# Expanding the lifespan of one composer



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

If you could have one composer live for 20 years longer than they did, who would it be and why? Assume that, during these 20 years, they are in decent enough health to be able to write music, but obviously take age and circumstance into account (I'm not sure how much Haydn would be able to churn out at 95).

Personally, I can't decide between Schubert and Mozart (probably the most obvious choices); they were both prolific geniuses up who died tragically early during a time that they both seemed to be entering a new stage in their artistic development.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

*Arriaga.*

Just to say something unexpected. We have masterpiece after masterpiece from Schubert and Mozart already, and God yes but I wish they had lived longer. One gets a sense for Mozart's future in his Clarinet Concerto, Piano Concerto #27 and Magic Flute, and it would have been even more tuneful, filled with exquisite sorrow and joy at the same time, and so much more deceptively simple. I think every piece would have had that Singspiel quality to it. Schubert too. He was just beginning to shake off the shadow of Beethoven. His music was becoming more introverted, tuneful and unhurried.

But Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga, I think he had tremendous potential. He only lived until he was 19. His last string quartets were his first mature pieces and they showed a genius's grasp of form, harmony, and melodic inventiveness. I think he would have exceeded Mendelssohn and would have kept company with Schubert.

He was called the Spanish Mozart, by the way.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

*Addenda:*

Pergolesi might be my second choice. One wonders whether that Stabat Matter was a one-off event or whether that was the start of true greatness. Wasn't he 21 when he died, or also 19?

After that. Purcell. We got quite a few masterpieces out of Purcell, but it would have been interesting to see what more he could have done.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Debussy! Wish he could have completed his planned 6 sonatas and beyond. He was really onto something new and exciting.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2019)

It's over 10 years ago that a poll was held on this topic.

The add 20 years to their lifes Poll

On that occasion it was a runaway win for Wolfie and Little Mushroom.

Those two would be my choice, and if confined to one only it would be Little Mushroom.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Also Lili Boulanger. Even with an additional 20 years, dying at 44 still would have been tragic, but at least we’d have many more great works.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

flamencosketches said:


> Debussy! Wish he could have completed his planned 6 sonatas and beyond. He was really onto something new and exciting.


Recommend a piece for me, one that typifies the direction Debussy was going.

* I listened to Chopin yesterday and the day before. I'm afraid I'm still a philistine. W̶a̶s̶ ̶g̶l̶a̶d̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶o̶o̶r̶ ̶h̶i̶t̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶.̶ **

** I categorically deny writing that.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

The new Quentin Tarantino movie about alternative history in classical music: _The Dodecaphonic Tango:Webern in Argentina_, starring Daniel Day-Lewis.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I wish Ravel had not gotten sick and began to unravel as he did, as he clearly had much more great music potentially to be realized. The two piano concertos were an indication of what could follow.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

I think I might take five more years of Beethoven over 20 more years of anyone else.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Strange Magic said:


> I wish Ravel had not gotten sick and began to *unravel* as he did, as he clearly had much more great music potentially to be realized. The two piano concertos were an indication of what could follow.


Terrible pun.

@vtpoet,


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I would choose Bach because he's my favorite composer and was writing masterpieces throughout his life.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

flamencosketches said:


> @vtpoet,


Hey, the Debussy is cool.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

vtpoet said:


> Hey, the Debussy is cool.


Thought you might like it. This may be worth reading up on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_sonatas_for_various_instruments

Though if this project of his piques your interest it will inevitably disappoint you that he never got to finish it


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Gustav Mahler is my choice.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Felix Mendelssohn, partly because he might have composed a great opera if he had had more time.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Obvious choices are Schubert, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Chopin, all of whom died before reaching 40. I'd probably go with Schubert as he died the youngest and had the most "mileage" left in him and I really dig his music.

A less obvious selection is Sibelius. Another 20 years of not finishing his 8th symphony! C'mon Jean, don't be so hard on yourself. I'm sure it's better than you think.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

starthrower said:


> Gustav Mahler is my choice.


