# Composers saying goodbye



## Nix (Feb 20, 2010)

A little bit of a depressing topic, but I was wondering if we could brainstorm pieces that composers wrote before they went into retirement or passed away. Pieces where the composer knew or thought that this was the end, and wanted to say farewell to the world. These don't need to be supported factually, it's up to interpretation. 

Ones I could think of: 

Mozart- Requiem
Beethoven- String Quartet #16 (I remember reading somewhere that he would tell jokes on his deathbed, or when extremely sick... the ending of this piece suits that perfectly). 
Schubert- Cello Quintet
Brahms- Symphony #4

Other pieces that for me don't necessarily signify a goodbye forever, but are reflective pieces written towards the end of their lives:

Bach- Art of Fugue 
Tchaikovsky- Symphony #6 (if the whole suicide conspiracy theory is true then this piece could very well be a farewell piece.)
Mahler- Symphony #9 
Shostakovich- Symphony #15

Any others?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Sibelius 7th, last symphony ment to be his "final statement".

Richard Strauss Four Last Songs obviously, even the texts reveal to us how this old man was tired with life. 

Also, much of mature Beethoven's music, though not ment by himself to be "farewell", I see as his testament.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

lili boulanger - pie jesu

composed the last days before she died


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Mahler endured heart problems for quite a few years so I would say that anything from Symphony no. 6 could have been his valedictory work. As it happens, no. 9 is the one for me, with the last movement of Das Lied von der Erde a close-ish second. I think he probably realised at an early stage that the arduous task of orchestrating No. 10 was physically beyond him.

Shostakovich also seemed to write his final few works with the notion in the back of his mind that any one of them could be his tombstone. String Quartet no. 15, Symphony no. 15, the Viola Sonata...

The other real stand-out for me is Britten's opera, Death In Venice. So obsessed he became with the almost mirroring tale of the ailing writer that he delayed his urgent heart operation so he could finish it. Whether this procrastination was fatal I wouldn't know, but Britten suffered a stroke during the operation and was extremely ill for the couple of years he had left. He did compose some more works after DIV - most worthy of note was his third string quartet - but DIV remains his real parting shot.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think that _Tapiola_ was Sibelius' final major work. Rachmaninov also wrote the _Symphonic Dances _when he retired from composeing, I believe. A couple of really obvious ones that spring to mind are Bruckner's 9th symphony and Bartok's 3rd piano concerto and viola concerto (all left unfinished, although the piano concerto was almost finished). I believe that Stockhausen never completed his cycle of operatic works called _Licht_ (?)...


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

Shostakovich is said to have considered his 8th string quartet his musical epitaph. He was planning on committing suicide upon its completion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._8_%28Shostakovich%29

He went on to live another 14 years after its completion though.


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## Aksel (Dec 3, 2010)

Wikipedia says Stockhausen finished Licht in 2003, a whole four years before he died.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

I can't really agree about Brahms and the Symphony No. 4. He wrote that many years before his death. Wouldn't the Elevan Chorale Preludes Op. 112 be more appropriate?


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## ScipioAfricanus (Jan 7, 2010)

Bruckner's 9th
Wagner's Parsifal


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

In the Renaissance, Jacob Obrecht's Missa Maria Zart is considered to be his swan song - 69 minutes long, with "an inexhaustible supply of motifs and melodic ideas" [Peter Phillips].


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Prokofiev's 7th Symphony. He was somewhat forced to make the ending optimistic for the sake of money, but it wasn't what he wished.

"You [Rostropovich] will live much longer than I, and you must take care that this new [overly happy] ending never exists after me."

And so it doesn't exist. We have the other version, where he ends it and soft and contemplative instead.


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## Falstaft (Mar 27, 2010)

Aramis said:


> Sibelius 7th, last symphony ment to be his "final statement".


Was it really meant to be his final statement? I mean, it *is* effectively, but I was under the impression that he had an 8th long brewing but never realized.

I think for musical farewell, the trio of Mahler Das Lied, 9th, and let's not forget the searing 10th, stand out. Mahler's trilogy of musical "leb' wohls"


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Topic bears some similarity to the discussions of this thread.


