Late works

[Bryn]

I think he was saying that Picasso was an exception though... but these "exceptions" in musical terms would have to include also Monteverdi and Bach and Handel and Haydn (and Mozart and Schubert but maybe they don't count) and Wagner and Bruckner and Mahler and Debussy and Berg and Cage and Carter and Messiaen and Nono, well I could go on, there is no rule about late works.

Would I not be correct in suggesting that certain of your own works were "late", as in being delivered after the deadline?

[ahinton]

Verdi began Otello at 71, Falstaff at 76.

Indeed - and look at the stages in life in which Schmidt worked on Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln, Shostakovich, Rubbra, Tchaikovsky and Simpson on their final symphonies, Brahms on his Four Serious Songs, Rachmaninov on his Symphonic Dances, Britten on his Third Quartet, Boulez on the currently definitive version of Dérive II and so on usw &c. until some time past the next opportunity for Caliban to refer once more to Tom Lehrer's Chemistry Song...

Sondheim's claim puts him in poor Company and is one of his Follies; it may not be the case that Anyone Can Whistle at his/her best even unto his/her dying day, but it's hard to imagine that more than a tiny minority would believe him...

[ahinton]

Would I not be correct in suggesting that certain of your own works were "late", as in being delivered after the deadline?

Ouch, that's below the belt! - especially as Richard's middle name is not Oliver and he does not write plenty o' Knussen. In any case, what are dead lines other than the result of customers' failure to pay their phone bills?

[vinteuil]

Verdi began Otello at 71, Falstaff at 76.

... all Rameau's operas were 'late works' - les Boréades written when he was eighty...

[Roehre]

Let's start by defining what's a "late work".

Is it work composed at a certain age, or a couple of years before the composer's death?

I don't think of Mahler or Berg dying at 50 makes their works "late works", just not to mention Mozart of Schubert.
Beethoven ied at 56. His last sonatas and quartets "late works"?
What are Haydn's works composed being that age then , like the London symphonies. Or is the Seasons hence a "very late work"?

The concept of a "late work" as a universally valid criterium is nonsense.

"Earlier of later styles" is not without difficulty either, but makes at least a connection with the composer's development and hence age.

[Richard Barrett]

Would I not be correct in suggesting that certain of your own works were "late", as in being delivered after the deadline?

Ho ho ho. There's nothing so inspiring as a deadline receding into the past.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ho ho ho. There's nothing so inspiring as a deadline receding into the past.

Or a hairline receding into the grey matter.

[vinteuil]

Ho ho ho. There's nothing so inspiring as a deadline receding into the past.

... "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

[Douglas Adams]

[Lento]

I think the idea of late works being less than earlier works is as said subjective. I am listening now to a very fine recording of Sibelius 7. Maybe this would not be considered late

Interesting that Sibelius wrote so little in his last 30 years, and no symphonies, if memory serves.

[ahinton]

... "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

[Douglas Adams]

...indeed - and which could surely somehow be incorporated into a deadline-missed score, either on principle or for some other composer-driven motive or both (Herr Dr Strauss, wo ist your wind-ma(s)chine?)....

[makropulos]

Let's start by defining what's a "late work".

So: How would you define them, if the definitions of others are such "nonsense"?

Your comments suggest that you don't regard late Mahler or Berg as "late works" - and even "late" Beethoven was, as you say, written when he was in his mid-50s. So can the concept can only be applied to composers like Rameau, Schütz and Verdi who lived into old age?

[EdgeleyRob]

RVW 9,nuff said.

[Stanfordian]

The late work of most first-rate artists is second-rate, according to Stephen Sondheim, citing Stravinsky and Picasso as exceptions. That's quite a claim, but one (being a person who in truth would often rather listen to early Beethoven, say, than late) I have some degree of sympathy with, possibly. (Times paywall, I'm afraid).


http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/s...cle4380358.ece

Stephen Sondheim is a great composer of musicals but concerning 'late composers' he is talking rubbish!

[Tevot]

Has anyone mentioned Janacek yet ?

[Roehre]

So: How would you define them, if the definitions of others are such "nonsense"?

Your comments suggest that you don't regard late Mahler or Berg as "late works" - and even "late" Beethoven was, as you say, written when he was in his mid-50s. So can the concept can only be applied to composers like Rameau, Schütz and Verdi who lived into old age?

"Late works " cannot be defined satisfactorily otherwise but as works composed in late stages or at the end of a composer's output (not life: Sibelius!). That doesn't say anything about these works' quality or their stylistic contents.
Indeed I don't regard Berg's as "late" works, Beethoven was developing a "new" style (hence op.135 is much more classical than 130-133), Mahler 9/10/LvdE might be called a late style, as it's a result of realisation of his own mortality, but is Strauss' contemporary Rosenkavalier then a "late work"?