If Mahler had lived 20 years longer, either his 9th symphony and DLvdE would have been severely anticlimactic, or they never would have existed.


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## Rubens (Nov 5, 2017)

Carlo Gesualdo.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

None, all my favs completed their destiny in music. Well except Mozart,,I really REALLY wished he had lived justa few months longer, in great health to complete his great Requiem,,this really is a great regrets which makes me sad at the loss of what would have made his Requiem something ,,even MORE unreal.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

flamencosketches said:


> If Mahler had lived 20 years longer, either his 9th symphony and DLvdE would have been severely anticlimactic, or they never would have existed.


The Unfinished 10th tells me he was heading to new and interesting musical territory. My other choice would be Alban Berg.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Beethoven or Mozart. Probably Mozart, just given that those 20 (37 to 57) would likely be extraordinarily productive.


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

For sentimental reasons alone I'd probably say Schubert but Starthrower's selection of Alban Berg could well be my 20th century choice. Even if he would provided relatively few works over another twenty years it's tantalising to think where his music could have took itself.


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

Rubens said:


> Carlo Gesualdo.


Ironic seeing he shortened the lives of two other people hur hur...


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Alexander Scriabin

The man with a messiah complex who wanted to end/transform the world with his music died from an infection caused by a pimple on his lip, or was it a shaving cut? Either way, it's ridiculous. Like many other things about him. Which also makes his end kind of fitting. 
There's an opinion out there that he had also reached his creative end. But that's just speculation if you ask me.
There could've been a lot more. From 1910-1914 he composed Sonatas 6-10, Vers la Flamme, Prometheus, and a number of solo piano pieces including the final set op Preludes, Op. 74. 
Surely he was not done composing...?
Whether realizing a part of his fantasy project Mysterium, or something else, the potential for more orchestral music on the level of Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus, two pieces I absolutely adore, is why I choose him over all the others.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

Mozart and Schubert without question.

composers that have lived beyond 50 really have had enough time.


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## Bigbang (Jun 2, 2019)

apricissimus said:


> I think I might take five more years of Beethoven over 20 more years of anyone else.


Haydn was 77 when he died. Beethoven was 56. The question is add 20 yrs to their life. Haydn was productive to the end. Beethoven obviously had health issues but if he lived 20 more years he would have been deaf during this time and his music would have been who knows but the word "bizarre" comes to mind.


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Hard choice between Tchaikovsky and Mozart, both didn't die out of age so I find it terrible they deceased in a relatively young age.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Vítězslava Kaprálová or Pergolesi or Purcell or Schubert or Mozart


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

stomanek said:


> Mozart and Schubert without question.
> 
> composers that have lived beyond 50 really have had enough time.


Why limit that to composers? Eh?


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Mozart or Schubert. They died so early and still gave us so many masterpieces.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

Bigbang said:


> Haydn was 77 when he died. Beethoven was 56. The question is add 20 yrs to their life. Haydn was productive to the end. Beethoven obviously had health issues but if he lived 20 more years he would have been deaf during this time and his music would have been who knows but the word "bizarre" comes to mind.


Yes, that bizarreness is what makes me want to hear it.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

apricissimus said:


> Yes, that bizarreness is what makes me want to hear it.


listen to Carter quartets to get an idea to where Beethoven would have evolved in another 20 years :lol:


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I wish Bruckner had lived longer and had been able to complete his ninth symphony and to put it in definitive form . But fortunately we have completions by William Caragan ( a Facebook friend of mine ! ) , and several other musicologists . 
Basically , the finale is more or less complete, and only the coda is lacking . According to some stories , which may be dubious, some of Bruckner;s friends took pages of the manuscript of the finale as souvenirs when he died in 1896 . If this is true, who knows what happened to them ! 
If Bruckner had lived longer he would no doubt have made revisions to the entire symphony and there is no telling what a definitive version of the symphony might be like . 
But I'm no longer satisfied with hearing the familiar three movement torso alone after hearing Caragan's version . The finale dispels the anguish and terror of the first movement and the deep longing of the slow movement and resolves everything quite convincingly .


