Composers who stopped composing long before the ends of their lives

[Ilja]

The usual killers: education and politics (but of course, there are exceptions).

First, politics: Glazunov was not only out of place in his time, but also in Paris. Everything seems to indicate that he was deeply unhappy after having had to flee Russia, and his alcoholism got badly out of hand. Glière, although staying, was transplanted out of the world he was accustomed to: everything he wrote before the Revolution is worth listening to, and very little he wrote afterwards is: he was clearly pressed into producing the same social-realist generic music everyone was; and you need to be of Shostakovich-like genius to make something out of those conditions. And Glière wasn't that good.

Then, education: being a (part-time) teacher myself, I can testify to the amount of time and energy that goes into teaching. The time, although inconvenient, isn't the main obstacle; but you can spend all your own creativity helping other people improve theirs. Philipp Scharwenka seems to have complained of this regularly, and all his composing was done in the school's off-season.

Exceptions that spring to mind are Bortkiewicz (productive despite very difficult political conditions) and Carl Reinecke / Salomon Jadassohn (both of whose very busy teaching careers seem to have been little impediment for prodigious production rates.

[TerraEpon]

I dunno how anyone could consider, say, the Coloratura Concerto or The Red Poppy 'not worth listening to'....unless you have some fetish for correlating what something sounds like for when it's written, which I find completely idiotic.

[Alan Howe]

I dunno how anyone could consider, say, the Coloratura Concerto or The Red Poppy 'not worth listening to'....unless you have some fetish for correlating what something sounds like for when it's written, which I find completely idiotic.

Let's just remember the requirement for polite discussion on this forum. Words like "fetish" and "idiotic" are hardly conducive to a friendly exchange of views...