#ClassicsaDay #FamousLastWorks Week 4

october Famous last Works For the month of October, the #ClassicsaDay team (of which I'm a part), decided to go with a Halloween theme. The idea is to share works marked in some way with the composer's demise. It can be the last piece a composer completed before death, or one left incomplete at death.

For my part, I chose to narrow the focus a little bit. Not all incomplete works were deathbed projects. Schubert, for example, abandoned his "Unfinished" symphony six years before his death. For my contributions, I focussed on the last piece a composer wrote -- whether it was completed or not.  

From famous last words to #FamousLastWorks. Here are my posts for week 4.

Felix Mendelssohn - Die Lorelei

Mendelssohn began work on the Die Lorelei in 1847. He had sketched out the first act when his sister died. Distraught, Mendelssohn lost interest in the project. Little more was done to the score. Six months later, Mendelssohn died following a stroke.

Maurice Ravel - Don Quichotte à Dulcinée

A head injury in 1932 triggered the onset of aphasia in Ravel. In 1933 he was working on a film score for Don Quixote. As his condition worsened, he lost the ability to compose music. His songs written for the film are his last works, although he was to live another four years.

Claude Debussy - Violin Sonata

Debussy had embarked on a cycle of six sonatas, each one written for a different instrument or instrumental combination. The violin sonata was the last one he was able to complete before his death. It was the third of the series.

Aaron Copland - Proclamation

Copland's final work, Proclamation was based on an earlier sketch. IN his last years, Copland suffered from Alzheimer's and found it difficult to compose. Proclamation was completed in 1982, eight years before the composer's death.

Ernest John Moeran - Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major

Moeran was a slow and careful composer. Moeran began work on his second symphony in 1945. It was incomplete when he died suddenly five years later. Initially, it was thought that much of the work had either been lost or destroyed by Moeran. Eventually, enough was recovered to allow a reasonable realization to be made.