Composers: the Muse departs?

[Dundonnell]

Recent mention of the later symphonies of Roy Harris in the thread on "Deservedly Unsung..." led me to start thinking about those composers whose later years were in different ways and for varying reasons blighted or undistinguished.

Composers may retire from teaching or administrative positions but there is no conventional imperative to cease composing. The inspiration or muse which impels a composer often lasts for his lifetime. He goes on composing and many composers not only 'die in harness', so to speak, but produce some of their greatest works towards the end of their lives. Many of the greatest composers fall into this category: Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler etc etc. It is, of course, perfectly true that composers in previous centuries, with some very obvious exceptions, tended to die at a younger age.

There are however others for whom this is not true. In some caes serious ill-health affected their capacity to compose. In others it seems that their inspiration began to wane.

It would be folly to generalise. Each composer's case is different. But we know that Rossini wrote virtually nothing (apart from the Petite Messe Solennelle) for the last twenty years of his life. Sibelius is the obvious example of a 20th century composer whose famous silence for the last quarter of a century of his life and whose destruction of those works he appears to have been working on in the 1930s is equally well-known.

Aaron Copland wrote nothing after the mid 1970s as he succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease. The same sad illness curtailed the compositional career of Sir Lennox Berkeley. No doubt there are other instances.

I reckon however that there are other cases which demonstrate that, for differing reasons, a composer had simply run out of inspiration or creative energy.
Would that be true of Sir Edward Elgar, for example After the Cello Concerto of 1919 did Elgar produce anything further before his death in 1934 to match the earlier masterpieces
Does the same apply to Sir Arnold Bax after around 1939(the 7th Symphony); Bax died in 1953. Or what about Sir William Walton after he reached the age of 65 in 1967; Walton died in 1983. Are these composers later works not pale shadows of the genius they had demonstrated in youth and middle-age

In mentioning Elgar, Bax and walton I am simply picking three British composers as examples of what I am trying to get at. If one looks to other countries then there are, naturally, other such composers one could discuss-in the USA, Roy Harris and Samuel Barber spring to mind.

To live with and love the music of certain composers is one of the greatest pleasures in life. And to reflect on what they might have done had they lived longer-as with Mozart, or Schubert, or Tchaikovsky, or Mahler-is always interesting as an exercise in total speculative day-dreaming .

But it is also rather sad, sometimes, to think about a composer whose later works evidence an appreciable decline in quality-as has been my recent experience in listening to the later works of Roy Harris. It is so very sad when one is almost forced to think that the composer in question would have been better to have stopped composition altogether.

(I hope this rather stream-of-consciousness, very late-at-night post is not the most dreadful ramble and that someone else at least understands the issue I am trying to identify )

[eschiss1]

Hrm. The Muse seems to drop in for enough visits (Bax in his B-flat piano trio?) that it's hard to generalize...

[Ilja]

Christian Sinding might be a good case in point: up to the Second Symphony his writing is lively, original and exciting. After that, it becomes just a bland tick-the-boxes-affair. The turning point seems to be a near-endless-string of piano solo pieces that he wrote in an attempt to imitate Grieg (and to find similar recognition). After that, it seems to me, he never recovered his creative footing.

[Jimfin]

Edward German made a very definite decision to stop composing, largely because his style was so out of kilter with the times, not because of any evident decline in ability. Tippett might be argued to have rather lost touch with things after about the time of the 4th Symphony. Elgar must be the most controversial: it used to be received wisdom that his genius departed in 1920 and that everything he wrote after that was derived from earlier works. The Third Symphony was dismissed as uninspired rubbish that he could never have finished. I think the Payne completion of that work completely changed that perception. Personally, I believe Elgar remained as inspired as ever, that he was lazy in the 1920s, let off the marital leash, but that he would have produced some fun works in the 1930s, had he lived. The "nursery suite" was a move in that direction, I think.

[eschiss1]

Elgar -did- continue to produce brief works in his last years, far as I know- partsongs, piano pieces- some of which have been recorded but which I have not heard. (I have heard some of his partsongs from earlier years- particularly, the lovely opus 53 set (with There is Sweet Music and with Owls - but other sets also) and am extremely impressed by them. Sibelius' output in his last years was irregular but I gather he only actually entirely stopped after revising and adding a new movement to an earlier organ work (the Masonic Ritual Music, op.113 of 1927/1948.)

