Composers whose music became less complex when they aged?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Might there be a development of wisdom in the widest sense, a feeling that important statements can come in smaller packages, a husbanding of energy - and even perhaps an impatience with trends?

There might, indeed - there are probably as many different "causes/reasons" as there are composers who pare down their language (infirmity; disillusionment; preference for intimate communication rather than public rhetoric; the ability [not present in earlier life] to say more with fewer notes/sounds; the challenge of saying more with less; the "pull" of purely Musical [as opposed to "entertaining"] exploration ...

[teamsaint]

sort of a tangent, but a band like Yes followed this path, and indeed Genesis.
and quite successfully IMO in the case of Genesis, speaking as a non fan.

of course, this demonstrates nicely how some Proggers learned lessons from the dinosaur Punks

( Phil Collins having worked with Adam Ant in the early 80's)

[ahinton]

There might, indeed - there are probably as many different "causes/reasons" as there are composers who pare down their language (infirmity; disillusionment; preference for intimate communication rather than public rhetoric; the ability [not present in earlier life] to say more with fewer notes/sounds; the challenge of saying more with less; the "pull" of purely Musical [as opposed to "entertaining"] exploration ...

True as all of that is, I think that considerations as to why some composers who've done this decided to do so have to be taken along with the reasoning behind the decisions of those composers who didn't.

Carter is arguably a composer who did, although few of his pieces from any time in his 84+-year composing career are especially lengthy, the longest that immediately come to mind are his first string quartet, Symphonia: Sum fluxæ pretium spei and What next?, each of which occupies only some 40-50 minutes in performance; no, in his case the "simplification" (if that's what indeed it is) - or rather the "paring down" referred to here - is, as with Sorabji, that of a loosening of the bonds of textural complexity although, unlike Sorabji, he carried on in this vein for more than 20 years!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Indeed - and those last twenty years Carter produced some of the finest pieces ever written (and I don't mean just by Carter). It is interesting to recall that, very early in his career (the time of the Holidays Overture) he had sought to make his mark with a much more "populist" Coplandesque way of writing.

[ahinton]

Indeed - and those last twenty years Carter produced some of the finest pieces ever written (and I don't mean just by Carter). It is interesting to recall that, very early in his career (the time of the Holidays Overture) he had sought to make his mark with a much more "populist" Coplandesque way of writing.

Indeed - and of that time he said that people still weren't interested and he got quite a few "funny modern music" type responses to it, so he resolved to try to develop in his own way rather than continue in that vein. Curiously, Holiday Overture, which is dedicated to his friend Copland (who apparently had not long previously written the score of Appalachian Spring on the Carter's dining room table), prompted the remark from its dedicatee "another complicated piece by Carter!", although clearly meant in an affectionate way. Copland rather parted company with Carter's way of working later on, professing not to understand it, yet a rapprochement occurred arond the time of Carter's second Pulitzer prize when Copland described Carter as "one of America’s most distinguished creative artists in any field" which, considering that this was at the time when Carter had not long written that thorniest and intractable of his works, the Third String Quartet!

[Boilk]

sort of a tangent, but a band like Yes followed this path, and indeed Genesis.
and quite successfully IMO in the case of Genesis, speaking as a non fan.

of course, this demonstrates nicely how some Proggers learned lessons from the dinosaur Punks

( Phil Collins having worked with Adam Ant in the early 80's)

Find it hard to believe that a progger/jazzer like Phil Collins would have learned anything musically from a relative novice like “Adam Ant”. Certainly in the 80s bands like Genesis and Yes consciously followed a more ‘corporate-friendly’ musical path, meaning shorter songs and less time signature changes, but even albums like Yes’s 90125 and Big Generator have some pretty complex stuff on them (just check out 90125’s ‘Changes’ and Big Generator’s ‘Big Generator’). Genesis’s simpler style probably also had much to do with PC’s phenomenal success as a soloist, meaning the more complex tendencies of Banks had to be compromised if the band was to continue (Collins certainly wasn't doing it for the money by then!). Banks’s 16-bar “solo” on the Invisible Touch single is a joke – it’s just a texture without a melody, a first for him!

