiem,' and if ever I come to write one I shall take note of many things."


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## nightscape

I would love to have heard a mature symphony by Strauss.

Four Last Songs......and one last symphony!


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## Reichstag aus LICHT

Ivanbeeth said:


> A Beethoven requiem would be interesting, hearing the funeral march in his third symphony.


It would indeed be interesting, but I somehow doubt that Beethoven could have written a choral piece to surpass the eloquence of the _Eroica's_ slow movement.

Anyhow, for my "unwritten piece by favourite composer(s)", here's three:

- I'd like Wagner to have got around to writing _Die Sieger_ or, failing that, to have written another comedy. Go out with a laugh, so to speak, like Verdi did with _Falstaff_.

- I always thought it a pity that Stockhausen fell just three short of completing his 24-part _Klang_ cycle, so I'll have them for my fantasy desert island.

- Finally, adept though many of the completions are, Mahler's own take on his 10th symphony would be priceless.


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## Flamme

More from Mussorgsky...Very lyrical and colourful composer but so little of his works in circulation...


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