Glenn Miller wrote:

>OK--here goes.  I was wondering what the list members felt was the one
>composer they would like to have seen lived longer.

Mahler--because in my heretical opinion, he was becoming something special
with the 9th and 10th symphonies.  He seemed to be advancing to the world
of Zemlinsky, Berg, etc.  For me he was may have been going from a great
composer who, as much as I have loved his music and have listened to it
repeatedly, live and on record, for years (and played some), never touched
me at my deepest core, to a great composer who finally did.

Elgar--because he was getting into something different. Here, though,
unlike Mahler, I was "touched" by the composer he already was.

Chaussan--just too young.

Mozart--if the Requiem was any sign. . . . But maybe Beethoven was Mozart,
continued?

Puccini--if Turandot was any sign, not to mention it would have been nice
to see what his last great duet was going to be

But if I had to pick one, it would be Mahler.  Modern music might have been
very different had he carried on.  He might have been the force that would
have balanced the atonality of Schoenberg and the dryness of Stravinsky
(not to be taken as a negative comment on either).  Who knows what might
have come from that? A synthesis, perhaps? In any case, Mahler wasn't done,
and I think he was about to supply modern music something it needed.  To a
certain extent people like Zemlinsky, Schreker and even Strauss marched on
in his place, but I always felt Mahler was moving beyond them, and beyond
himself, as well.

Roger Hecht