# Final Works



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

This is sometimes a composer's last full opus, or a work that they were near to completing at their death. Mozart's Requiem gets a lot of hype because of that, and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.6 is also a famous "Final Work" although he actually had several other pieces under construction such as a Flute Concerto at his death. However, the Pathetique symphony is his last complete work.

The Poem for Flute and Orchestra by C. Griffes also has a similarly ominous background. Griffes was young when he wrote it, but about 4 months after the premiere of this work by Georges Barerre, he contracted a dangerously high fever and illness and died within days. As far as I know, no other works were at hand with him, so that was a true last work. Glazunov's Saxophone Concerto was like this as well, with him likely not getting to hear its premiere.

What other "Final works" out there are impressionable to you? Were they naively looking ahead to life, or heralding impending death, or something unexpectedly profound because of its placement in a composer's oeuvre?


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

From Bruckner, we get the unfinished 9th. Though, even without a finale, the work feels complete to me. It's dedicated "to the beloved God", reminding us what a pious man Bruckner was. The first movement gives off a "woe is me" kind of feeling (and being dedicated to God, it's almost like Beethoven shaking his fist at fate in his C minor drama). The scherzo pulses with sound and fury, which seems to add to this mood. It's almost like Mahler's 2nd, asking "what is the point of life", only with full on anger rather than anguish. The adagio (and accidental last movement) is a beautiful chorale-like reaction against the first two movements. It seems to look back at the best parts of life, and turns to look forward to the glory of God. 

While it does look upon death, it is a bitter farewell to life, but ends with an acceptance of sorts.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

http://www.talkclassical.com/31852-last-piece-music-take.html

Faure's charming and ethereal sting quartet.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Bartok's third piano concerto - he knew full well he was dying as he wrote it, and one gets a sense of this in the slow movement, though not in the joyous last movement.


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

Hmm...maybe Shostakovich's Viola Sonata? He did plan a couple of other things concurrently but this is really the work which screws the lid down. And the second book of Bach's '48' - I find the breaking off of Contrapunctus XIV poignant and just a little bit eerie.


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## MJongo (Aug 6, 2011)

Both Mahler's final complete work (Symphony 9) and incomplete work (Symphony 10) are incredible.


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## MJongo (Aug 6, 2011)

elgars ghost said:


> And the second book of Bach's '48' - I find the breaking off of Contrapunctus XIV poignant and just a little bit eerie.


I think you mean The Art of Fugue, not WTC Book 2.


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

MJongo said:


> I think you mean The Art of Fugue, not WTC Book 2.


Absolutely correct. I've had a hard day.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I like to think of Obrecht's Missa Maria Zart as a summa of his compositional career, possibly his last composition, and at least his last mass setting. I don't think he knew he was about to die, but he what he did was sum up everything he knew about mass settings in a gigantic, Bruckner-like scale which couldn't be equaled.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Bartók's Sonata for solo violin (1944) wasn't his final work, but it may have been his final step on the path his music was taking him. The things that came later seem like guided tours in comparison.

Reference: Kelemen


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## schuberkovich (Apr 7, 2013)

I love the replacement finale to Beethoven's op.130 (it was the last thing he ever wrote). It's such a happy movement and it feels like a nice farewell to music.


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## Frei aber froh (Feb 22, 2013)

*Viola Pride*



elgars ghost said:


> Hmm...maybe Shostakovich's Viola Sonata? He did plan a couple of other things concurrently but this is really the work which screws the lid down.


This makes me indescribably happy as a violist and as a Shostakovich fan. My teacher asked me what I want to play after I'm done with my current repertoire a few weeks ago and I responded that I wanted to play the Shostakovich quite promptly. (In addition to a few other things...)

I'm going to add the Bartók Viola Concerto to this. Like the Shostakovich sonata, one of its movements sounds like dying. I personally think of the second movement of the Bartók as letting go of life and going to heaven.


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## GodNickSatan (Feb 28, 2013)

How much of the Bartok Viola Concerto was written by him?


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

GodNickSatan said:


> How much of the Bartok Viola Concerto was written by him?


Apparently, not nearly as much as one would have liked...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Concerto_(Bartók)


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## Pip (Aug 16, 2013)

What about Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder? - a sublime set of song compositions to end with.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Pip said:


> What about Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder? - a sublime set of song compositions to end with.


Oh yes

Just think at that _Verklärung _theme (written when he was young, nearly 60 years before) at the end of the last Lied, just after the words "Ist dies etwa der Tod?" (Is this perhaps death?).

The cycle is over... hardly there is a better way to say farewell to life...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> ...
> 
> What other "Final works" out there are impressionable to you? Were they naively looking ahead to life, or heralding impending death, or something unexpectedly profound because of its placement in a composer's oeuvre?


I think that *Janacek's* _Erinnerung (Reminiscence)_ for solo piano is quite moving in that it is something like under a minute. It was on his piano when he died. So listening to that (as to Bach's famous unfinished fugue from _The Art of Fugue_, as mentioned already) I get the sense of this being the point at which he died.

There is a famous anecdote of Toscanini conducting a performance of* Puccini's *_Turandot_, also unfinished at his death but completed by another. At the point in the score at which Puccini's part finished, Toscanini stopped and said to the audience something like "this is when the maestro died." That's quite profound, but _Turandot_ itself doesn't strike me in the same way as the Janacek or Bach pieces.