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## Chris (Jun 1, 2010)

When Michael Tippett published The Rose Lake he declared it would be his last orchestral work. I think Malcolm Arnold said the same about his ninth symphony.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Schubert's last three sonatas, but particularly the last one. They were probably the last major works he completed. He still had hope he might survive his illness though, and this might be reflected in the 10th symphony he was writing at his death.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I was listening last night to *Arnold Bax's 7th symphony *& the quiet coda made me "hear" a kind of relaxed & jovial "goodbye." I just read the wikipedia entry on it, & it says the same thing. This was his final symphony, put down in 1939. He lived until the early 1950's, but never came to compose anything this elaborate again, the other major work I can think of from his final years is his score to director David Lean's _Oliver Twist_...


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

norman bates said:


> lili boulanger - pie jesu
> 
> composed the last days before she died


In fact, she dictated it to her sister Nadia while on her deathbed. Nadia Boulanger, who was a composer as well, did not compose much after Lili's death, believing her sister to have been far more talented than herself.

Pie Jesu features Boulanger's characteristically very chromatic harmony that I sometimes find rather unsettling (and a creepy chromatic organ line) but then it ends with these lovely restful major chords and it sounds like she's made peace with the state of things. It's quite moving. I wish we could hear what Lili Boulanger would have composed had she lived beyond 24. You can hear the influence of impressionists in much of her music, but she definitely had a very individual style that I think would have become even more defined had she lived longer.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Meaghan said:


> In fact, she dictated it to her sister Nadia while on her deathbed. Nadia Boulanger, who was a composer as well, did not compose much after Lili's death, believing her sister to have been far more talented than herself.
> 
> Pie Jesu features Boulanger's characteristically very chromatic harmony that I sometimes find rather unsettling (and a creepy chromatic organ line) but then it ends with these lovely restful major chords and it sounds like she's made peace with the state of things. It's quite moving. I wish we could hear what Lili Boulanger would have composed had she lived beyond 24. You can hear the influence of impressionists in much of her music, but she definitely had a very individual style that I think would have become even more defined had she lived longer.


a great loss indeed. I agree with your description of the piece, i've read somewhere that it's a piece with an atmosphere that reminds of a vampire movie and i think it's a quite fitting description, but at the end there's that sort of musical peaceful mist but still full of a sense of mistery, like she's finally entering in an unknown world... i don't know why but it reminds to me some painting of symbolist painters like Bocklin


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Webernite said:


> I can't really agree about Brahms and the Symphony No. 4. He wrote that many years before his death. Wouldn't the Elevan Chorale Preludes Op. 112 be more appropriate?


That's what I thought too. For Brahms, although the Chorale Preludes have the latest opus number, I think more intimate and poignant are the Vier Ernste Gesange (Four Serious Songs) just one opus previous (Op. 121).


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## Nix (Feb 20, 2010)

Webernite said:


> I can't really agree about Brahms and the Symphony No. 4. He wrote that many years before his death. Wouldn't the Elevan Chorale Preludes Op. 112 be more appropriate?


I thought that Brahms had plans to retire after writing the fourth symphony? If thats the case then I don't see why it can't be seen as a farewell piece, even if it isn't his last. The other late works I'm familiar with- the Clarinet Quintet and Sonatas certainly don't seem like farewell pieces. They have a very reminiscent quality about them, but none of their endings sound so conclusive as that of his fourth symphony.


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

Nix said:


> I thought that Brahms had plans to retire after writing the fourth symphony?


Pretty sure he _had_ been planning to retire--before he heard Richard Muhlfeld and decided he had to write some clarinet music for him. 



Polednice said:


> I think more intimate and poignant are the Vier Ernste Gesange (Four Serious Songs) just one opus previous (Op. 121).


Sooo good!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Maybe there's a difference between saying "farewell" to writing symphonies & a "farewell" to life? Bruckner's & Mahler's, written right at the end, qualify as both those things, but many others (as detailed above) only speak to a "farewell" to writing symphonies (if the composer lived some years after their completion) - eg. Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Sibelius, Bax...


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