# Should a composers' later works be regarded as "a culmination"?



## Guest (Apr 15, 2018)

In the thread about Bach being 'more religious than you might think', Eschbeg makes this point...



Eschbeg said:


> [we tend to believe] that a composer's overall output can be thought of as a linear process of stylistic growth and evolution, and that the last works of a composer are a "culmination." Consequently, the fact that the chorale cantatas appeared to be the culmination of Bach's career was proof that Bach was a fundamentally religious composer.


This set me wondering about the extent to which this is true for any composer. An obvious example is Beethoven's Ninth, an apparent 'culmination' and one which others who followed him set as a standard to reach. Did Beethoven have any intimations that the Ninth was going to be his last, and therefore it must be his greatest symphony? A culmination? And, therefore that the Ninth represents all that he was about? I think I know the answer (that some of the works completed after the Ninth suggest he was continuing to 'develop and progress' in his composition and that, according to Morris cited in Wikipedia, he estimated his 14th Quartet to be his most perfect single work.)

More broadly - for I don't intend that this thread should just be about Beethoven - how far have other composers been, shall we say "misrepresented" by the idea that their later works have represented a culmination of their effort and achievement?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

There's also the question of whether later revisions of earlier works are necessarily better, this came up recently in a discussion of Bach's sonatas for keyboard and violin.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beating the Beethoven drum (sorry), Ludwig had no idea he was dying and certainly had no plans in that direction. Nothing "culminating" there, at least in a purposeful way. But common mythologies state otherwise.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

It struck me yesterday, when I responded to a poster's request for information comparing Haydn and Mozart, that the fact that Mozart and Schubert died young has tended to colour our perception of their later works. Especially since Mozart was working on a Requiem, and Schubert's publisher chose the title "Schwanengesang" for a collection of songs. So the works that seem to be considered the pinnacle of their achievement are really only "middle-period" works. How would Mozart's symphonies nos.40 and 41 be perceived if he'd gone on to write another 20 or 30? Would there be quite as much interest in "completing" Schubert's "unfinished" symphony if we had another 10 to listen to?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> In the thread about Bach being 'more religious than you might think', Eschbeg makes this point...
> 
> This set me wondering about the extent to which this is true for any composer. An obvious example is Beethoven's Ninth, an apparent 'culmination' and one which others who followed him set as a standard to reach. Did Beethoven have any intimations that the Ninth was going to be his last, and therefore it must be his greatest symphony? A culmination? And, therefore that the Ninth represents all that he was about? I think I know the answer (that some of the works completed after the Ninth suggest he was continuing to 'develop and progress' in his composition and that, according to Morris cited in Wikipedia, he estimated his 14th Quartet to be his most perfect single work.)
> 
> More broadly - for I don't intend that this thread should just be about Beethoven - how far have other composers been, shall we say "misrepresented" by the idea that their later works have represented a culmination of their effort and achievement?


Obviously, it's one's subjective opinion whether one thinks a composer's later works are a culmination. I wouldn't agree with said Morris's citing of Beethoven's 14th String Quartet as such.

Certainly, with regard to Sibelius, I would regard his 7th Symphony and 'Tapiola' as a culmination of his work but that's not a view shared by most here.


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## Guest (Apr 15, 2018)

janxharris said:


> Obviously, it's one's subjective opinion whether one thinks a composer's later works are a culmination. I wouldn't agree with said Morris's citing of Beethoven's 14th String Quartet as such.
> 
> Certainly, with regard to Sibelius, I would regard his 7th Symphony and 'Tapiola' as a culmination of his work but that's not a view shared by most here.


Just to be clear, Morris was cited saying that Beethoven himself thought the 14th was his most perfect.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Just to be clear, Morris was cited saying that Beethoven himself thought the 14th was his most perfect.


I see. I know Bernstein considered his orchestral (strings) rendition of this work to be his best moment.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Brahms may be an example of a composer who deteriorated. I know people who think that his later work (everything after the first symphony) is turgid. I don't know enough about his music to have an opinion.

Haydn too reached a peak before the final period, I would argue. The Op 50 quartets, for example, and even op 20, and the 30 or so symphonies preceding the London Symphonies.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Beethoven himself thought the 14th was his most perfect.


And he was right, it is his most successful quartet.



MacLeod said:


> Did Beethoven have any intimations that the Ninth was going to be his last, and therefore it must be his greatest symphony?


It isn't his best symphony.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Mandryka said:


> Brahms may be an example of a composer who deteriorated. I know people who think that his later work (everything after the first symphony) is turgid. I don't know enough about his music to have an opinion.


Brahms is one of my favourite composers, and I feel just the opposite. I prefer symphonies 2-4 over the 1st, and especially in chamber music, his last few years turned out some of his best works (most notably the clarinet quintet).


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> It isn't his best symphony.


In what respect do you think it falls short? I've always thought that it has really great moments but suffers from being overly long and I don't really get the slow movement.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

janxharris said:


> In what respect do you think it falls short?


Final movement. Mind you I don't think that the final movement of the Eroica is a high point either.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Art Rock said:


> Brahms is one of my favourite composers, and I feel just the opposite. I prefer symphonies 2-4 over the 1st, and especially in chamber music, his last few years turned out some of his best works (most notably the clarinet quintet).


