# Composer deprogression



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

When we think of composer's compositional development in their life we often think of them maturing throughout and then writing their greatest masterpieces at or near the end of their life, e.g. Bach: Art of Fugue, Beethoven: 9th symphony Mozart: Symphony 41 or so on and so forth.

My question is, can you think of any composers that did the opposite? Started out great and then just kept going downhill, perhaps writing their _worst_ pieces near the end of their lives instead of their best?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

never mind.


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## Chris (Jun 1, 2010)

Stravinsky.

Mendelssohn according to some, but they haven't heard the opus 80 string quartet.

Michael Tippett possibly.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Vaughan Williams.
Penderecki.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Schumann, I think. I'd have to look into it more though.


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## ScipioAfricanus (Jan 7, 2010)

Joachim Raff. After his 3rd Symphony it was all down hill.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

JS Bach

[cackles evilly and runs for cover]


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

But seriously, I can't think of any.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Pietro Mascagni.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

ScipioAfricanus said:


> Joachim Raff. After his 3rd Symphony it was all down hill.


Surely his fifth is great?


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Some on top of my head: 
Milhaud, Popov, Mossolov, Penderecki post-1985, Khachaturian, Paganini, Rossini.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Lisztian said:


> Schumann, I think. I'd have to look into it more though.


We've already had this discussion many times.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

ScipioAfricanus said:


> Joachim Raff. After his 3rd Symphony it was all down hill.


I think I've found this to be generally true.

Edit: though I've enjoyed his 5th.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Alan Hovhaness. After Mysterious Mountain and Mt. Ararat, it went downhill.

And, though I like his later symphonies, William Schuman, is not nearly as accessible(and arguably as exciting)after his 3rd symphony.

And a real example of this is english classical era composer Samuel Wesley. This man was "the english Mozart" at 17, writing interesting and exciting symphonies in the classical style, and then after his early 20s, only composed sporadically.

Medtner pretty much stayed at the same and only slightly variable level once he issued his op 8 skazki, until later in life he started to sound a little academic with some exceptions. Though he did a lot of works on a grander scale, they aren't necessarily of higher quality than these skazki. There are some that surpass them in various ways, but these works are very fresh.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

Let's be fair, most of Schumann's best works were written towards the beginning of his life, though the late works aren't _bad_.

Mendelssohn looked like he was going that way but picked himself up a bit towards the end with the last string quartet, the VC and Elijah.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

jalex said:


> Let's be fair, most of Schumann's best works were written towards the beginning of his life, though the late works aren't _bad_.
> 
> Mendelssohn looked like he was going that way but picked himself up a bit towards the end with the last string quartet, the VC and Elijah.


Mendelssohn also wrote Song's Without Words throughout his life of consistent quality.

Schumann, I think if you are really into him, you can get depth out of any number of his works.


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## Trout (Apr 11, 2011)

I think Shostakovich, to a degree. He didn't start off great, but I think he peaked towards the middle of his career with his later music going downhill.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

jalex said:


> Let's be fair, most of Schumann's best works were written towards the beginning of his life, though the late works aren't _bad_.


Suit yourself. Some of my favorite works are actually written in his late period, i.e. Cello Concerto, Violin Concerto, Märchenbilder, Märchenerzählungen, the three Violin Sonatas, and the Geistervariationen.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Klavierspieler said:


> Suit yourself. Some of my favorite works are actually written in his late period, i.e. Cello Concerto, Violin Concerto, Märchenbilder, Märchenerzählungen, the three Violin Sonatas, and the Geistervariationen.


If MarchenerZahlungen comes from his late period, then yes, that's my favorite one.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

clavichorder;250485
And said:


> I've yet to listen to the early symphonies, but I find no.4 highly accessible. I also find nos. 6,7, and 9 to be very impressive works. So far no. 10 is a tougher nut to crack.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

starthrower said:


> I've yet to listen to the early symphonies, but I find no.4 highly accessible. I also find nos. 6,7, and 9 to be very impressive works. So far no. 10 is a tougher nut to crack.


6 is very impressive overall. 7 is slow moving at first, very *dark*. 9 I can't seem to recall right now. I agree about 10.

The first two symphonies are withdrawn, but I think that though the 6th might be his masterpiece, the 3rd is in some ways more enjoyable because its more optimistic. The 3rd string quartet is a great work as well.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

Trout said:


> I think Shostakovich, to a degree. He didn't start off great, but I think he peaked towards the middle of his career with his later music going downhill.


I think his last string quartet, and in an entirely different way his last symphony, are some of his best pieces of music. The fourteenth symphony is pretty damn good too.


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## Trout (Apr 11, 2011)

jalex said:


> I think his last string quartet, and in an entirely different way his last symphony, are some of his best pieces of music. The fourteenth symphony is pretty damn good too.


