Anne Ozorio wrote:

>If I could write just one piece like Beethoven did - even the least
>little snippet - I would feel wonderful.  So I agree, who cares about
>"clunkers" when there is so much else to marvel about.  Of Beethoven's
>late style, the late Edward Said wrote a moving essay in the London
>Review of Books.  (August 2004) He himself was in his "last phase" and
>thought about Beethoven's situation.  It's such a lyrically written,
>profound essay I'll quote a bit:

Thanks for sharing the quote.  I am reminded of an "assignment" of late.
Our Chamber Music Center's http://www.austinchambermusic.org Summer
festival has Beethoven as it focus.  We were asked what was our favorite
Beethoven work and why.

My answer was...the late quartets...because, for me, they suggest to me
that they are Beethoven's vision of the infinite.

I wonder how others on this list might respond to those questions...also...
I wonder about the late works of composers.  I think about the late works
of Scriabin, Liszt and others and how they differ significantly from
their earlier works.  I also wonder how it might be when a composer knows
they are writing some of their last works and how they might want to
make them more personal.

I remain profoundly moved with late works as diverse as Copland's Inscape
(for me his vision of the infinite), and his Latin American Sketches (a
bit of nostalgia for his trips south of the border) and Barber's The
Lovers and the Fadograph, a romantic's farewell to the beauty of love,
tinged with a sense of sadness...two works which seem to me to so free
in their expression, so unencumbered.

And then there is Mahler's Tenth! And then, there is Wagner who thought he
would never die.

Karl (perhaps rambling too much)