# Musical growth



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Some composers just get better as the years pass. Others show transcendent genius early, but perhaps never quite move beyond that.

I'm listening to Mendelssohn's Octet now, written when he was sixteen. Yes, he wrote a lot of other fine works, but did he ever really surpass this?

Other composers, other examples of one or the other?


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I used to quip that Mendelssohn died tragically old -- unfair, but it always got a laugh.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

GGluek said:


> I used to quip that Mendelssohn died tragically old -- unfair, but it always got a laugh.


I think Glenn Gould said the same of Mozart, but he was just being a jerk. Guess we can grant GG some jerkness!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I think Glenn Gould said the same of Mozart, but he was just being a jerk. Guess we can grant GG some jerkness!


Jerkness, and jerking the chains of the public, the critics. and the cognescenti was Gould's 'other' big talent


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I nominate Ravel, who but for a few very early pieces, really stayed nearly the same composer, and produced the same quality, throughout. Still, coming as it were to the scene fully developed, like Venus on the Half-shell, then littering the scene with a good number of works and four or five masterpieces ain't a bad showing.

P.s. @ KenOC:

My dear colleague, "Musical Growth" sounds like something that should be immediately looked at by a physician!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> I nominate Ravel, who but for a few very early pieces, really stayed nearly the same composer, and produced the same quality, throughout. Still, coming as it were to the scene fully developed, like Venus on the Half-shell, then littering the scene with a good number of works and four or five masterpieces ain't a bad showing.


Agree with that, and with respect to Mendelssohn as well. I certainly intended no disparagement!


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I think Liszt got better and better as his life went on, although he certainly got less ambitious after 1866 (Christus). For me it's a steady improvement to that point, followed by a more experimental last twenty years.

It's hard to say overall, though, because his output is just so diverse. Different periods of his life produced radically different music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> My dear colleague, "Musical Growth" sounds like something that should be immediately looked at by a physician!


True! The big question: benign or malignant? But that's probably a subject for another thread...


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

This thread reminds me of Sick Boy in Trainspotting:






NSFW, of course.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Camille Saint-Saens ~ Child prodigy, the first piece (really I don't know what) to the last, all meticulously crafted, and 'similar.'
Born a conservative, it seems, stayed that for his entire long life.


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

Charles Ives was pretty much done composing by the time he was in his mid forties. He spent the rest of his life revising, but complained to his wife that he felt he couldn't actually write anymore. Haydn experienced a similar creative inability in old age (much to his distress), although most of his composing career followed a conventional path of continuous development.

I believe that Rachmaninoff thought his best composing years were behind him when he surprised himself by composing the Symphonic Dances (my personal favorite of his works). He didn't write anything after that.

My personal opinion is that except for the sublime Four Last Songs, Richard Strauss' best works were written when he was a younger man. I might say I feel the same way about George Crumb's output. This of course is only an opinion.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I once saw an interesting article in a magazine (I think it was BBC Music or something like that) in which they listed the top ten precocious composers, i.e. individuals who were exceptionally good at an exceptionally young age, but whether or not they became major figures in music.

Rather controversially, Mozart did not make the list: he composed a lot in his youth, but little of it is still played. If memory served, Schubert was at the top of the list, along with Mendelssohn and Shostakovich. Most of the other figures on it sunk into utter obscurity after their spectacular youth. 

My feeling is that Stravinsky went downhill as he aged, but perhaps this is a controversial opinion. Wagner seemed to get better and better, though I can't tell for sure because I dislike his work and I am therefore no expert on it. I don't think his early operas can compare with the Ring cycle though.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I think a lot of creative people reach a point - if they live long enough - where they review their process, their conclusions, their output, and it either freshens them up to continue, or it restricts them some way. It can restrict them either through being intimidated by what they'd done before, or disappointment and disillusionment. The trick, most likely, is to plough on regardless and learn from wherever you can.

But I can imagine that for an aging composer there must be little more galling than to misplace their muse...


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brianvds said:


> My feeling is that Stravinsky went downhill as he aged, but perhaps this is a controversial opinion.


Very few people have heard good performances of his late works, because the Columbia recordings of them are mediocre at best, owing to the players and singers struggling with an unfamiliar idiom. Threni and Requiem Canticles are absolutely masterpieces on par with his earlier output (I'd put them easily above The Firebird, but perhaps that's a controversial opinion...).


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

I agree about the later Stravinsky being often interesting. "Agon", the "Variations for Orchestra", "Movements" also being very among the fine works.

With the exception of some pleasant piano trios, Franck seems to have been very uinteresting as a young composer. 

Whereas a good deal of the younger Soviet avant-garde of the Twenties were more or less crushed by the hostile Stalin regime (Gavril Popov, Alexander Mosolov, Nicolai Roslavets).


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Sibelius pretty much stopped composing altogether. I suppose one might say that is going downhill.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Weston said:


> Sibelius pretty much stopped composing altogether. I suppose one might say that is going downhill.


Fell down the neck of a bottle ~ into profound alcoholism.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Fell down the neck of a bottle ~ into profound alcoholism.


I didn't know that. I thought he just retired.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Bruckner didn't really get started as a composer until he was 44, but he was developing until he died at 72. There aren't many who start that late and keep growing into their 70s.


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