Yeah, he's not a perfect example. For me, however, I prefer his middle symphonies to his last 5 or so.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

I think the proper term is "regression." The earlier songful, tonal works of Gabriel Faure are generally preferred over the later works, which are much more chromatic and personal. This is especially true in his works for piano.

The quality of Schumann's works tends to drop off after 1840, as his mental health gradually deteriorated.

There are also composers who simply stopped composing after a while. Probably the most obvious example is Rossini, who wrote a bunch of operas relatively early in life and then stopped composing altogether. Sibelius is another. A further example could be Copland, who wrote many great works in the 40s and 50s and didn't write much for his last 30 years.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

Ravellian said:


> I think the proper term is "regression."


I was going to say that, but doesn't 'regression' imply going back to a previous state? I can't think of a word which means what Violadude is trying to say.


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## lukecubed (Nov 27, 2011)

Stravinsky is the definitive example of this to me. I don't really enjoy anything he wrote after the ballets. Schoenberg for me too, but I only really like his romantic stuff, which wasn't particularly innovative, just good...

I once encountered a theoretical approach (based on a comparison of auction prices vs. time of life created for painting/sculpture) that argued there are essentially two kinds of artists: those who come out with groundbreaking work while young, but then can't really follow up on it, and those who spend a lifetime perfecting their craft, and peak towards the middle/end of their lives. The 20th and 21st century approaches to art seem, to me, to largely favor the former--innovation is often seen as more important than craftsmanship--so many of the modern composers fit this bill, IMO. The ones who don't--Shosty, Prokofiev, Britten--were craftsmen of a high order and were/are sometimes accused of being nothing more than late romantic holdouts. I kind of wonder if Shosty wouldn't have been in the first camp had he not felt so confined by party strictures, heh.


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

Mendelssohn, although he did write some masterpieces near the end of his life, I think the quality of his work was much less consistent. I'm still not sold on the greatness of the F minor quartet, there was something about it that seemed so 'basic' when I first heard it. It's emotive, but also very plain. I get the same impression with his songs without words...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Any composer that rehashes himself, eg. does carbon copies, or near carbon copies, of earlier works imo can be accused of what you talk of, violadude.

Who these are depends on one's taste and preferences (& ideology, etc.).

In terms of my taste, I think Arvo Part for the last 20 years has been offering rehash of his works before, which I think were excellent, those that I've heard. He's kind of treading a "safe" line, as far as concerns this country. He's probably the most played contemporary composer from overseas here in our concert halls and on radio. I don't have a problem with popularity, only when it makes the composer rest on his laurels and just regurgitate stuff. Say the same thing he's said before, and did it much better before. So what's the use.

There's even a kind of "school" that has developed in rehashing Part's style from around esp. Northern Europe, and that's even worse. Ask any musician playing these rehashes of rehash today, around here I mean, and they're sick of it. They were trained to play a wide variety of classical music, from old to new. & most of what "new" things they play now is the likes of Mr. Part and his "holy minimalist" brigade. This is just as bad as say them only playing one composer or a few from the Romantic Era, Classical Era, Baroque, whatever. It's kind of a blandness and a misrepresentation of the true richness of classical music of today...


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## Clementine (Nov 18, 2011)

Interesting thread. It's not often composers get worse, but more common that they just to more of the same. Composers whose output actually got less inspired as they aged: 

Philip Glass
Jean Sibelius (ala 4'33) 
Aaron Copland
Samuel Barber

I disagree with those who mentioned Stravinsky and Schumann. Both of those composers were constantly looking for new ways to mature, and succeeded in doing so. If you're in need of a late Schumann masterpiece, I'd point you to his Violin Sonata No. 2.


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Richard Strauss


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Rasa said:


> Richard Strauss


Nope. Disagree.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Clementine said:


> Interesting thread. It's not often composers get worse, but more common that they just to more of the same. Composers whose output actually got less inspired as they aged:
> 
> Philip Glass
> Jean Sibelius (ala 4'33)
> ...


I definately don't agree with Sibelius....You dont like Symphony 7 or Tapiola?


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

clavichorder said:


> Nope. Disagree.


It's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of analysis.

His style regressed into romanticism. It's not an artistic judgement, it's a technical one.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Rasa said:


> It's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of analysis.
> 
> His style regressed into romanticism. It's not an artistic judgement, it's a technical one.