I like those late Brahms pieces too, at least in some performances. Maybe Brahms IMO was uneven through all his career -- I'm not sure about this.

The end of Beethoven's life may not be a high point either. Think of the number of people you meet who can't enjoy his Diabelli Variations or the Missa Solemnis. And indeed the middle period is far from unproblematic -- the Kreutzer sonata isn't an easy thing to make into poetry, for example, nor is the Waldstein and Appassionata. Maybe Beethoven was uneven too.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> Final movement. Mind you I don't think that the final movement of the Eroica is a high point either.


The 9th's finale's climactic full chorus outburst near the end is wonderful though is it not? I'm with you on the Eroica - though, again, it (the full symphony) has undoubtable greatness in places.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> I like those late Brahms pieces too, at least in some performances. Maybe Brahms IMO was uneven through all his career -- I'm not sure about this.
> 
> The end of Beethoven's life may not be a high point either. Think of the number of people you meet who can't enjoy his Diabelli Variations or the Missa Solemnis. And indeed the middle period is far from unproblematic -- the Kreutzer sonata isn't an easy thing to make into poetry, for example, nor is the Waldstein and Appassionata. Maybe Beethoven was uneven too.


I would expect a composer to be uneven in his or her output - especially those that have written a lot of pieces.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

janxharris said:


> I would expect a composer to be uneven in his or her output - especially those that have written a lot of pieces.


.........

Indeed


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

It has always seemed to me that music composed when a composer is young cannot be easily evaluated against the composer's later music. To some extent they were different people. I love middle period Beethoven as much as late Beethoven but they are very different. I love a lot of early Beethoven, too, and would not want to say that it is less successful than the later works. I say this even though technical ability often develops over a lifetime.

Isn't it an illusion or a cognitive bias to hear progress where there is really only change (some qualities lost, some gained)? It is not such a big leap from seeing growing greatness in a composer's output to seeing later music as better than earlier music (such as "Boulez is greater than Beethoven") but that is obviously nonsense. They are just very different and are attempting very different things.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Originally Posted by Eschbeg:
[we tend to believe] that a composer's overall output can be thought of as a linear process of stylistic growth and evolution, and that the last works of a composer are a "culmination." Consequently, the fact that the chorale cantatas appeared to be the culmination of Bach's career was proof that Bach was a fundamentally religious composer.
--
Bach dedicated most of his works to the glory of God long before his later works, so it could be argued that his later ones are no more religious in intent than his earlier ones. I believe that to consider his works otherwise is built upon a false premise. It would also be false to say that he didn't write secular works as well, such as his Goldberg Variations or his WTC. Such arguments are an attempt to place this composer in one box only, and it just doesn't work.

Considering that Beethoven's 9th, Brahms' later piano works (Op 116-119), and Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and 41 are full of a mastery and richness in composition would certainly point, IMO, to these being culminating works in the lives of these composers. But how about Stravinsky who had his Russian, neoclassical, and serial periods? While his serial period came last, such works certainly don't rival his Russian period in success or popularity and might not be considered his culminating works, such as his much earlier Rite of Spring.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

In popular music the trend is often the opposite. Many bands' debut albums were their best albums. But I think it's usually the case for bands of humble stature. They spend their best creative forces on the first album and then afterwards just repeat themselves. Really good bands, on the other hand often evolve or re-invent themselves.
When it comes to classical music I think those two processes, the evolution, and the spending of creativity, or devolution, if you will, occur simultaneously. Usually in good composers the evolution prevails.
But even for them despite the general increase in maturity and skill as they age, they probably can't do all the things they were able to in their youth. The mind, even if it's more mature, is not as sharp and fresh as it used to be. This can potentially be overcome by more patience and methodical development of later works.
I am often interested in both early and late works of composer, the first when I look for that freshness, the second when I look for maturity.
Middle period works should in theory have the best balance of freshness and maturity, but for some strange reason I sometimes overlook them. Perhaps because they are so standard, and there's nothing so special about them.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

"Should a composers' later works be regarded as 'a culmination'?" 

It depends, of course. As one person already mentioned, we are different people at different ages. The 5 year old me, the 15 year old me, the 25, 35, 45 year old me are all different people with different aspirations, different memories and different world views; and the 65, 75 and 85 year old me will be different also, if I'm fortunate enough to live that long and still have my mental faculties. 

Some composers such as Mozart and Beethoven continued to refine their output, and Beethoven seemed to seek out composing on a larger scale with the more massive string quartets, the 9th and his Missa Solemnis. 

Other composers, such as Stravinsky and Copland went through stylistic changes all there lives and continued to change and grow as they got older. Stravinsky took his Russian phase and Neo-Classical phase as far as it could take him and then turned to serial music in the twilight of his career. 

Verdi, known for tragic operas, where everyone dies at the end, composed his final opera, "Falstaff" as a comedy, and explored terse development as opposed to catchy melodies and dramatic effects.

Rossini and Sibelius simply stopped composing when they thought there was nothing more to say. 

