Friday, July 17, 2015

A Paucity of Time; A Plethora of Incandescence - A Handful of Artists...

Upon my poring over the work of Van Gogh recently, a gentle nudge reminded me that  the Van Gogh the world knows was given to us during,  approximately,   the last thirteen years of his life.
Then that nudge guided me to a parallel miracle in music; namely, all but the last half dozen of Mozart's symphonies had been committed to paper  by age 31 and a half. ( Beethoven had given us his first symphony at age 31 and a half).
Handel;  literally 'confining' himself for just a few weeks in order to extract, from his core, the 'Messiah'. It took him about 24 days to write the work down . Though  the first  score  has a number  of 'blotchy' smudges and some errors, it is fantastically true to what we hear today, over two and a half centuries after his self-imposed 'imprisonment' in order to get  it down on paper - amazing!
Schubert;  after having formed a mountain of  Through - Composed(different music for each stanza) music  sagas for the voice, along with great numbers of strophic(the same music for all the stanzas) lieder ( he wrote at least 600 songs that we know of,  in both forms),  let alone symphonies and marvels for the piano etc., etc.; then mulling over the possibility of making an assiduous  study of counterpoint  during his 31st year. The final year of his life.
There are a few others who visited for such a brief time, but left us with so much -
Cantelli?
Kapell?
Lipatti?
The list goes on; but not too much longer.

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