As someone who has never had the slightest capacity to create one, I am fascinated with what I call "big bodies of work." That is, a substantial number of works all in the same genre or form where the composer confronts that same challenges over and over and solves them differently each time. It is rather like variation form taken to an entirely higher level.
Some examples:
- the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart (Mozart around fifty and Haydn over one hundred--Beethoven with only nine really doesn't count)
- an extreme example, the 555 harpsichord sonatas of Scarlatti
- just making the grade on the low side, the fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets of Shostakovich
- the thirty-two piano sonatas of Beethoven
- a special example, the preludes and fugues of Bach: 48 in all
- actually, we could keep citing examples from Bach: the cantatas, about three hundred of which survive; the keyboard suites (six English Suites, six French suites and six Partitas for a total of eighteen)
- I'm forgetting one of the best, the roughly eighty string quartets of Haydn
Here's a fun project: buy a box of these (I recommend the Shostakovich string quartets by the Emerson Quartet) and listen to one or two every morning. Much better, not to mention cheaper, than psychotherapy.
Or, alternatively, the Beethoven piano sonatas. There is a new complete set by Igor Levit and an older one I like by Friedrich Gulda. Let's hear one of those. This is No. 32, op. 111:
I started listening to the Scarlatti Sonatas several years ago and it's turned into my "fun project." So many sonatas, so many performers but I listen to five or more sonatas every third day or so.
ReplyDeleteGood for you! They are really inexhaustible. I listened to the whole Scott Ross Erato box a few years ago and I need to do it again.
ReplyDeleteI think we forget that these current day geniuses were just metro boulot dodos back in the day and wrote large numbers of whatever people were paying them to do. They were just better at it.
ReplyDeleteI think I'd throw in William Byrd for choral and keyboard music, and Tallis for choral music.
ReplyDeleteSince the centennial of his death was not too long ago and he certainly earned the title, Scott Joplin has remained the King of Ragtime for more than a century after his death. James Sylvester Scott and Joseph F Lamb wrote some remarkably good rags that are at Joplin's level of quality but Joplin's spot at the top of the ragtime genre was well-earned for both quantity and quality.
Maury, yes, the whole point is that "They were just better at it."
ReplyDeleteWenatchee, I was just looking at large numbers of works in a single style, form or genre.
Heitor Villa-Lobos has, what, at least seventeen string quartets?
ReplyDeleteI've written what turns out to be 26 sonatas for guitar and I've finished 36 of a projected 48 preludes and fugues for solo guitar as of April this year.
Nikolai Kapustin wrote at least twenty piano sonatas and he wrote 24 preludes and fugues. Sometimes I"m in the mood for his work and sometimes not but his prelude and fugue cycle is pretty good. It's one of the rarities in classical music that is openly influenced by jazz but not actually cringe-inducing. :)