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Composers we wish had written more

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calyptorhynchus
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« on: April 22, 2014, 02:47:44 am »

I was just listening to two composers today, neither of whom died young, and yet for various reasons didn't publish much music.

Both Paul Dukas and Howard Ferguson wrote very powerful music, and the few pieces they did publish are very high quality. Dukas was a perfectionist and simply didn't publish much (he also had teaching duties), and later in life seemingly gave up composition. Ferguson was doing all sorts of useful things in his life: performing, arranging concerts, musicological work and helping other composers (especially Gerald Finzi). He published a few works such as a Piano Sonata (actually No.2), ditto ditto a Violin Sonata, an Octet, a Piano Concerto and few other works. However in the late 1950s he simply decided he had nothing more to say musically and stopped composing.

What other composers do you know who published little, didn't die young, and you wish they had written more.
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« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2014, 05:36:57 am »

Brahms: symphonies 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10!
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ahinton
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« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2014, 08:16:28 am »

Brahms: symphonies 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10!
Brahms did write quite a lot of music for his lifespan and six more symphonies would have been quite a tall order for him betwen completing his fourth and his death, surely?
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dyn
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« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2014, 08:51:33 am »

Dutilleux, Varčse, Ustvolskaya. A handful of surviving compositions from each, all the rest destroyed because of perfectionism.

Sibelius and Ives simply gave up composing after a while, living out their last few decades in silence. While they were prolific until then, I have always found that a disappointment.

And he did die young, but it is a shame Voríšek didn't start finding his "groove" until the year or so before his death—most of the early music is pleasant Weber-isms of not much consequence, but the B-flat minor Sonata and the D major Symphony are great works. Not every composer can be a Mozart and blossom at the age of twelve; I think Voríšek might have managed it by the age of forty, had he lived that long.
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ahinton
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« Reply #4 on: April 22, 2014, 12:47:14 pm »

I think that this thread could perhaps do rather better by being split into composers who wrote little because they died young and those who just wrote little. Dutilleux actually wrote more than he let out but, being the perfectionist that he was, his known output is indeed small for someone who reached the age of 97, but most of it is of exceptionally high quality. Composers who might have gone on to do wonderful things but whose lives were cut very short include Lili Boulanger and Guillaume Lekeu.

One could perhaps have a parallel thread for composers who wrote more than was arguably necessary - the names Milhaud, Hovhaness and Bentzon spring to mind...
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dyn
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« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2014, 02:44:44 pm »

Another name: George Enescu. 33 opus numbers, only about half of which represent his mature style (a rich vein of Central European impressionism unlike any other composer I'm aware of)—not perfectionism in his case, but an extremely busy international career and a difficult home life. Some works he didn't even bother to write down (like the Piano Sonata No. 2), retaining them only in his prodigious memory, which is now lost of course. It doesn't help that his music remains so little-known outside Romania with many of the unpublished works still in manuscript etc.
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ahinton
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« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2014, 03:19:49 pm »

Another name: George Enescu. 33 opus numbers, only about half of which represent his mature style (a rich vein of Central European impressionism unlike any other composer I'm aware of)—not perfectionism in his case, but an extremely busy international career and a difficult home life. Some works he didn't even bother to write down (like the Piano Sonata No. 2), retaining them only in his prodigious memory, which is now lost of course. It doesn't help that his music remains so little-known outside Romania with many of the unpublished works still in manuscript etc.
Good point - I suspect that part of the resason for this is that he spread himself so thinly - composer, violinist, pianist, conductor, researcher, writer and teacher - in that respect not unlike his Scots counterpart Erik Chisholm (though he was considerably more prolific a composer than Enescu).
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Jolly Roger
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« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2014, 11:45:33 pm »

Geirr Tveitt is one my very favorite composers and my heart aches over this
(from Wkipedia:Burned to the ground[edit]
In spite of Tveitt's glorious successes internationally, the contemporary Norwegian establishment remained aloof. Following the upheaval of the Second World War, anything that resembled nationalism or purism was quickly disdained by the post-war intellectuals. Tveitt's aesthetic and music were fundamentally unfashionable. Tveitt struggled financially and became increasingly isolated. He spent more and more time at the family farm in Kvam, keeping his music to himself - all manuscripts neatly filed in wooden chests. The catastrophe could therefore hardly have been any worse when his house burned to the ground in 1970. Tveitt despaired - the original manuscripts to almost 300 opuses (including six piano concertos and two concertos for Hardanger fiddle and orchestra) were reduced to singed bricks of paper - deformed and inseparable. The Norwegian Music Information Centre agreed to archive the remains, but the reality was that 4/5 of Tveitt's production was gone - seemingly forever. Tveitt now found it very difficult to compose and gradually succumbed to alcoholism. Several commentators imagine that his many hardships contributed to these conditions. Tveitt died in Norheimsund, Hardanger, reduced and largely embittered, with little hope for the legacy of his professional work.[4]

His Christmas Symphony (No. 1) is an especially a glorious creation.
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