Kim Patrick Clow wrote:

>>Imagine had Mozart lived just another 5 years....the mind staggers at
>>the loss.

Roger Hecht replied:

>You can confort yourself with the hypothesis that perhaps Mozart died
>young precisely because he gave us everything he had.

A while ago there was a thread on this list posing the question of which
composer's premature death had been the greatest loss of potential musical
genius.

In this particular contest, I'd cast my vote for Schubert.  Not because
he was necessarily the greatest of those who died young, but because he
was just beginning to achieve a level of brilliance that could have been
far more.

 - seb