{"id":31955,"date":"2015-11-20T15:09:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T20:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=31955"},"modified":"2015-11-20T15:09:54","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T20:09:54","slug":"book-review-four-last-songs-the-composer-end-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2015\/11\/20\/book-review-four-last-songs-the-composer-end-game\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK REVIEW | Four Last Songs: The Composer End Game"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Verdi
Verdi by Giovanni Boldini<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten; By Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon; University of Chicago Press.<\/h3>\n

It isn\u2019t easy for a generation whose motto was once \u201cdon\u2019t trust anyone over 30\u201d to admit that they now need role models who lived to be over 80 or 90. Unless, perhaps, they were introduced to classical music early enough to learn that the field abounds with figures who lived long and productive lives so may well serve as guides to making the most of longevity.<\/p>\n

This is the view of the highly energetic and productive co-authors of Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten<\/a>, Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon, who launched their own retirement phase by \u00a0studying four composers who were able to manage their diminishing resources in such a way as to produce a complete opera at the end of their lives.<\/p>\n

After attending a recent presentation by the Hutcheons at the Massey College, where they are both senior fellows, I became aware that certain canonical operas, such as Verdi\u2019s Falstaff and Strauss\u2019s Capriccio, which I\u2019d assumed were the products of composers in the prime of life and the stride of their careers, were actually created in late life. And I discovered that Oliver Messiaen\u2019s first opera, St Francis of Assissi, premiered when he was 75. In a month in which I heard 60-year-old Ian Brown talk about his hemorrhoid on The Agenda, and read 64 year old John Allemang \u2018s reflections on his resistance to prevailing wisdom on aging and most other subjects, I was relieved to find that the Hutcheons were taking a more dignified, and admittedly intellectual look at aging.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized that today, as people are getting older they are remaining fairly well, and this had never happened before.\u201d Michael Hutcheon said to me in a recent chat I had with the energetic duo.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201c There were not a lot of examples of elderly people who had productive and positive old ages. We decided to look for some. \u201d<\/p>\n

Being lifelong opera-lovers and enthusiastic supporters of local music groups (Linda sits on the Board of the Canadian Opera Company, and they are both on the board of The Canadian Artsong Project, to name only two of their projects), as well as the co-authors of three previous books on opera, it was only natural that they would restrict their study to opera composers.<\/p>\n

What they found were \u201cmodels of growth and development\u201d according to Linda Hutcheon, \u201cwhose creativity gave meaning to their last years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Four
Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten Cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fascinating profiles of each of these composers in Four Last Songs, makes it clear that their successful final stages were due to far more than abundant talent and prior success, but to the heroic levels of discipline and commitment to their work honed over a lifetime of productivity. In a way that is almost paradoxical, this history of success was as much a disadvantage as an advantage, as they each felt compelled to maintain or exceed the standards they had reached as younger, healthier, more energetic men. And this challenge came after already withstanding enormous personal and musical struggles. Three of the four composers lived through both world wars, for example, and could not help but be changed, musically and developmentally by those events. Strauss wrestled with the complexities of accommodating the Third Reich in his professional life, emerging with a tarnished\u00a0\u00a0 reputation even though he was eventually absolved of any Nazi complicity.<\/p>\n

Messiaen experienced almost the opposite\u2014the halo of victimhood and to some degree heroism hovers over his Quartet for the End of Time, due to its composition while he was in a prisoner of war camp.<\/p>\n

The other crisis the Hutcheons wanted to examine was that of musical modernism, the challenge of atonality and their accommodations to the trends of their times. That plus the development for the first time of a theory of old age and the fields of gerontology and geriatrics, makes 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> century composers particularly interesting to show case.<\/p>\n

Along the way other figures including Offenbach, Janacek, Prokofiev and Smyth appear. Smyth, who gets the last line of the book, expresses what might serve as a far better motto for today\u2019s emerging seniors \u00a0\u201cAs long as breath is in your body life need never cease to be a creative effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors wisely conclude that there are no easy generalizations to be drawn from the examples of these four composers. The variation in their experiences combined with the physical, emotional and other complexities that govern the final stages of life prevent this. \u00a0Even so, it is fair to conclude that their unflagging industry and discipline was a major factor in their resilience. In fact, it raises the possibility that such will power made their longevity possible in addition to enriching it.<\/p>\n

Another striking feature is humour. Even though Strauss suffered from \u201cend of the world gloom\u201d as he called it, he wryly referred to his final compositions as \u201cexercise for his wrists\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 And Verdi\u2019s Falstaff is about an old man whose delight in sensual pleasure allows him to mock everything and laugh right until the end. \u201cTutto nel mondo e burla\u2026Ma ride ben chi ride\/La risata final\u201d) \u201cEverything in the world is a joke\u2026but he laughs well who laughs\/The final laugh\u201d.<\/p>\n

Four Last Songs is full of material of interest to opera lovers as well as students of human nature and though it has special pertinence to readers embarking on the last great era of their lives, it is never too soon to reflect on how to manage life now in order to savour it later. The Hutcheons\u2019 observation that people are aging and feeling well for the first time is correct, but what\u2019s equally important is that today people know <\/em>that our life expectancy is long. When my grandmother was born in 1903, nobody could have predicted that she would live to 2009, least of all her. (Yes, she made it to 106!!!)\u00a0\u00a0 But the Hutcheons and their fellow baby boomers know the road ahead is longer than it used to be for many of us, and they are admirable models themselves, for looking at the challenges while clearly enjoying their projects to the utmost.<\/p>\n

Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten<\/em> is available for purchase at Amazon.ca<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten; By Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon; University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":31957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,7,52],"tags":[5697,5695,5696],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/11\/Verdi_by_Giovanni_Boldini.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-8jp","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31955"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31963,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31955\/revisions\/31963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31955"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=31955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}