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You have a medical bag and a time machine...

M

marshanp

ellipsis addict
...and you can go back in time and (using the instruction book in the copiously equipped bag - no medical expertise required) prevent the premature death of any one composer.

Who do you choose, and why?
 
Easy - Schubert.

His "later" works are all absolute masterpieces with an emotional depth and existential questioning that wouldn't be heard again until Bruckner & Mahler 60-70 odd years after his death (and even then they don't have the simple directness) - and yet they are the works of a young person still only in their twenties who probably hadn't yet reached artistic maturity. What might he have done had he lived to his 60s or 70s?

Imagine if today we classed works such as the last three sonatas, the string quintet and the unfinished symphony as merely the highlights of his "early" period!
 
Beethoven. His late works are at the pinnacle of Western Art. What might have he composed with a few more years.
 
It would have been interesting to see what Webern would have done had the Americans not shot him. To my mind he was the most interesting of the ‘2nd Viennese School’, though left the least works. The whole lot comfortably fits on three CDs IIRC.

I’d second the recommendations for Schubert and Beethoven, but only if they were required by law to focus on chamber music. That’s where both were truly exceptional in the late period IMHO.
 
Surely Schubert for a Classical composer for reasons stated above, but can I have John Coltrane for Jazz? Would be very cool to hear how he transformed musically after his last recordings. I wonder if he’d have created something entirely new in the 1970s with Miles.
 
Yes, Coltrane is the obvious jazz contender. I’d be fascinated to see if he’d have followed Miles, Herbie Hancock etc down an electric path. For rock Hendrix is the obvious one I guess, again to see whether he’d have shifted over to jazz/fusion. There were suggestions Miles wanted to work with him.
 
Schubert every day of the week. Look at what he'd created by the age of 31. He'd been pretty much on fire since age 15 or something! Though of course there's the unsolvable conundrum of how his music might have sounded had he not been mortally ill. Would we have had lots more Trout quintets. I think his music would have sounded different (though not necessarily any less profound). I don't know what would happen there under this magic scenario! But he was always developing.

Other fairly obvious suggestions - both Buckleys. I'm a Tim fan most of all, that voice, and his creativity was explosive although he was struggling to find any sort of market for his avant garde explorations (trying to slip them into otherwise mediocre - by his standards - albums like Sefronia). Jeff was creating amazing stuff like I know we could be so happy baby, dark indie rock rather than led zep pretensions. And Hendrix of course and what he might have done with Miles.
 
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Charles Mingus. Compositionally speaking I reckon his late works were probably amongst his best. ‘Probably’, because they are so dense I don’t think I’ve fully assimilated some of them yet. It’s a shame his band weren’t quite so exciting as those of a decade or more previously - but maybe Mingus’ physical deterioration was a factor there too. On the subject of his bands, if I were also allowed to take my medical bag to where poor Eric Dolphy totally failed to get the correct treatment, I’d be grateful.

Addition: Or maybe Billy Strayhorn, if we are talking jazz. I think he has more right to be remembered as a composer whose life was cut short than say, Coltrane, whose genius lay in other fields.
 
The sketches for Schubert's 10th symphony (2nd movement) sound more than a little Mahlerian to me, sparse and plangent. Pretty amazing.
 
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Tony L said:
It would have been interesting to see what Webern would have done had the Americans not shot him. To my mind he was the most interesting of the ‘2nd Viennese School’, though left the least works. The whole lot comfortably fits on three CDs IIRC.

I’d second the recommendations for Schubert and Beethoven, but only if they were required by law to focus on chamber music. That’s where both were truly exceptional in the late period IMHO.
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Ah, so very true about chamber music, that most private of genres. Just compare the public works of Shostakovich with his private, and absolutely incredible, string quartets.

Webern is an interesting choice. Where would/could he have gone.
 
Ahhh... yes, Schubert and Mozart are the obvious contenders. I'm fairly sure that our modern medical bag could have kept them going for a fair few years.

But... their output is already perfect. Schubert, in particular, had achieved his potential in the most complete way imaginable through his astonishing productivity. If we have to have league tables of composers, Schubert is already in the top two or three, every single season, for me.

What about those who showed great promise, yet to be completely revealed?
 
marshanp said:
What about those who showed great promise, yet to be completely revealed?
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George Butterworth, killed in action in WWI, aged 31. Could have maybe rivalled his friend Vaughan Williams otherwise?

Webern was 62 when he died and his music was ever-decreasing circles IMO. His friend Alban Berg was much more interesting, he died of an infected mosquito bite in 1935, aged 50. His Violin Concerto was one of his last pieces, still to be premiered when he died and showed he really had somewhere to go.
 
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