[Christo]

Couldn't it be that a comparison with other arts would show a relatively high age for the creative peak of many composers? That famous novels and famous paintings were, comparatively speaking, made by younger artists than tthe most famous musical compositions? Could it be that creativity is often a relatively 'young' phenomenon and that composers are no exception to that rule, and even more often of a mature age than there counterparts in other arts?

I'm just questioning, but i've always been of the impression that much remarkable music is written by "old" composers - and that it's harder to find examples of the same level of creativity among other arts. Does anyone know about comparative studies in this field?   

[Ilja]

Couldn't it be that a comparison with other arts would show a relatively high age for the creative peak of many composers? That famous novels and famous paintings were, comparatively speaking, made by younger artists than tthe most famous musical compositions? Could it be that creativity is often a relatively 'young' phenomenon and that composers are no exception to that rule, and even more often of a mature age than there counterparts in other arts?

I'm just questioning, but i've always been of the impression that much remarkable music is written by "old" composers - and that it's harder to find examples of the same level of creativity among other arts. Does anyone know about comparative studies in this field?   

On the other hand, 'old' composers were usually in a much better position to 'market' their works than when they were young: because they could make better use of their network and official position, because they had proved themselves to their audiences, etc. Those works would be played more often and thus gain quicker acceptance into the collective consciousness.

As an example, take Dvorak: his earliest works have often been dismissed casually, but I find they contain as much inspiration as the later ones, and a 'nimbleness' that his more mature output sometimes lacks.

[semloh]

I reckon however that there are other cases which demonstrate that, for differing reasons, a composer had simply run out of inspiration or creative energy.
Would that be true of Sir Edward Elgar, for example After the Cello Concerto of 1919 did Elgar produce anything further before his death in 1934 to match the earlier masterpieces

Well, of course, what constitutes a "masterpiece" is a matter of dispute in itself, and even if we could find agreement on that point, deciding which works of Elgar are actually masterpieces would lead to further dispute - which indeed it has always done among the experts. Personally, I think the Nursery Suite, The Sanguine Fan, Polonia, and the Fantasia & Fugue in C Minor are all masterpieces, and had Elgar composed only these they would be treasured as such. It's only when compared to some of his large scale earlier works that they may seem to be less obviously inspired. I would also contend that there are a number of reasons (other than any reduction in visits from that rare "spirit of delight") for Elgar's reduced output post Cello Concerto.
But this is not really the stuff of the Unsung Composer.......

[Jimfin]

No indeed: Elgar is pretty 'sung', but he is very relevant to this debate. I would contend that practically everything he wrote is a masterpiece of its kind, but his later partsongs are perhaps less inspired than the really good ones of the 1900s. But the 'Nursery Suite', the 5th Pomp and Circumstance march and the sketches for the 3rd Symphony are to me evidence that the muse remained, although a lack of the discipline of his wife, the temptation of the racetrack and the income from recording (which must have brought in a lot more per hour of work than composition), sufficed to put him off working as hard as before.

[Hovite]

we know that Rossini wrote virtually nothing (apart from the Petite Messe Solennelle) for the last twenty years of his life.

Apart from other works, there are the fourteen volumes of Péchés de vieillesse, containing some 150 works.

[JimL]

Isn't there also a Stabat Mater from this period?

[Dundonnell]

we know that Rossini wrote virtually nothing (apart from the Petite Messe Solennelle) for the last twenty years of his life.

Apart from other works, there are the fourteen volumes of Péchés de vieillesse, containing some 150 works.

Yes, I should have been more explicit in defining the nature of Rossini's retirement as a composer of operas to an entirely different and much more private musical life. My understanding is that these pieces were not intended for either public performance or publication.

[Dundonnell]

Isn't there also a Stabat Mater from this period?

Yes, completed in 1841, 27 years before his death.

[JimL]

we know that Rossini wrote virtually nothing (apart from the Petite Messe Solennelle) for the last twenty years of his life.

Apart from other works, there are the fourteen volumes of Péchés de vieillesse, containing some 150 works.

Yes, I should have been more explicit in defining the nature of Rossini's retirement as a composer of operas to an entirely different and much more private musical life. My understanding is that these pieces were not intended for either public performance or publication.

Well, quite a few of them have been performed and recorded, and some of them are quite lovely.  Some of them are quite a hoot as well.

[TerraEpon]

Sibelius' output in his last years was irregular but I gather he only actually entirely stopped after revising and adding a new movement to an earlier organ work (the Masonic Ritual Music, op.113 of 1927/1948.)

Actually his last 'work' was the orchestration of the song Come Sweet Death, done only a few months before he died.