A very old Richard Strauss, once the composer of what was once considered dissonant and shocking ("music of the future"), in the wake of World War II, the holocaust, Hiroshima, Neo-Classicism and serialism; reverted back to a kind of Romanticism that goes back to Schubert and Schumann, with the lovely "Four Last Songs"; certainly not "music of the future" but more a last gasp of Romanticism. 

After World War I, and losing his wife, and probably sinking into depression, Elgar left us with his sad but beautiful swan song, the cello concerto, before turning his back on composing altogether. 

Tchaikovsky quite willfully left us all with a mystery, having kept the program of his 6th symphony a secret. 

The life cycle affects us all in different ways and the life cycle itself often compels artists to deal squarely with issues that come with aging. 

While Mahler's wonderful "Das lied Von Der Erde" faces middle age (and the mid-life crisis?) head-on; Shostakovich's 14th "Songs of Death" and 15th Symphonies face death itself. 

Music is not just notes on a page; sounds arranged in an order and in patterns that are engaging to the brain...

the music always tells a story.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I believe most composers go through stages with different approaches to music. With Stravinsky, Rochberg, Penderecki, for example their music can go through radical changes over time, some trying out atonal, others moving away from it. 

With Beethoven, his middle period was distinctly different than late, and his late period doesn't supersede or culminate his ideas in the middle period at all. Mozart music also took a startling change and became more subdued in energy, but gaining in a more mature outlook.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

IMO, a composer's creative output is an ongoing process, a continuum, which progresses until the composer dies or stops writing. Perhaps we can regard it as a "culmination" in hindsight, looking back at the body of work....but while the composer is alive and active it is an ongoing creative process...i doubt there is really a conscious finishing point.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

A complicating factor for Soviet-era composers is the necessity to conform to State requirements for musical correctness, and also a requirement to compose heroic or laudatory sawdust periodically to celebrate the achievements of the State.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Strange Magic said:


> A complicating factor for Soviet-era composers is the necessity to conform to State requirements for musical correctness, and also a requirement to compose heroic or laudatory sawdust periodically to celebrate the achievements of the State.


Sawdust?..............


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I just saw a documentary about Respighi, where he wrote his last tone poem and declared he couldn't go any farther with that, and then he started writing in a different form. Erik Satie had the same thing happen to him when Debussy wrote Pelleas, stating that after hearing that, he had to find a different way to go. 

So instead of their life's work ending up with a culmination of everything, it sounds like many times composers chase something to its conclusion and then move on. 

Sibelius called a symphony a confession of faith at different stages of life. I wonder if a composer's output can be seen less as a culmination and more of a "confession of faith" or a declaration of their particular outlook at a particular time.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Manxfeeder said:


> I wonder if a composer's output can be seen less as a culmination and more of a "confession of faith" or a declaration of their particular outlook at a particular time.


That's close to what I had posted....any composition of a composer is a declaration of where that composer is at that particular time....not a conscious "_let me wrap it all up with this one_" idea.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

The latter works of both Beethoven and Brahms are not cumulations, they are distillations. These works show an economy in style and logic not present in their earlier works. The late quartets, _Missa Solemnis_, and the Ninth Symphony for Beethoven and Opus 116-119 for Brahms are mighty, mighty works. If you think there is a deterioration in compositional skills in the latter works, then I'm not sure you know the latter works.


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## Beet131 (Mar 24, 2018)

Sometimes a culmination can be like a fond farewell - personal, tender, soft-spoken, upset, bewildered and yet profound. Beethoven's Late String Quartets strike me as his most personal expressions at the end of his life. The "Cavatina" from the B Flat Major String Quartet (No. 13), the "Heiliger Dankgesang" from the A minor String Quartet (No. 15), the 1st movement of the C Sharp minor String Quartet (No. 14), and the 3rd movement of the F Major (No. 16). It's like he's sharing some of his innermost secrets. 

Similarly, Schubert's Cello Quintet gives a powerful testimony to an awareness of his own mortality. He left us with arguably the greatest piece of chamber music ever composed. The "Adagio" from this work has always made me think of sacred steps into that eternal life Schubert could envision. What could be a greater culmination than this most personal of goodbyes?

Like Beethoven and Schubert, Brahms chose to focus on small works - the piano pieces of Op. 116, 117, 118 and 119, lieder and choral works.

In a way, it makes sense to me that a composer would end his life's work this way, doing perhaps what was most private and satisfying.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Beet131 said:


> *Sometimes a culmination can be like a fond farewell - personal, tender, soft-spoken, upset, bewildered **and yet profound.* Beethoven's Late String Quartets strike me as his most personal expressions at the end of his life. The "Cavatina" from the B Flat Major String Quartet (No. 13), the "Heiliger Dankgesang" from the A minor String Quartet (No. 15), the 1st movement of the C Sharp minor String Quartet (No. 14), and the 3rd movement of the F Major (No. 16). It's like he's sharing some of his innermost secrets.
> 
> Similarly, Schubert's Cello Quintet gives a powerful testimony to an awareness of his own mortality. He left us with arguably the greatest piece of chamber music ever composed. The "Adagio" from this work has always made me think of sacred steps into that eternal life Schubert could envision. What could be a greater culmination than this most personal of goodbyes?
> 
> ...


The magnificent adagios from Mahler 9 and Mahler 10 can be considered similarly, though the farewells are not so "fond", IMHO.