You could argue that the trilogy or early 80s King Crimson albums (Discipline, Beat, Three of a Perfect Pair) are technically MORE complex than their 70s stuff. Both Fripp and Bruford relish their odd times signatures more than ever, as well as rapid multi-layered ostinati of different lengths, creating ever-shifting inter-relationships.

[teamsaint]

Find it hard to believe that a progger/jazzer like Phil Collins would have learned anything musically from a relative novice like “Adam Ant”. .

Adam Ants' ( and Marco's) track record both in record sales, and also in terms of some interesting creative ideas, such as those on Kings of the Wild Frontier, prior to working with Collins in 1982/3, put him in a bracket way above " relative novice," in my opinion.
No doubt Ant learned a good deal from Collins, but learning is a two way process.

AA had achieved around 10 top 10 singles, and three top 5 albums by the time he worked with Collins.

Ant also received a good deal of critical acclaim for his records up to that point.

Sorry, prolly a bit off topic for most people's taste, but needed saying !

[Boilk]

Adam Ants' ( and Marco's) track record both in record sales, and also in terms of some interesting creative ideas, such as those on Kings of the Wild Frontier, prior to working with Collins in 1982/3, put him in a bracket way above " relative novice," in my opinion.
No doubt Ant learned a good deal from Collins, but learning is a two way process.

AA had achieved around 10 top 10 singles, and three top 5 albums by the time he worked with Collins.

Ant also received a good deal of critical acclaim for his records up to that point.

Sorry, prolly a bit off topic for most people's taste, but needed saying !

I suspect a fair number of the "interesting creative ideas" on Kings of the Wild Frontier were courtesy of manager Malcolm McLaren and (musically) the album's drummer/producer Chris "Merrick" Hugues, whose most famous work was on the first two Tears for Fears album.
Incidentally I once interviewed Marco Pirroni, circa 1981. I didn't expect him to be living with his mother!

Getting back to the thread topic, the latest Yes album (Heaven and Earth) is indeed their most simple to date. Mercifully their Royal Albert Hall gig will be solely material from 1972 (Fragile) and 1980 (Drama).

[Lat-Literal]

There might, indeed - there are probably as many different "causes/reasons" as there are composers who pare down their language (infirmity; disillusionment; preference for intimate communication rather than public rhetoric; the ability [not present in earlier life] to say more with fewer notes/sounds; the challenge of saying more with less; the "pull" of purely Musical [as opposed to "entertaining"] exploration ...

Might there be a development of wisdom in the widest sense, a feeling that important statements can come in smaller packages, a husbanding of energy - and even perhaps an impatience with trends?

Like these - especially "preference for intimate communication rather than public rhetoric" and also the links between ability and saying less/husbanding of energy.

There is a parallel with the written word, not that I wholly subscribe to it or have the ability to do so.

True as all of that is, I think that considerations as to why some composers who've done this decided to do so have to be taken along with the reasoning behind the decisions of those composers who didn't.

Carter is arguably a composer who did, although few of his pieces from any time in his 84+-year composing career are especially lengthy, the longest that immediately come to mind are his first string quartet, Symphonia: Sum fluxæ pretium spei and What next?, each of which occupies only some 40-50 minutes in performance; no, in his case the "simplification" (if that's what indeed it is) - or rather the "paring down" referred to here - is, as with Sorabji, that of a loosening of the bonds of textural complexity although, unlike Sorabji, he carried on in this vein for more than 20 years!

I might consider Carter more on the basis of your comments. An extraordinary career. I will also revisit Sorabji and see how I find him three years on.

Adam Ants' ( and Marco's) track record both in record sales, and also in terms of some interesting creative ideas, such as those on Kings of the Wild Frontier, prior to working with Collins in 1982/3, put him in a bracket way above " relative novice," in my opinion.
No doubt Ant learned a good deal from Collins, but learning is a two way process.

AA had achieved around 10 top 10 singles, and three top 5 albums by the time he worked with Collins.

Ant also received a good deal of critical acclaim for his records up to that point.

Sorry, prolly a bit off topic for most people's taste, but needed saying !

I suspect a fair number of the "interesting creative ideas" on Kings of the Wild Frontier were courtesy of manager Malcolm McLaren and (musically) the album's drummer/producer Chris "Merrick" Hugues, whose most famous work was on the first two Tears for Fears album.
Incidentally I once interviewed Marco Pirroni, circa 1981. I didn't expect him to be living with his mother!