Alban Berg agrees with you.

http://www.instantencore.com/buzz/item.aspx?FeedEntryId=101479










"yet none of the real masters has shown such a downward turn later in life as Strauss (since his 50th year at least). Everyone (except those suffering from mental illness) has grown until death (Verdi, Beethoven, Bach, etc)(not to speak of all of those who died young!) or remained at their highest point in the last decade (Wagner)-- Something Else: how little in general can be said about a development of music in Strauss; one sees, for example, how he has not brought even dance music further. His Rosenkavalier waltz is only a Johann Strauss waltz taken higher in outward technique. How different are the waltzes of Brahms. Or the minuets of Beethoven, Mozart-that is development. With Strauss, music really stagnates in the Wagner epigonism of the 1890s (except that he was by far the most talented of all the epigones, Hausegger, Schillings, Humperdinck, etc, and naturally also the personally most singular). That Brahms actually left no trace on Strauss speaks also for this Wagner-Liszt epigonism (a few melodic turns of phrase does not count), and Brahms is therefore in many respects more modern-than Sturass, there, namely, where Schonberg first started. Mahler in turn developed in a completely different way, but how he developed. Even a blind person indeed sees and hears this. "

From a Barenboim interview.

Well, we are talking on Mahler and he was a very bad yes-sayer, - to quote Adorno.

Barenboim: And you know, Richard Strauss, who, God knows, was a great composer; Richard Strauss, who was the master of orchestration, the master of opera, the master of all these things - if you think about it, Richard Strauss' most innovative works were written in his youth. The early tone poems: Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, Tod und Verklärung, and also Elektra and Salome, are more interesting than Daphne, Frau ohne Schatten, Capriccio, the Oboe Concerto and the Four Last Songs. So, it's not an example of how to deal with the passage of time. If you want to deal with the passage of time, you have to pick on composers who kept changing, and who kept developing, like Beethoven. Beethoven started as a completely classical composer, out of Haydn and Mozart; developed in his middle period into larger forms, virtuoso writing for the piano, very strong, expression-filled symphonies; and then went into his late periods where he tore everything apart. There is this convention of saying that when you get older you get milder. This is not true, Beethoven is exactly the opposite. Strauss got milder, Beethoven was a fury, and he didn't feel the necessity anymore for these things, everything was extreme and cut into small pieces. Therefore, Strauss' opinion about Mahler in this way, is, to me, not that important.


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Haha, cute.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Clementine said:


> Jean Sibelius (*ala 4'33*)


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Originally Posted by Clementine
Jean Sibelius (ala 4'33)



Klavierspieler said:


>


The suggestion is probably - silence.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

My argument for Schumann "regressing" is mostly based on his keyboard works, since after all, the piano was his main instrument.

The period up to 1839 gave us many excellent piano works: Papillons, Davidsbundlertanze, Carnaval, Fantasia in C, Phantasiestucke, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, symphonic etudes.

The only truly successful, mature work after 1840 is the Waldszenen. Album for the Young doesn't count because it is mainly didactic. The quality of most of these later works, like the Bunte Blatter and the Drei Phantasiestucke, suffers from a lack of consistency.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Ravellian said:


> My argument for Schumann "regressing" is mostly based on his keyboard works, since after all, the piano was his main instrument.
> 
> The period up to 1839 gave us many excellent piano works: Papillons, Davidsbundlertanze, Carnaval, Fantasia in C, Phantasiestucke, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, symphonic etudes.
> 
> The only truly successful, mature work after 1840 is the Waldszenen. Album for the Young doesn't count because it is mainly didactic. The quality of most of these later works, like the Bunte Blatter and the Drei Phantasiestucke, suffers from a lack of consistency.


Tell me what you think of these:

Bilder aus Osten Op. 66 No. 4
Vier Fugen Op. 72 Nos. 1, 2
Drei Fantasiestücke Op. 111 No. 1
Geistervariationen WoO 24
Gesänge der Frühe Op. 133 No. 1


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Klavierspieler said:


> Tell me what you think of these:
> 
> Bilder aus Osten Op. 66 No. 4
> Vier Fugen Op. 72 Nos. 1, 2
> ...


I don't mean to take a side in this discussion because I don't know Schumann's music even nearly well enough, but I have read that the Geistervariationen use a theme that he believed ... I think it was the ghost of Schubert... revealed to him, but that the theme was actually very similar to themes he used in earlier works.

I suppose that could be taken two ways: in the variations, he was just re-using material that he'd thought of in his younger, more creative years - or, in the variations, he was stretching and expanding the material that he'd thought of in his younger, less creative years.

So perhaps it is a kind of a Rorschach blot: our interpretation of it tells us more about ourselves than about the music itself.

Maybe even all music is like that....


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## Clementine (Nov 18, 2011)

violadude said:


> I definately don't agree with Sibelius....You dont like Symphony 7 or Tapiola?