Profound? Yes, deeply.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

janxharris said:


> Sawdust?..............


Sawdust, in this sense:

"I, L. W., believe, am sure, that my friend hasn't sawdust in his body or in his head, even though I have no direct evidence of my senses to the contrary. I am sure, by reason of what has been said to me, of what I have read, and of my experience."
Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty,


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

There is often plenty of justification for viewing final works as a culmination, but exactly what they are a culmination of can be a rather messy question. A composer's life can be fit into any number of narratives, and within each narrative there will undoubtedly be ways in which the final works are culminations. But establishing the narrative in the first place can be a truly subjective and selective exercise.

To continue with the Bach example: Forkel's biography of Bach from the early 1800s, at the start of the German nationalist movement, depicted Bach as a German first and a Lutheran second. Spitta's biography of the 1880s, the so-called "decadent" era, depicted Bach as refreshingly straight-laced and religious composer. When Schoenberg invented dodecaphony in the 1920s and proclaimed that the technique would "insure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years," it was only inevitable that his first fully 12-tone work (the Piano Suite) incorporated the B-A-C-H motif into the tone row, resurrecting Bach the German forefather. When Hindemith was in his "Gebrauchsmusik" phase in the 1930s, he modeled himself on Bach as the ultimate utilitarian composer who wrote music because it was his job. After the revision of the Bach chronology in the 1950s, the Bach that emerged was suspiciously congruent with the detached and sober formalism of the modernist movement. And so on.... one might say that every generation gets the Bach it deserves.

In other words, "culminations" do tend to be convenient confirmations of the pictures we've drawn for the composers we love.


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Not in the case of Schumann, that’s for sure (with all my love for Gesänge der Frühe).

Also, the very late works of Prokofiev show he lost some of his edge towards the end.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

BiscuityBoyle said:


> ...the very late works of Prokofiev show he lost some of his edge towards the end.


Prokofiev was a wonderful craftsman and a gifted melodist, able to create catchy melodies almost as well as Tchaikovsky; but unlike Tchaikovsky or contemporaries such as Britten or Shostakovich, Prokofiev lacks very much emotional depth. Along this line, Prokofiev, who was a talented chess player seemed to approach music as if he were playing chess. While he is able to solve problems in the opening, middle game and endgame in beautiful fashion, such an approach can only take one so far in music. Add to this, the soulless Soviet/poster propaganda world he lived in after he returned to the USSR, and it's no wonder that he would lose his "edge". In "Lives of the Great Composers", Harold Schonberg states that all the Soviet composers could do was compose watered down Prokofiev and even Prokofiev composed watered down Prokofiev.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

BiscuityBoyle said:


> Also, the very late works of Prokofiev show he lost some of his edge towards the end.


I agree -- in some cases. But his Cello Sonata probably edges Shostakovich's (a much earlier work), and his Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra is convincing and has many memorable passages, despite being a bit diffuse.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Boston Charlie said:


> Prokofiev was a wonderful craftsman and a gifted melodist, able to create catchy melodies almost as well as Tchaikovsky; but unlike Tchaikovsky or contemporaries such as Britten or Shostakovich, Prokofiev lacks very much emotional depth. Along this line, Prokofiev, who was a talented chess player seemed to approach music as if he were playing chess. While he is able to solve problems in the opening, middle game and endgame in beautiful fashion, such an approach can only take one so far in music. Add to this, the soulless Soviet/poster propaganda world he lived in after he returned to the USSR, and it's no wonder that he would lose his "edge". In "Lives of the Great Composers", Harold Schonberg states that all the Soviet composers could do was compose watered down Prokofiev and even Prokofiev composed watered down Prokofiev.


I think this is a very accurate synopsis of Prokofiev's art. Emotional depth of the sort displayed by Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich was not Prokofiev's métier; his gifts were in a different direction--a vigorous, bracing, eager, somewhat acidic, often joyous robustness that is often the very opposite of T and S, whose emotionalism has sometimes a faintly neurotic edge.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ZJovicic said:


> In popular music the trend is often the opposite. Many bands' debut albums were their best albums. But I think it's usually the case for bands of humble stature. They spend their best creative forces on the first album and then afterwards just repeat themselves. Really good bands, on the other hand often evolve or re-invent themselves.
> When it comes to classical music *I think those two processes, the evolution, and the spending of creativity, or devolution, if you will, occur simultaneously. Usually in good composers the evolution prevails.
> But even for them despite the general increase in maturity and skill as they age, they probably can't do all the things they were able to in their youth. The mind, even if it's more mature, is not as sharp and fresh as it used to be. This can potentially be overcome by more patience and methodical development of later works.*


Sibelius offered this advice to young composers: keep all your sketches, since in your later years you will not have such inspirations as you had early on. That may be true in many cases, but knowledge acquired over a creative lifetime may outweigh raw inspiration.

In the case of Sibelius we hear his youthful fires burning brightly in the somewhat sprawling _Kullervo_, which throws out one arresting idea after another in its headlong fervor, and his mature craft in the 7th symphony and _Tapiola,_ where the economy of material is as striking as the structural strength and expressive power achieved with it.