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2019)

Bulldog said:


> I would choose Bach because he's my favorite composer and was writing masterpieces throughout his life.


He was 65 when he died. That's not a bad "innings". With annother 20 years he might not have achieved much if had planned to retire or simply play an instrument to while the time away. With the likes of Mozart and Schubert there is a much greater likelihood of them achieving further highly noteworthy works.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Partita said:


> He was 65 when he died. That's not a bad "innings". With annother 20 years he might not have achieved much if had planned to retire or simply play an instrument to while the time away. With the likes of Mozart and Schubert there is a much greater likelihood of them achieving further highly noteworthy works.


All the above is true, but I'd still go with Bach.


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## Bigbang (Jun 2, 2019)

Bulldog said:


> All the above is true, but I'd still go with Bach.


Remember also that Bach was blind at the end of his life. And incapacitated so to speak. How can one write music unless dictated? I guess composers with life ending issues really do not qualify for 20 more years but if run over by a car............


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Bigbang said:


> Remember also that Bach was blind at the end of his life. And incapacitated so to speak. How can one write music unless dictated? I guess composers with life ending issues really do not qualify for 20 more years but if run over by a car............


The OP tells us to "assume that, during these 20 years, they [the composers] are in decent enough health to be able to write music", so I think that is fair to assume that Bach wouldn't be blind or at least would be able to circumvent his lack of vision had we given him more 20 years in our hipothetical scenario.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Just want to derail the thread a bit for a fun fact. The charlatan ophthalmic surgeon who blinded Bach, and ultimately caused his death due to complications from the botched cataract surgery, also blinded Handel in a later attempt at the same surgical procedure, but managed not to quite kill him. Makes one a little bit more grateful for modern medicine. It's a wonder any of these old composers survived to give us even a few works.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Vincenzo Bellini : besides dying way to early he would have made some other great operas.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Mozart would be my second choice has he seemed to be going fantastic places with his late works but ultimatley I think I have to go with Mahler. He would have completed his 10th symphony and, unlike Mozart, if Mahler had lived another twenty years we would likely have recordings of him conducting which would be quite interesting.


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

Honestly, I find Haydn's London Symphonies to be such a massive leap in quality that I would be supremely excited for Mature mature Haydn. Slim chance, but maybe some circumstance would lead to a 2nd Sturm und Drang period. Even if not, I'd be ecstatic. He had developed into a nice combination of Mozart's ear for melody, but with more interesting development sections, and Beethoven's more vigorous rhythmic sensibility, but without some of the mildly tedious excess, to the point that I find his late symphonies far more re-listenable than any by the two guys who always overshadow him. And screw Schumann!


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## Guest (Jun 29, 2019)

I have been trying to imagine a "balloon debate" involving Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.

In case anyone doesn't know, a* "*balloon debate" is one involving a group of imagined famous people speaking on their own behalf to win approval from an audience to prevent them from them being thrown out of a hot-air balloon that is sinking fast due to being overweight. By throwing out one person, the balloon will not crash and the remaining people will be saved.

Each of these composers would be required to make some promises about the music they would aim to complete over the next 20 years, again assuming ongoing reasonable health. To be realistic it would need to take account of what they had already written in the past.

Since all of these composers are all long since dead, I'll try to present my view of what they might have promised, faced with impending disaster in the sinking balloon. I imagine something along the following lines:

Bach - He died in 1750 and had written tons of stuff exclusively in the baroque style. I cannot think of any sub-genre within the baroque that is under-represented, except opera, and I reallly can envisage Bach turning his attention to that area. Early "classical"/late galante had already started to take off. Josef Haydn (one of the archpriests of the "classical" era) was 18 years old in 1750, and was beginning to churn out works. I reckon it's possible that Bach might have turned his attention towards making some offerings in this area, given that this is what seemed to becoming fashionable. Over the next 20 years, by 1770, the "classical" style as developed by Haydn and others was reaching more mature proportions, but it was still too early to have witnessed anything really important by Mozart. I rather reckon that by 1770 Bach may have run out of time, and not have made much of an impression since the best of the "classical" era was yet to come.

