Composers and Their Lifespans

Started by JoshLilly, September 12, 2007, 11:20:46 AM

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JoshLilly

One thing often discussed is how tragically young some composers died. Often-cited examples are W.A.Mozart, Schubert, Lekeu, and Pergolesi. With the likes of Lekeu (and I would add Arriaga) the deaths came so early that the composers are often mourned more for what they might have done than for what they actually did. While that wasn't what I had in mind, I think that would be an interesting topic for discussion.

I've always been most fascinated among the "Early Death" group by Guillaume Lekeu, but I'm not really sure why (don't care for his small amount of music much). I've seen repeated statements by people familiar with him about how he would have become a Great composer with a capital G had he lived longer, and maybe that sparks my interest. Does anyone here know much about Lekeu, have opinions or thoughts on his music, speculation about what he might have become? Why do some people seem to be almost certain that he would have become one of the giants of composers of the 20th century?

At the other end of the spectrum are composers of long life. Long life spans are probably my #1 obsessive interest, and I'd love to one day be a part of a new 130+ club that hopefully will appear in the next few decades. But my real fascination comes with thinking about those who lived extremely long lives already and what they've seen and done. Considering my passionate love of music, it's no surprise that long-lived composers are a particular interest to me. This probably started in my case upon first hearing music by Gossec and then looking him up and finding that he reached an astonishing (for those days) age of 95. Supposedly, he was literally found dead with pen in hand; while I've seen this stated as fact in one book and would like to believe it, this is not known for sure. Born in 1734, he could theoretically have gone to hear J.S. Bach play the organ, and then heard Berlioz conduct his own works!¹  Other composers have also lived long lives and witnessed drastic evolutions in music over their lives, famously including the likes of Rodrigo. Still, it feels to me that the changes from Gossec's youngest days to his last (Baroque to Romantic) had to rank among the top with regards to how much music changed. Then again, the changes from the first half of the 19th from the first half of the 20th centuries were really amazing, with the likes of Schönberg on the prowl; who knows what Reinecke ever thought if he considered the music of 1908 compared with his youth in the 1820s?

Anyway, enough rambling for now. Maybe I'm the only one really interested in this topic, I don't know. But, as an aside-bonus, I'll nominate a longest-lived composer of all time with Leo Ornstein (c.2 December 1893 – 24 February 2002, accumulating more than 108 years of life). Any composers exceed that?



¹ I'm not sure Berlioz was actually conducting his own works until the mid-1830s, but you know what I mean.

Lethevich

#1
I can't think of any who have exceeded 100, Carter is getting very close, and is also still working seemingly ceaselessly on his music. Sorabji lived until 96, I think, but he was very unconnected from any outside movements and was uninfluential in his life (and still now), and was pretty reclusive, so that is a bit of a dead-end, discussion-wise.

I also find composers with a life-span around the time of Richard Strauss interesting, talk about living in a time of change...

Edit 26/8/2011 (I don't want to needlessly bump this): Harald Genzmer lived until 98.
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

Joe Barron

#2
Leo Ornstein (1893-2002) lived to be 108. He published his last work at age 97, which made him the oldest published composer up to that time. The record has since been surpassed by Elliott Carter, who has published several new works this year at age 98 and shows no signs of stopping. He has a particular incentive to keep on, since he once promised to let me interview him for a book when he got too old to compose --- something he clearly wanted to avoid.

Sibelius, too, lived to be very old, but he stopped composing in his early 60s. (Nielsen, his exact contemporary, died at 66 but had a longer compositional career.) Two composers who I would say surpassed themselves toward the ends of their long lives would be Verdi and Richard Strauss.

hornteacher

Copland lived to be 90 years old (1900-1990).  He was born just before the invention of the automobile and the airplane, and died just after the invention of the CD, the mobile phone, and the internet.  In between were two world wars, the depression, radio, television, Woodstock, and landing on the moon.  Quite a life.

