John White asks if we think he wrote a load of rubbish by suggesting that
we would be better off if Shostakovich had stopped writing symphonies after
# 10.

Yes, because we would then not have #13 ("Babi Yar"), one of the finest
and most moving symphonies ever, and one which several list members, a few
months ago, cited as one of the works most suitable to represent the 20th
Century in music.

Besides, so what if his 15th is not as intense as his 5th? Some of us like
it just the same.

As for the more general question John raises, no one knows what a
composer is going to go on and write.  If Rossini had died young, right
after William Tell, there would have been much speculation about the new
directions he would have moved in.  If Verdi had died before Otello and
Falstaff, everyone would have assumed that he had come to an end of his
creativity years before.  If Richard Strauss had gotten into big trouble
with the Gestapo, we never would have heard the Four Last Songs.  If
Schubert and Mozart had lived another ten or twenty years, they might
have burned out and stopped writing--like Rossini.

Jim Tobin