Mozart - Clearly, the world was his oyster. He had covered all of the main genres in abundance, so I do not think there is anything in particular that we are missing, but obviously more of the same or of higher quality would be most welcome. I guess there would have been more operas, symphonies, concertos. He would obviously have finished the Requiem, and would have very likely produced more stunning religious sacred music. In addition, there would have been more chamber music, etc. It is awesome to contemplate what more might have been if he had not died in full bloom at age 37.

Beethoven - Brilliant in all respects but largely the same is true for Beethoven as for Mozart, in that there is nothing obvious that's missing in his wide repertoire. I doubt that he would have tried any more choral works, as they were too problematic. His forte was refining and complicating the "Classical" style to to accommodate further his evolving expressive ideas. I think there is an argument that he may have written more symphonies and string quartets and piano solo with ever-greater programmatic content, to become mainstream "Romantic" par excellence. However, I am not so sure about that. I rather tend to agree with a few others that he may have continued to write in his own unique style. With another 20 years of composing, he might well have affected the ambitions and style of other composers who part-filled the void after his death in 1827, but it is difficult to speculate on how exactly.

Schubert - Ah, Schubert. What he might otherwise have achieved with another 20 years is mind-blowing. All he would require is a few decent librettos, as high quality music would follow, and he would be up there with the best of the other opera king's of the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] C. He wrote so rapidly that they would have been polished off very quickly. He was so good at melody that he hardly had any need for elaborate counterpoint. Late in life he had begun to dabble with more counterpoint. Perhaps this might have featured a lot more prominently in any later choral works than it did in his earlier material. There would have been greater flowering of his romantic tendencies. He loved the countryside and walking so I think there would have been a lot of scene painting in his work, both chamber and orchestral. Doubtless, too, there would have been more songs and piano solo. The big gap in Schubert's output is in concertos. He was so good at writing for piano, string and wind instruments and general orchestra that it seems highly likely we would have seen a proliferation of concertos.

Decision Time - For me, perhaps Schubert would be the biggest loss of all, given the gaps in his otherwise very wide range of work, and the strong likelihood of his filling them with some oustanding contributions. The next biggest loss would be Mozart. Next would be Beethoven. So I'm afraid we're looking at you, Bach, you gotta go babe, sorry.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Despite their misfortunes, the composers had their chances. I’m for lengthening the life of all listeners and the avoidance of road accidents while listening to Mozart. Without the listeners, the composers would be nothing, even the immortals.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Jacck said:


> listen to Carter quartets to get an idea to where Beethoven would have evolved in another 20 years :lol:






but isn't this like, much better than anything Carter ever wrote?


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

If only Webern had quit smoking

Bartok, Takemitsu and Schnittke died in their 60s and could have had another couple of productive decades


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Bwv 1080 said:


> If only Webern had quit smoking
> 
> Bartok, Takemitsu and Schnittke died in their 60s and could have had another couple of productive decades


:lol: smoking kills, kids.


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## Bigbang (Jun 2, 2019)

Allerius said:


> The OP tells us to "assume that, during these 20 years, they [the composers] are in decent enough health to be able to write music", so I think that is fair to assume that Bach wouldn't be blind or at least would be able to circumvent his lack of vision had we given him more 20 years in our hipothetical scenario.


Problem is that changing very basic facts (Beethoven can hear again, it is a miracle) then anything goes.


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## Bigbang (Jun 2, 2019)

Bigbang said:


> Problem is that changing very basic facts (Beethoven can hear again, it is a miracle) then anything goes.


I posed a question like this way back during the 1990's on a classical list. Schubert and Mozart came up a lot but I asked how Mozart would respond hearing young Beethoven and so on. In general I was thinking of composers who died younger and clearly had more to say but circumstances of health (usually) cut them short. For the most part they would start where they left off before death so Beethoven would have a few more years if he were able to get better treatment but still deaf.


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