Another thing I find quite sad in a sense is when a composer starts striking out in a new direction, then dies. One example I can think of is *Bernard Herrmann's *final film score _Taxi Driver,_ which was unique in his output in having this pared down jazzy feel (am I right, film music experts out there?), but his death robbed us of more things going off in that direction.

I think that *Mozart's* final works, not only the incomplete _Requiem _but also his last three symphonies speak to this as well (although not done right before he died). I have also heard a fragment, an incomplete first movement, of a second clarinet quintet that he was composing just before he died. Like the Janacek and Bach pieces, it ends abruptly.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Walter Piston ~ Concerto for string quartet, wind instruments and percussion.





A fine work, and one he was commissioned to write, but wrote or continued to write under remarkable circumstances which might have had many another simply giving up vs. continuing to work....

From the notes in the above link:
"This was Piston's final score; much of it was written while he was in the hospital, and he completed it in the months immediately following the death of his wife, whom he survived by only nine months. It was commissioned by the Portland Symphony String Quartet, originally to celebrate the symphony's fiftieth anniversary in 1974-75 - but the composer missed the deadline.
The premiere was given on October 26, 1976; Piston, who heard the performance (or possibly the rehearsal) only on tape, died on November 12."


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Berg's last completed work was the Violin Concerto and, of course, Lulu was left with a bit of work to do when he died (fortunately not too much due to the extent of the sketches and Berg's comprehensive structure for Lulu - Friedrich Cerha's completion is fully accepted) - they both ruminate in death with a wide sentimental streak (but that's Berg!)

That brought me to thinking of Webern who was shot in 1945 while stepping out for a cigar so he didn't disturb his sleeping grandchildren - lovely!. His last was the second Cantata (Op 31) which appears to have been completed in 1943 - seems his final years were mostly taken up with trying to manage his family through the hardships of war. Op 31 is a wonderful work and suggests to me an opening up of his terse style

What might have been from both of these men who died with the possibility of decades of work ahead of them


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I really like Scriabin's last preludes, very dark and foreboding.

No. 2 




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude,_Op._74,_No._2_(Scriabin)

No. 5


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The two greatest opera composers of the 19th century, Verdi and Wagner, ended with two of the most astonishing operas ever written. Each work is technically innovative, carrying its composer's art into previously uncharted territory, and represents at the same time a kind of philosophical summation. The last words in _Falstaff_ are sung as an earthy, rollicking fugue by the entire cast of characters: "Everything in the world is a joke." The last words in _Parsifal_ are sung as a chorus of quiet exaltation by the knights of the Grail, joined by ethereal voices from the temple dome: "Redemption to the redeemer." Viewed side by side, these words, the stories they conclude, and the music to which they are set, take us to opposite, but equally fundamental, poles of our human experience.

I am in awe of these final testaments of two old men.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

^^^ Fantastic .


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Nikolay Myaskovsky* deserves a mention with the completion of both his 27th Symphony and 13th String Quartet, written after the Zhdanov 1948 decree/attack against leader composers and writers and during his illness with terminal cancer. And while the finale of the Symphony may sound a tad obligatory, these works remain so typical of the composer not composing music out of circcumstances at the expense of music's intrinsic value and virtues.

I agree with Huilunsoittaja re. *Glazunov's * Saxophone Concerto (pretty nostalgic). Also worth mentioning are *Rimsky-Korsakov's* "The Golden Cockeral" and *Puccini's* "Turandot." *Mahler's* Ninth comes to mind also as does *Shebalin* with his Fifth Symphony (quite a sad, resigned ending).


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Cosmos said:


> From Bruckner, we get the unfinished 9th. Though, even without a finale, the work feels complete to me. It's dedicated "to the beloved God", reminding us what a pious man Bruckner was. The first movement gives off a "woe is me" kind of feeling (and being dedicated to God, it's almost like Beethoven shaking his fist at fate in his C minor drama). The scherzo pulses with sound and fury, which seems to add to this mood. It's almost like Mahler's 2nd, asking "what is the point of life", only with full on anger rather than anguish. The adagio (and accidental last movement) is a beautiful chorale-like reaction against the first two movements. It seems to look back at the best parts of life, and turns to look forward to the glory of God.
> 
> While it does look upon death, it is a bitter farewell to life, but ends with an acceptance of sorts.


Kind of like Bax's Seventh Symphony in how ends, although he lived for the next 16 years


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## MissLemko (May 11, 2014)

I believe that Liszt's final work was Bagatelle sans tonalite, as it was intended as a replacement for the 4th Mephisto Waltz. Liszt felt that the end was near; and he was not wrong.The 4th MW was left unfinished. The piece was performed in June and he died in Bayereuth in July. It follows the same programme and is not as fragmented as the other late piano pieces. I believe he was in quite a good mood when he composed it (I know that it's not exactly the most joyous piece ever, but given the fact that his moods ranged from despair to alcohol-induced dullness this is surely a very „bright“ piece). It almost sounds playful! And it's the first intentionally atonal piece in history so we could say that Liszt's death meant the death of tonality (although this is not the truth, but a little melodrama hasn't killed anyone).


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