Sibelius presents a good case for seeing his late works as "culminations," since they epitomize the economy and unity which he pursued throughout his career. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're his "best" works, though.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

ZJovicic said:


> In popular music the trend is often the opposite. Many bands' debut albums were their best albums. But I think it's usually the case for bands of humble stature. They spend their best creative forces on the first album and then afterwards just repeat themselves. Really good bands, on the other hand often evolve or re-invent themselves.


There are a number of reasons that can be attributed to this phenomenon, which others have referred to as the "sophomore slump."

A typical successful songwriter (band) of the past was usually signed to a multi-album contract. He or she may have been writing for years prior to being discovered and has a backlog of grade A material which of course is selected for the first album. This leaves lesser material for follow-up albums. The songwriter can always write new material, however, now they are under time constraints. Whereas the grade A material was written over an extensive time period, new material is usually pushed by deadlines.

The other phenomenon that happens is the "can't repeat yourself" stigma. Once success is obtained, there is pressure on the songwriter to "evolve" in new directions. This can mean that the songwriter now must somehow go against the grain of the abilities that brought success in the first place. Musical evolution takes time and as pointed out above, time may be constricted.

Of course pop styles can change rapidly. If you were a surf band in the early sixties, the British Invasion changed the sound on you. If you were a folk rock musician in 1975, disco was about to change your world. Neil Young is on record as saying that if _Heart of Gold_ had been released a year earlier or a year later it would not have been a number one hit. Timing in success and in music is essential!

Often a songwriter has just that initial success period to build a fan base that will allow for time to write new material or to move in other directions. You could have all the talent in the world as a songwriter, but if you miss that initial commercial success you can end up like Jimmie Spheeris or Nick Drake.

Bands (songwriters) that evolve usually have the talent, the initial success, and the right timing. These are some of the factors that limit what we would call really good bands.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

ZJovicic said:


> In popular music the trend is often the opposite. Many bands' debut albums were their best albums. But I think it's usually the case for bands of humble stature. They spend their best creative forces on the first album and then afterwards just repeat themselves. Really good bands, on the other hand often evolve or re-invent themselves.
> When it comes to classical music I think those two processes, the evolution, and the spending of creativity, or devolution, if you will, occur simultaneously. Usually in good composers the evolution prevails.
> But even for them despite the general increase in maturity and skill as they age, they probably can't do all the things they were able to in their youth. The mind, even if it's more mature, is not as sharp and fresh as it used to be. *This can potentially be overcome by more patience and methodical development of later works.*
> I am often interested in both early and late works of composer, the first when I look for that freshness, the second when I look for maturity.
> Middle period works should in theory have the best balance of freshness and maturity, but for some strange reason I sometimes overlook them. Perhaps because they are so standard, and there's nothing so special about them.


A great point. This brings to mind Bruckner, Myaskovsky, Dvorak, even Bax, who in their early years had burning inspirations coupled with trials and tribulations/errors, finding their ways, their voices however fresh earlier on, while improving on their techniques along the way. And all the while, putting more focus on clarifying their ideas, getting, sort of speak "to the bones of the matter." Erno Dohnanyi comes to mind also, when comparing his lush First Symphony (1900) with his Second (1945).


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Boston Charlie said:


> Prokofiev was a wonderful craftsman and a gifted melodist, able to create catchy melodies almost as well as Tchaikovsky; but unlike Tchaikovsky or contemporaries such as Britten or Shostakovich, Prokofiev lacks very much emotional depth. Along this line, Prokofiev, who was a talented chess player seemed to approach music as if he were playing chess. While he is able to solve problems in the opening, middle game and endgame in beautiful fashion, such an approach can only take one so far in music.


Everyone among the Russian intelligentsia plays chess. I'm Russian and chess was part of my upbringing, just like hockey would be in Canada. It's really funny to see this trotted out as evidence that "Prokofiev lacks very much emotional depth". To quote *Shostakovitch*, who once won a game against Alekhin, "Шахматы очень люблю: в них сочетаются искусство и наука. Они дают мне отдых и вдохновение" ("I like chess a whole lot: it combines science and art. It affords me repose and inspiration.").

"Craft" vs "emotional depth" is a cousin of the tired "form + content = wineglass + wine" formula Prokofiev's contemporaries, the Russian Formalists, so convincingly took apart. Subscribing to this language is simply not conducive to appreciating the specificity of art on its own terms.

Instead let's read what Sviatoslav Richter had to say about Prokofiev's 3rd Symphony:



> The performance of his Third Symphony in 1939 left a tremendous impression on me. The composer himself conducted. Never before had I felt anything like it when listening to music. The impression was staggering; it was like the end of the world. Prokofiev uses extraordinarily intense expressive devices in this work. In the third movement - a Scherzo - the strings play a flickeringly jerky motif from which plumes of asphyxiating smoke seem to issue, as though the air itself were on fire. The final movement opens with a sort of sombre march - a grandiose orchestral tumult, a veritable apocalypse followed by a brief lull before starting up again with redoubled force in a swirl of tocsin-like bells. I sat there as though turned to stone. I wanted to hide. I glanced at my neighbour, who was crimson and sweating profusely. Even during the interval, shivers still ran up and down my spine.