Dundonnell

I suffer from the disease of "chronic list-making". There is probably a fancy name for this and-doubtless-a psychological explanation which I would be most grateful if no-one would tell me about!!

Anyway, here goes:

98: Goffredo Petrassi; Arnold Cooke

97: Joaquin Rodrigo

96: Havergal Brian

95: Francois Gossec; Gustave Charpentier; Carl Ruggles; Giancarlo Menotti

94: Harald Saeverud; Alan Bush; Tikhon Khrennikov

93: Charles Widor; Sir Michael Tippett

92: Louis Aubert; Hilding Rosenberg; Virgil Thomson

91: Josef Foerster; Joseph Guy Ropartz; Jean Sibelius; Cyril Scott; Gianfrancesco Malipiero; Ernst Krenek

90: Herbert Howells; Aaron Copland

89: Daniel Auber; Alfred Hill; Alexandre Tansman; Egon Wellesz; Alan Hovhaness; David Diamond

88: Igor Stravinsky; Hugo Alfven; Henri Sauguet; Roger Sessions; Gordon Jacob

87: Heinrich Schutz; Giuseppe Verdi; Ildebrando Pizzetti; Florent Schmitt; Carl Orff; Dame Elizabeth Maconchy

86: Georg Philipp Telemann; Camille Saint-Saens; Dame Ethel Smyth; Cecile Chaminade; Kurt Atterberg; Sir Lennox Berkeley;
      Vagn Holmboe; George Rochberg

and- amongst those still living:

98: Elliott Carter

91: Henri Dutilleux; Milton Babbitt

90: John Gardner

89: Richard Arnell

Apologies in advance to the missing!

Kullervo

Not crazy about his music, but: Otto Luening (1900 - 1996)

scottscheule

I've the most remorse for the loss of Gershwin at 38.  I think he had a drive, and an ability, to create better and better music, and it's tragic that his classical output is as small as it is. 

vandermolen

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Dundonnell

Quote from: vandermolen on September 13, 2007, 07:16:11 AM
Paul Le Flem (1881-1984)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Flem

Of course, Paul Le Flem! How could I forget him? I have his 1st symphony(written between 1906 and 1908) on a Timpani CD and his 4th symphony(written between 1971 and 1972) on Marco Polo. A very fine composer indeed, very much influenced by his Breton roots and the sea(as was Joseph Guy Ropartz). A pupil of Widor and d'Indy, he lived to the wonderful age of 103. I have hoped for some time to hear more of his atmospheric music.

I did give my apologies in advance to those missing from my list but Le Flem should have been right up there at the beginning!

Dundonnell

Update- Richard Arnell is 90 today. Vandermolen has already wished him a happy birthday and I do too!

Dundonnell

And here are some more composers from the last 150 years who died prematurely(definition chosen is under 60-arbitrary I know!)-

59: Anatol Liadov; Erik Satie; Gustav Holst

58: Sir Arthur Sullivan; Ferrucio Busoni; George Antheil; Mark Blitzstein; Kenneth Leighton

57: William Mathias

56: Horatio Parker; Ottorino Respighi; Don Banks

55: Alexander Dargomitzhsky; Claude Debussy; Franz Schrecker; Ernest Moeran; Gerald Finzi; Matyas Seiber

54: Leo Delibes; Karol Szymanowski

53: Alexander Borodin; Peter Tchaikovsky; Emmanuel Chabrier; Bruno Maderna; Alfred Schnittke

51: Amilcare Ponchielli

50: Gustav Mahler; Alban Berg; Kurt Weill

48: Isaac Albeniz; Enrique Granados

47: Edward MacDowell;Ivor Gurney; Irving Fine

45: Benjamin Godard; Nickolaos Skalkottas; Constant Lambert

44: Henryk Wieniawski; Ernest Chausson; Anton Arensky

43: Max Reger; Alexander Scriabin

42: Modest Mussorgsky; Hugo Wolf

40: Louis Gottschalk

38: George Gershwin

37: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

36: Georges Bizet; Peter Warlock

35: Leon Boellmann; Charles Griffes

31: George Butterworth

Hard to imagine how much wonderful music some at least of these composers still had to offer the world!

