Which five composers do you wish had another five years to live?

[Sergeant Rock]

In 2002, after Symphony No. 7, he retired and focused full time on composing without much concern if his music would be performed.  This is point where his output exploded.  He wrote 109 more symphonies from 2002 to 2017.

  109? Is that a typo? That's six or seven symphonies a year! If true, that puts Havergal in the shade 

Sarge

[SymphonicAddict]

Another composer I forgot mentioning is Mieczyslaw Karlowicz (1876-1909), a truly promising Polish composer who died skiing in the Tatra Mountains. His output comprises chiefly a set of great tone poems (Returning Waves, Eternal Songs, Lithuanian Rhapsody, Stanisław and Anna Oświecimowie, A Sad Tale, and Episod during a Masquerade), a Symphony in E minor Rebirth, a Violin Concerto in A major and a Serenade for strings. Some consider his tone poems superior to those by Strauss (I don't give any opinion about it  ).

A big loss for music without any doubt.

[Cato]

Three more from me...

* Lepo Sumera who at 50 died way too young and I love his music so much. 
* Arthur Butterworth who died at the age of 91 was extremely prolific up to the end.  I wish he had written more because I love his output...it is sort of like an amalgamation of post Sibelius/Vaughan Williams/Bax.
* Derek Bourgeois who died a year ago and was a friend of mine.  I miss him and his amazing compositional skills.

  109? Is that a typo? That's six or seven symphonies a year! If true, that puts Havergal in the shade 

Sarge

Sarge , I  think your eye skipped!  Bourgeois was born in 1941. 

[TheGSMoeller]

Charles Ives. A few extra years and he could've written some crazy new insurance policies.


And perhaps completed his Universe Symphony.

[André]

Another composer I forgot mentioning is Mieczyslaw Karlowicz (1876-1909), a truly promising Polish composer who died skiing in the Tatra Mountains. His output comprises chiefly a set of great tone poems (Returning Waves, Eternal Songs, Lithuanian Rhapsody, Stanisław and Anna Oświecimowie, A Sad Tale, and Episod during a Masquerade), a Symphony in E minor Rebirth, a Violin Concerto in A major and a Serenade for strings. Some consider his tone poems superior to those by Strauss (I don't give any opinion about it  ).

A big loss for music without any doubt.

+ 1

- Pergolesi
- Arriaga
- Lekeu (Guillaume)
- Boulanger (Lili)
- Alain (Jehan)

All of the above died in their twenties (Arriaga was 19 ). There's a sense of unfinished business about their oeuvre. That is not the case with most composers who died in their thirties, since they had the time to bequeath the world many fully formed masterpieces.

[relm1]

  109? Is that a typo? That's six or seven symphonies a year! If true, that puts Havergal in the shade 

Sarge

Sarge, no typo.  He died last year having written 116 symphonies.   Before 2002 he had composed 7.   Here is a good traversal of his output: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/feb/09/derek-bourgeois-symphonies

The article is from 2009 when Derek had reached Symphony No. 44. 

[relm1]

+ James Horner one of my favorite film composers who died way too young and was in the midst of a Renaissance.  He composed several concert works the last years of his life that are wonderful.  Full of joy and hope.  One of my own works is dedicated to him since I was composing it when he died and has a few "tips of the hat" to him.  He died tragically in a plane crash at the age of 62. 

[vandermolen]

+ James Horner one of my favorite film composers who died way too young and was in the midst of a Renaissance.  He composed several concert works the last years of his life that are wonderful.  Full of joy and hope.  One of my own works is dedicated to him since I was composing it when he died and has a few "tips of the hat" to him.  He died tragically in a plane crash at the age of 62.

+1

His death saddened me too. I admired his work from 'The Name of the Rose' onwards.

[Brian]

Three more from me...

* Lepo Sumera who at 50 died way too young and I love his music so much. 

Robert von Bahr, who recorded his orchestral works for BIS Records, has a sad story about Sumera. The man was so addicted to alcohol that the sound booth reeked of it just from his presence. RvB agrees with you about the tragedy of it...

[Florestan]

Carl Filtsch (1830-1845), born in Sebeș (Mühlbach) in present-day Romania.  At the time of his death he was considered Chopin's best pupil. Had he lived five more years he'd have died at 20. 

https://www.youtube.com/v/yA5iumIHw6o

[vandermolen]

Another vote for Madetoja from me and a new one for Klami.

[Sergeant Rock]

Sarge, no typo.  He died last year having written 116 symphonies.   Before 2002 he had composed 7.   Here is a good traversal of his output: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/feb/09/derek-bourgeois-symphonies

Thanks for the reply, and the link. Most interesting. I'd love to hear "a short jazz version ("Blue Brahms") of the Passacaglia from Brahms Four."

Sarge

[kyjo]

Korngold. He could've finished his second symphony that he was working on at the time of his death...

[Madiel]

Carl Filtsch (1830-1845), born in Sebeș (Mühlbach) in present-day Romania.  At the time of his death he was considered Chopin's best pupil. Had he lived five more years he'd have died at 20. 

https://www.youtube.com/v/yA5iumIHw6o

Goodness.

[relm1]

Korngold. He could've finished his second symphony that he was working on at the time of his death...

What about Bernard Herrmann?  Had he lived 5 more years he might have scored the new Star Trek The Motion Picture.

[bwv 1080]

Another 5 years for Jimi Hendrix so that planned Miles Davis collaboration could have happened

and what would be more valuable than 5 more years of Beethoven?

[Florestan]

and what would be more valuable than 5 more years of Beethoven?

Five more years of Mozart.

[bwv 1080]

Five more years of Mozart.

But there is already more Mozart than I can listen to

[Florestan]

But there is already more Mozart than I can listen to

By the time Beethoven died there was already more Beethoven's music that he could compose. 

EDIT: By which I mean I don't see how far he could have got beyond where he already got in the late string quartets, piano sonatas and the Ninth. He squeezed these forms of all their juices; going farther meant giving them up altogether and coming with something completely new and unheard of. But for all his idiosyncracies and whimsical behavior he was essentially a man of the Enlightenment; besides, his literary culture was Classical --- he couldn't have done it imho. To see it happening the world had to wait the birth of a new generation, nurtured with Romantic literature and harboring genuinely Romantic feelings and thoughts, which he didn't have, witness his failure in the most Romantic of genres, the Lied, the piano non-sonata works and the opera.

On the other hand, had Mozart lived another five years it would have been probably he, not Beethoven, who changed music forever and possibly even Beethoven wouldn't have been the same.

All this is but pure speculation, of course.

[amw]

For me the interesting counterfactual is reversing Beethoven and Mozart's lifespans: Beethoven 1770-1806, Mozart 1756-1813. Beethoven dies already a world-famous composer whose "Eroica" stands as an isolated monument larger than any other symphony ever written, with the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies left in sketch form (perhaps Mozart tries his hand at completing them?). Nonetheless, Beethoven is the firebrand who died young, Mozart is the composer who reacts to him and takes his most revolutionary works onboard as influences—as a composer Mozart was voracious in assimilating the styles of others—for another seven years. Any signs of burnout in Mozart's style circa 1791 might thus have not been permanent and instead lead to a period from circa 1795 (when Beethoven began his study with Haydn; presumably Beethoven would have gone to Mozart instead had he been alive) onwards defined by the relationship between Beethoven and Mozart.

Having Beethoven live until 1832 (or even 1837, 1842 etc) is less counterfactual just because he already had plans for what he was going to compose which he shared in the conversation books: another symphony, an additional set of quartets beginning with Op.135, a Requiem and approximately one oratorio per year "in the manner of my grand master Handel".