That's an excellent point. Monteverdi was born in the same year as Shakespeare and
his Ritorno d'Ullisse was first performed in 1641 at age 77. Sibelius lived a very
long life but wrote little in old age. When his sons wanted to have him declared
senile Sophocles recited the ode to Athens from his latest Oedipus at Colonus. He
won the case.
Mozart died just about the time Beethoven began to write. If he had lived to 1810,
their careers would have overlapped for two decades, and it is very likely that both
composers would have stimulated each other in ways about which we unfortunately will
never know anything.
> I'm getting the impression that most poets who didn't write into old age
> stopped because Death intervened with a decisive FINIS, rather than because
> they retired or turned to other things. So I suppose a related question
> would be, how many poets of this period stopped writing long before their
> deaths? (Shakespeare, arguably - if three years count as a long time.)
>
> Charlie
>
>
> --
> Website: www.charlesbutler.co.uk
> Blog: http://steepholm.livejournal.com/
>
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