Or, better still, listen to works such as this






Or this








> Add to this, the soulless Soviet/poster propaganda world he lived in after he returned to the USSR, and it's no wonder that he would lose his "edge". In "Lives of the Great Composers", Harold Schonberg states that all the Soviet composers could do was compose watered down Prokofiev and even Prokofiev composed watered down Prokofiev.


Except he wrote many of his greatest works in the 1940s. Zhdanov's decree against "formalism" that came out in 1948 was a contributing event to his somewhat underwhelming final stretch, yes - but what you said is far too simplistic. Also, citing Schonberg as an authority on Soviet music is hilarious.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The posts of Boston Charlie, BiscuityBoyle, and myself can be seen as offering differing yet complementary views of the several facets of the enormously fecund and varied Prokofiev. Prokofiev has often struck me as a 20th century Mozart--master of genres, inexhaustible, tireless. Mozart also has been questioned as to his emotional "depth": too much cheerful, happy music? Too few tears? I do also join in Richter's praise of Prokofiev's 3rd symphony--it is a wonder of my world certainly, if not of everyone else's.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I loved Schonberg’s book, but there were times when he could be far too glib and dismissive, with him being proven totally wrong with regard to someone like Mahler. I’ve found the Russians the far most rewarding composers of the century, including Prokofiev and Shostakovich, despite the political nonsense they were compelled to overcome, and consider the Shostakovich 2nd Violin Concerto a masterpiece and also the Piano Concertos of Prokofiev, just for starters. They did not lack depth, in my opinion, and those who feel that way may just not appreciate or understand them as composers— and of course no one is obligated to. I imagine that those who don’t care for them are listening to Schuman, Piston and Copland all day, as fine as they sometimes are? The Russians are worth delving into far more deeply than they are sometimes given credit for. They had to be ingenious in order to survive, and they wrote with great skill, color and imagination.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I'd imagine they should only be considered a culmination if the composer themselves declares them to be so. But I'm sure many composers haven't thought in those terms, being working musicians who constantly crave more work, and have a healthy enough ego to assume their best might be still ahead of them...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Kieran said:


> I'd imagine they should only be considered a culmination if the composer themselves declares them to be so. But I'm sure many composers haven't thought in those terms, being working musicians who constantly crave more work, and have a healthy enough ego to assume their best might be still ahead of them...


Certainly true in Prokofiev's case. P's second "wife" Mira Mendelssohn wrote that as Prokofiev lay in what was to be his deathbed, "all the forces his being could muster were tensed to write down [the titles of] what he had planned. He worked on seven scores at once.... [Prokofiev] asked me repeatedly and so insistently that, not wishing to cross him, I took a notebook and pencil and wrote down to his dictation: 
_Opus 133: Concerto No.6 for two pianos...
Opus 134: Cello Sonata...
Opus 135: Sonata No.5 for piano, new edition...
Opus 136: Symphony No.2, new edition....
Opus 137: Sonata No.10 for piano in E Minor...
Opus 138: Piano Sonata No.11...._"

All pieces he had begun sketches of or had definite plans for. The seventh work was a Concertino for 'Cello and Orchestra, begun in collaboration with Rostropovitch.


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Strange Magic said:


> Certainly true in Prokofiev's case. P's second "wife" Mira Mendelssohn wrote that as Prokofiev lay in what was to be his deathbed, "all the forces his being could muster were tensed to write down [the titles of] what he had planned. He worked on seven scores at once.... [Prokofiev] asked me repeatedly and so insistently that, not wishing to cross him, I took a notebook and pencil and wrote down to his dictation:
> _Opus 133: Concerto No.6 for two pianos...
> Opus 134: Cello Sonata...
> Opus 135: Sonata No.5 for piano, new edition...
> ...


I really wish the piano concerto 6, for two pianos, strings and percussion, had materialized. It was meant to be premiered by Richter and Anatoly Vedernikov (who was Prokofiev's musical assistant at the time; many of the surviving pages of the manuscript are in his handwriting), and might've brought a greater international renown for this criminally overlooked master. He played Prokofiev (and quite a few other composers) as well as anyone.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

BiscuityBoyle said:


> Everyone among the Russian intelligentsia plays chess. I'm Russian and chess was part of my upbringing, just like hockey would be in Canada. It's really funny to see this trotted out as evidence that "Prokofiev lacks very much emotional depth". To quote *Shostakovitch*, who once won a game against Alekhin, "Шахматы очень люблю: в них сочетаются искусство и наука. Они дают мне отдых и вдохновение" ("I like chess a whole lot: it combines science and art. It affords me repose and inspiration.").
> 
> "Craft" vs "emotional depth" is a cousin of the tired "form + content = wineglass + wine" formula Prokofiev's contemporaries, the Russian Formalists, so convincingly took apart. Subscribing to this language is simply not conducive to appreciating the specificity of art on its own terms.
> 
> ...


My chess analogy regarding Prokofiev was not meant to be a characterization of chess players, but of Prokofiev's approach to music making which I find to be lacking in the same emotional depth that one may find in Tchaikovsky, or in his 20th century contemporaries, Shostakovich and Britten.