Getting back to the thread topic, the latest Yes album (Heaven and Earth) is indeed their most simple to date. Mercifully their Royal Albert Hall gig will be solely material from 1972 (Fragile) and 1980 (Drama).

All fine - my mind did go to Rick Rubin's work with a very old Johnny Cash.

Cash was hardly ever "very big production".

However, Rubin's arrangements for him were basic and enabled Cash to be all the more moving.

[kea]

I would say most of them. A simplified, pared-down, and often less inventive but more 'characteristic' style is considered a hallmark of a composer's 'late manner'. Some especially notable cases including Schumann, Liszt, Bartók, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Ligeti, Xenakis.

Composers whose music becomes more complex and extensive with age are the exception: Bach, Verdi, Tippett, etc.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ligeti? I'd say the late works are more "complex" than the simpler techniques of the works up to c1970. He uses consonant sounds more frequently, (part of what he took from the Spectralists) but does this make the works "simpler"? Bartok, I mentioned earlier - there are works that were intended for more immediate public consumption that he wrote whilst in the United States, such as the C for O, the Third Piano Concerto, and the Viola Concerto - but these had as much concern for his wife's future after he had died (Schoenberg and Stravinsky also wrote works intended for such an audience when they first moved to the States, much good it did them). The Sixth Quartet and the Solo Violin Sonata show no such "simplification" of language.

(And Tippett - are New Year and The Rose Lake "more complex" than The Knot Garden or the Third Symphony (or Concerto for Orchestra, for ahinton's preference)?

[teamsaint]

Like these - especially "preference for intimate communication rather than public rhetoric" and also the links between ability and saying less/husbanding of energy.

There is a parallel with the written word, not that I wholly subscribe to it or have the ability to do so.


I might consider Carter more on the basis of your comments. An extraordinary career. I will also revisit Sorabji and see how I find him three years on.





All fine - my mind did go to Rick Rubin's work with a very old Johnny Cash.

Cash was hardly ever "very big production".

However, Rubin's arrangements for him were basic and enabled Cash to be all the more moving.

Interesting point about Cash's late albums.The arrangements were usually pretty successful.

labouring the point about Adam Ant, ( which I know is now off topic) Boilk's problems with him seem to be based in suspicion, rather than anything solid. The songwriting credits are Ant/Perroni, for example. I doubt ( why would he) that Maclaren would have passed songwriting royalties up. He may have contributed musically in some way, but the overall credit has to go to the two central creative figures. The same surely applies to Merrick.
Not liking a record or musicians work is fine, but credit is due where it is due.

[ahinton]

Ligeti? I'd say the late works are more "complex" than the simpler techniques of the works up to c1970. He uses consonant sounds more frequently, (part of what he took from the Spectralists) but does this make the works "simpler"? Bartok, I mentioned earlier - there are works that were intended for more immediate public consumption that he wrote whilst in the United States, such as the C for O, the Third Piano Concerto, and the Viola Concerto - but these had as much concern for his wife's future after he had died (Schoenberg and Stravinsky also wrote works intended for such an audience when they first moved to the States, much good it did them). The Sixth Quartet and the Solo Violin Sonata show no such "simplification" of language.

(And Tippett - are New Year and The Rose Lake "more complex" than The Knot Garden or the Third Symphony (or Concerto for Orchestra, for ahinton's preference)?

Good points and questions! It's perhaps also worth mentioning that, like everyone else, composers don't know when they're going to utter their last notes; Bartók, for example, was only in his 60s and there are plenty of other examples of major figures whose careers ended at or before that age.

[ahinton]

[duplicate: deleted]

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Good points and questions! It's perhaps also worth mentioning that, like everyone else, composers don't know when they're going to utter their last notes; Bartók, for example, was only in his 60s and there are plenty of other examples of major figures whose careers ended at or before that age.

Generally very true - I've made a similar point on the Bruckner #9 Thread (ie that the composer wasn't dying when he started the work - some nine years to go, IIRC) - but Bartok was in the advanced stages of leukaemia when he wrote (for example) the Third Piano Concerto, which (again IIRC) was written without commission to give his widow a source of income after he had died.

(She wasn't his "widow" as he wrote it, of course - but you know what I mean, I hope!)