vandermolen

#11
Robin Orr 1909-2006

A fine Scottish composer. His "Symphony in One Movement" (1963) on EMI British Composers series, is a powerful and oddly moving work of considerable slumbering power.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fricker-Orr-Simpson-Peter-Racine/dp/B00006YX78/ref=sr_1_1/203-1624948-6863157?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1189938460&sr=1-1

Actually, this is a very interesting CD; fine, historical performances of three undeservedly neglected symphonies.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Dundonnell

Indeed, Robin Orr-a fellow Scot!

I once heard his Symphony in One Movement(his first symphony) in a live performance by the (Royal) Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh and was instantly gripped by the symphony's superb ominous opening
pages full of grim foreboding. Often wondered what his second and third symphonies sound like.

As vandermolen says, the CD containing the Orr also has Fricker's second symphony-which, like all Fricker's music is undeservedly neglected. Fricker and Iain Hamilton made the 'mistake' of going to the USA to take up teaching posts in California and North Carolina respectively with the result that they became largely forgotten figures in their home countries.

vandermolen

#13
Quote from: Dundonnell on September 16, 2007, 03:29:27 AM
Indeed, Robin Orr-a fellow Scot!

I once heard his Symphony in One Movement(his first symphony) in a live performance by the (Royal) Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh and was instantly gripped by the symphony's superb ominous opening
pages full of grim foreboding. Often wondered what his second and third symphonies sound like.

As vandermolen says, the CD containing the Orr also has Fricker's second symphony-which, like all Fricker's music is undeservedly neglected. Fricker and Iain Hamilton made the 'mistake' of going to the USA to take up teaching posts in California and North Carolina respectively with the result that they became largely forgotten figures in their home countries.


How great that you heard the Orr Symphony live; I am jealous. The EMI CD has a charming photo of Orr with Alexander Gibson, a rather underrated conductor (excellent Sibelius symphony cycle, long deleted Vaughan Williams Symphony 5).
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Lethevich

Quote from: vandermolen on September 16, 2007, 05:03:57 AM
Alexander Gibson, a rather underrated conductor (excellent Sibelius symphony cycle [...]).

Indeedie. Even after I had bought Davis, Sanderling and Berglund, I still felt the need to buy the last few discs to complete Gibson's Chandos Sibelius cycle- not second rate in the last :)
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

vandermolen

Quote from: Lethe on September 16, 2007, 06:32:22 AM
Indeedie. Even after I had bought Davis, Sanderling and Berglund, I still felt the need to buy the last few discs to complete Gibson's Chandos Sibelius cycle- not second rate in the last :)

Indeedie. Gibson's other Sibelius recordings are excellent too; Four Legends, Tapiola, En Saga, Oceanides etc
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

jurajjak

Quote from: Dundonnell on September 15, 2007, 01:03:38 PM
And here are some more composers from the last 150 years who died prematurely(definition chosen is under 60-arbitrary I know!)-

Also, Lili Boulanger, who died at 24.


Lethevich

Hey - I just realised. If we kill Jay Greenberg, we can produce the youngest composer death of a composer of note in history.

Um... a joke, don't arrest me :-X :P
Peanut butter, flour and sugar do not make cookies. They make FIRE.

greg

Quote from: Lethe on September 18, 2007, 08:05:03 AM
Hey - I just realised. If we kill Jay Greenberg, we can produce the youngest composer death of a composer of note in history.

Um... a joke, don't arrest me :-X :P
stop giving me ideas.....


stop it!  :-[

stop it, stop it!!!!  :'( :'( :'(



STOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP ITTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!

>:D >:D >:D


no, really, that'd suck, i think his music is pretty cool  8)