For the record, I like Prokofiev, and apart from classical music, chess is my other passion in life. Having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s, I'm well aware of how Russia dominated the chess scene for decades and I often have turned to the beautiful games of Alekhine, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Tal, Smyslov, Petrosian, Karpov and Kasparov, for learning.

I never stated that Schonberg was an expert on Soviet music; but can see where Schonberg might have been on to some kernel of truth in his assessment of Soviet music, where even you have stated that "Zhdanov's decree against 'formalism' that came out in 1948 was a contributing event to [Prokofiev's] somewhat underwhelming final stretch."

Yes, my statements are far too simplistic and I appreciate the level of nuance that you've provided through your more integral understanding of the Russian people and culture.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

'Criminally overlooked'? The man is widely regarded and in the top rank of great composers. No hyperbole necessary :tiphat:.


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

eugeneonagain said:


> 'Criminally overlooked'? The man is widely regarded and in the top rank of great composers. No hyperbole necessary :tiphat:.


I meant the pianist, not the composer. Had Prokofiev written something especially for Vedernikov, more people would know who Vedernikov is (as they should - he was a very great pianist).


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> I loved Schonberg's book, but there were times when he could be far too glib and dismissive, with him being proven totally wrong with regard to someone like Mahler. I've found the Russians the far most rewarding composers of the century, including Prokofiev and Shostakovich, despite the political nonsense they were compelled to overcome, and consider the Shostakovich 2nd Violin Concerto a masterpiece and also the Piano Concertos of Prokofiev, just for starters. They did not lack depth, in my opinion, and those who feel that way may just not appreciate or understand them as composers- and of course no one is obligated to. I imagine that those who don't care for them are listening to Schuman, Piston and Copland all day, as fine as they sometimes are? The Russians are worth delving into far more deeply than they are sometimes given credit for. They had to be ingenious in order to survive, and they wrote with great skill, color and imagination.


I come from a working class family who had no interest in classical music. During my teenage years, I developed an interest in classical music that came out in part from cartoons, but also the original "Star Wars" trilogy that was part of my coming of age and I was as taken by John Williams' big and brassy classically-inspired score as I was by the "Star Wars" message and mythology.

While still a teenager, my mother gave me a copy of Schonberg's "Lives of the Great Composers" one Christmas; not that she liked or even understood classical music but I guess she figured there were worse things a teenage boy could do besides spend his time on classical music, so she encouraged my interest.

Anyway, Schonberg's book became almost like a Bible to me. I read through it to the point where I committed sections to memory, and eventually the book started to fall apart.

I don't agree with all of Schonberg's assessments, though. In the second edition (the one I grew up on), he's rough on Mahler, Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and by omission, Britten, who barely gets a line (in the third edition he's much kinder to Shostakovich and pays Britten some regard as well.)

What's great about Schonberg, though, is just that his book is so well written. Writing is hard and writing about something as ambiguous as music is even harder. Schonberg is able to explain complex musical systems in a way that is accessible to the non-musician and he is able to weave such into a narrative that also captures the essence of the composer's life and times.

I owe a great deal to Schonberg.

Like me, Schonberg's duo passions are classical music and chess, and he did write a book on the grandmasters of chess that is comparable to his book on composers. I found it amusing, that Schonberg's chess book, though, reveals the author's limitations in being able to explain the world's greatest chess players without falling back on his classical music expertise. As Schonberg says: "If Capablanca was the Mozart of chess, then Alekhine was it's Wagner."


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^i also appreciate Schonberg's book. Whatever warts it might have--and it would be impossible to write such a book on such a subject without there being substantial disagreements among its readers--it is an excellent overview. One might quibble with the title itself: is every composer mentioned in the book a "Great Composer"? Does Schonberg think so? Do I think so? But imagine a book on the Lives of the Great Physicists--after one got past Newton, Einstein, etc., imagine the arguments among physicists over who was really great!


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> I loved Schonberg's book, but there were times when he could be far too glib and dismissive, with him being proven totally wrong with regard to someone like Mahler.


You could not be more right about that. But remember, Schonberg, (who was a friend of my father's and whom I got to spend time with more than once) was not a musician or musicologist, except for being an amateur pianist of modest skills. He was, however, a great journalist and a great writer with a prodigious memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of, among other things, classical music (literally -- he could have written a superb music encyclopedia if he'd had the time). And his skills didn't just apply to writing about classical music: Assigned by the NY Times to the Fischer-Spassky chess match, his coverage, ultimately turned into a celebrated book he co-authored, helped turn that match into the legendary event it became, though he was no chess expert.

His greatest flaw, most apparent in his concert reviews but sometimes seen in his books too, is that he assumed his own opinions of composers and performers somehow had some special weight and validity, hence the "glib and dismissive" tone you mention, which by the way was far worse in private conversation. He even served on juries for piano competitions, something I have trouble believing he was qualified to do (any more than anyone here is qualified, at any rate). But the skills he did have made it easy to assume he had a level of training and expertise in music that he did not have.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

A composer's last works are to be viewed as a "culmination" only if the composer, knowing he was near death or retirement, views them as such as he is working on them. I expect that happens rarely.

