In Tuesday’s (11/29) Slate, Jan Swafford writes, “The last thing anyone does or says has an inevitable fascination, poignancy, and poetry. The fascination only intensifies when that person is an artist, in the profession of doing and saying memorable things. … On his deathbed in the week before he died, blind and in the aftermath of a stroke, Bach had a friend play his organ chorale on the hymn ‘When We Are in Greatest Distress.’ Even near the end of his rope, Bach’s lifelong perfectionism endured. He dictated a number of revisions to the chorale. … [Mozart] had been expecting the end for a while, perhaps even when he was writing the sublime fairytale The Magic Flute. Anybody who goes to the movies knows that when Mozart exited he was working on the Requiem. Yes, as in Amadeus he may have considered it his own requiem. No, it was not commissioned by his rival Antonio Salieri or by some mysterious figure, but by a Count von Walsegg. … There is usually something revealing about the music of a composer who feels death at his shoulder. Beethoven’s late music has a distinctive voice. Little of it is tragic and there is no trace of self-pity. … Some of it has an ethereal quality, some an almost childlike directness, like the first movement of his Op. 110 Piano Sonata.”
Posted December 5, 2011
