Jon Johanning wrote:

>On the other hand, could it be that his fount of inspiration was finally
>starting to dry up?

There is a management book which deals with the S curve - a typical way
of showing the growth an maturiy of a product.  It is a well established
theory that when a product is introduced, the growth is very slow, then
increases until it reaches maturity, at which time it moves downwards into
decline.  This theory has been used on the works of various composers, and
I should like to quote from a book entitled "Evolution Management," by Dr
Marc van der Erve:

   "Should Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) have lived beyond the
   age of thirty-five years, he probably would not have written many
   new compositons.  Mozart had exhausted approximately 91% of his
   creative potential when he died, having written close to six hundred
   compositions. When Brahms (1833-1897) dies at the age of sixty-four,
   he had exhausted 93% of his perceived creative potential, having
   written 128 compositions. Similar conclusions can be drawn for
   Schubert, Schuman, and so forth (Modis, 1992).  These conclusions
   which concern the cumulative number of compositions over a lifetime
   are vbased on the application of the S shaped life cycle curve. The
   'S-curve', as it is referred to, can be used to predict the cumulative
   growth and ceiling of growth of a wide range of activities. The rate
   of natural growth represented in the slope of the S curve, is
   'proportional to both the amount of growth already accomplished and
   the amount of growth remaining to be accompalised. The latter implies
   a limit, a saturation level, a finite market size, which is represented
   in the flattened end of the curve. In his book 'Predictions,' Theodore
   Modis provides an impressive review of cases in which the S-shaped
   relation between cumulative growth and time applies. The added value
   of his contribution is in convincingly demonstrating that we are
   dealing with a fundamental law of natural growth."

So - all this, I think, means that to ask the question "what would have
happened" flies very much in the face of a fundamental law of natural
growth which suggestes that there is a limit to the amount of work a
composer can producer and that the greatest composers reach that limit - or
at least get very near to it - at their death.  If they lived much longer,
the conclusion would most probably be that, like Beethoven, they would see
their creative powers decline.

Jonathan