Brahms' Vier Ernste Gesang were a melancholy look back at the end -- but I doubt if you could call it a culmination.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I loved Schonberg's book to death. I had a hardbound copy that was almost in tatters by the time I was through with it. But it also taught me a great lesson about critics and historians: not everything they write is worth accepting blindly, and when they were wrong, they could be just as wrong as the average listener. I've never trusted them since, including someone such as De La Grange, who wrote on Mahler. What the historian excels in is the gathering and collecting of information about a composer's works and life that is not accessible to the average listener. But the _interpretation_ of what they find is where one has the right to question their conclusions and make one's own determination, and I doubt if Schonberg ever realized that. Trust no one's opinion implicitly, and his views on the Russian composers were painted with too large a brushstroke in the negative. I never felt that he understood Russian culture or the composers who had to exist within the trials and tribulations of the Soviet system under Stalin during the 20th century, and he came across as glib and condescending.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> I loved Schonberg's book to death. I had a hardbound copy that was almost in tatters by the time I was through with it. But it also taught me a great lesson about critics and historians: not everything they write is worth accepting blindly, and when they were wrong, they could be just as wrong as the average listener. I've never trusted them since, including someone such as De La Grange, who wrote on Mahler. What the historian excels in is the gathering and collecting of information about a composer's works and life that is not accessible to the average listener. But the _interpretation_ of what they find is where one has the right to question their conclusions and make one's own determination, and I doubt if Schonberg ever realized that. Trust no one's opinion implicitly, and his views on the Russian composers were painted with too large a brushstroke in the negative. I never felt that he understood Russian culture or the composers who had to exist within the trials and tribulations of the Soviet system under Stalin during the 20th century, and he came across as glib and condescending.


Yes to all of that. But as you obviously well know, he was also a great writer, the kind who could spark one's interest in a subject, nearly any subject, actually, and that's how I like to remember him, even though he often tended to let his personal biases show through too easily, and yes, glibly. You mention the Soviet Russian composers, and he was surprisingly lukewarm about Stravinsky, too. On the other hand, I thought it interesting he felt the Concerto for Strings, Percussion and Celesta was Bartok's greatest orchestral work, rather than the Concerto for Orchestra. So his tendency to pronounce his opinions is sometimes thought provoking, though as you say, bad practice for a historian.


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## BiscuityBoyle (Feb 5, 2018)

Boston Charlie said:


> My chess analogy regarding Prokofiev was not meant to be a characterization of chess players, but of Prokofiev's approach to music making which I find to be lacking in the same emotional depth that one may find in Tchaikovsky, or in his 20th century contemporaries, Shostakovich and Britten.


I responded to your citation of Prokofiev's love of chess as somehow defining of him by saying it's funny to see it, i.e. his love of chess, trotted out as a basis for some sort of characterization of him, when it's completely cultural - other Russian composers including Shostakovitch where even greater chess fanatics, as were a lot of cultured Russians. It really was like hockey in Canada.

The whole "emotional depth" business is too boring to discuss. The language of "craft" vs "emotional depth" is a cousin of the tired "form + content = wineglass + wine" formula Prokofiev's contemporaries, the Russian Formalists, took apart so convincingly. Subscribing to this language is simply not conducive to appreciating the specificity of art on its own terms.

Instead let's read what Sviatoslav Richter had to say about Prokofiev's 3rd Symphony etc and so forth.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> In popular music the trend is often the opposite. Many bands' debut albums were their best albums. But I think it's usually the case for bands of humble stature. They spend their best creative forces on the first album and then afterwards just repeat themselves. Really good bands, on the other hand often evolve or re-invent themselves.


I can't say much about pop music but do like some rock music. It seems to me, though, that few rock bands or soloists have made music that seems worthwhile once they are past their youth. It seems to me that rock music is about the feelings of being young and as a genre it offers little to those practioners who are older than 40. I would much rather listen to what the Arctic Monkeys did a few years ago than what the Rolling Stones did at the same time (and the Stones kept making good music much longer than most). The genre is generally too limited to offer a medium for genuine expression for artists who are getting on. Extreme fame, also, can get in the way of creativity.

This does not apply to jazz or folk music etc. And there are a few rock musicians who have found a way to stay true and relevant within their genre. This can be achieved through technical mastery or, perhaps, finding meaningful lyrics.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^Very well put. Rock and Pop are musics for the young, the young at heart, and for what remains of the young within each listener. The degree to which this latter is retained varies quite considerably from person to person.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> ... and for what remains of the young within each listener. The degree to which this latter is retained varies quite considerably from person to person.


Also very well put!


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

MarkW said:


> A composer's last works are to be viewed as a "culmination" only if the composer, knowing he was near death or retirement, views them as such as he is working on them. I expect that happens rarely.
> 
> Brahms' Vier Ernste Gesang were a melancholy look back at the end -- but I doubt if you could call it a culmination.


Some of the last works of Shostakovich, especially the last string quartet, are very much concerned with death. I'm not sure that qualifies them as a "culmination" of all that came before. I suppose when artists know the end of their life is nearing it can have a significant impact on their work, and that does sometimes happen. Debussy, knowing he was seriously ill, pressed on to complete three of his greatest chamber music works - the cello sonata, the trio for flute, viola and harp, and the violin sonata. But he also planned or had begun work on other major projects. In retrospect, one could view those final three great works as a culmination of sorts.


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