Oh no, those are great works. I was referring to the last decades of his life in which he wrote nothing. And the rumor is he tried to write, but destroyed the works or didn't complete them, presumably because they weren't as good as his previous stuff. The ultimate de-progression in creativity: not writing anything.


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## hespdelk (Mar 19, 2011)

Manxfeeder said:


> Pietro Mascagni.


I can actually think of few composers who I would consider genuinely "deprogressed"..

But I have to agree on Mascagni. Years ago I went to some effort to gather recordings of his other works stemming from curiosity to hear more than just Cavalleria. His early period is much stronger - the youthful Guglielmo Ratcliff, Cavalleria (of course) and Amico Fritz are probably his best works, along with some really early sacred pieces (which sound so very surprisingly like the mature Mascagni). Even Iris isn't really at the same level of inspiration.. he wasn't a stagnant composer, there are innovations and attempts at some different directions in his later works, but they just don't hold up very well.. The later operas all have their moments, but don't rise beyond that.

Its really rather strange to me actually.

Mind you, finding decent recordings of anything beyond Cavalleria and L'Amico Fritz is a task in itself (excluding the really well done studio Iris with Domingo under Levine), most recordings fall into two categories - old radio broadcasts with strong soloists but poor quality sound that destroys the effect of the orchestra and chorus (a problem because later Mascagni isn't about stand alone arias so much as dramatic narrative) or more modern productions, usually recorded live also in poor sound and with weak casts and weak orchestras...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^*Mascagni *did say something like, with_ Cavalleria,_ he was crowned before he became king. Or the reverse. There's a famous quote by him like that. Saying that he kind of reached his peak with that only big hit of his, everything else after kind of was judged (and paled) in comparison.

As for* R. Strauss,* I get what Rasa means, also the replies. I personally connect only to a high degree with his _Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings,_ written in about 1946. My issue with him is not necessarly the quality of his music, it's just that he rarely reveals his own emotions. That work is highly autobiographical, which is what I like about it. I think similar in terms of Stravinsky, but I find his modern style more kind of expressive in itself, less anachronistic to my ears of 2011 than what R. Strauss did. Stravinsky did hold himself back from being too autobiographical, but at the same time that restraint is part and parcel of what he has to say. Eg. the _Symphony in Three Movements _which I'm getting back to now, it's "his" war viewed from afar in the USA, so of course it's not going to be anything like the more heroic-romantic mould, eg. Shostakovich's_ Leningrad _Symphony. But that Stravinsky symphony has always packed a punch with me, more so than the Shostakovich. ANyway I digress.

With re *Schumann,* I also disagree, in terms of one of my favourite works by him, his _Cello Concerto_, which came towards the end of his career. Highly innovative and I think of a very high quality, and very expressive and emotional...


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

I'm not saying Schumann didn't compose anything worth hearing later in his career, far from it, but I notice a distinct general downward trend in the quality of his music through his life.


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## hespdelk (Mar 19, 2011)

Sid James said:


> ^*Mascagni *did say something like, with_ Cavalleria,_ he was crowned before he became king. Or the reverse. There's a famous quote by him like that. Saying that he kind of reached his peak with that only big hit of his, everything else after kind of was judged (and paled) in comparison.


Yes, I'm familiar with that quote - I can only imagine the frustration of being famed for an early work and never having any of one's mature creations appreciated in the same way. Apparently when asked who he thought were the most important modern composers of opera he replied Wagner and himself.. and wasn't being facetious. He clearly believed in what he was doing - which I suppose is only natural, or how could any creator go on with their work? Poorly chosen texts to base his works on seem to play a part in it.. even something like Il piccolo Marat which as an outline seems like a perfect operatic subject with its revolutionary theme in its details is weak, filled with empty posturing and cliches.. (though there is some nice music in there) contrasting this with any of Puccini's libretti is night and day.. then again Puccini was masterful at picking the right subject and getting his writers to hone it perfectly to what he needed..

I also disagree that Schumann's late period is of lesser quality.. I've never understood why this notion has endured, those late concertos and piano works of his are some of my favourites and some of his most original creations. The personal tragedy of his mental condition would only have contributed to their unique nature..

I also disagree that Strauss deprogressed - he simply turned to a different means of expression. What he did with his late works simply wouldn't have been possible with his earlier style - too different. Why should this be seen as a fault?
The Metamorphosen and Four Last Songs are probably my favourite pieces of his.. and I have a high regard for nearly all his works.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Klavierspieler said:


> Tell me what you think of these:
> 
> Bilder aus Osten Op. 66 No. 4
> Vier Fugen Op. 72 Nos. 1, 2
> ...


It's true that he wrote _some_ good piano pieces later in life. But basically, his best piano works are from early in his career, surely?

I agree that there are lots of wonderful late chamber works.


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