The story of classical music is, of course, liberally sprinkled with child prodigies - those composers and performers who showed exceptional promise from a very early age (with pushy parents often playing a key role). Mozart and Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns and César Franck are just four examples of musicians who were making waves before they were out of short trousers.
But there are plenty of cases, too, of the reverse: composers who left it until late, either to begin composing at all, or to really hit their stride. Here are seven late-blooming composers who made us wait (but who definitely made the wait worthwhile).
Leos Janáček (1824-1896)
An organist and schoolteacher by trade, Leos Janáček’s first piece Exaudi was published when he was 22. But it wasn’t until the Prague premiere of his opera Jenůfa in 1916 that Janáček, then 62, began to establish his reputation.
In the final decade of his life the Moravian-born composer penned some of his most enduring and inventive masterpieces, including the Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass.
- Janǎček is one of the best Czech composers ever
Crucial to Janáček’s late burst of creativity was his passionate but unrequited love for Kamila Stosslová, a married woman 35 years his junior. Janáček’s infatuation with Stosslová, whom he met in 1917, found its expression in the strong female characters in his final three operas.
Late masterpiece: Sinfonietta (1926)
Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)
Like Janáček, Anton Bruckner began his career as an organist and schoolteacher. One of Europe’s finest organists, he held a post at the renowned St Florian Cathedral in Linz, Austria, where as a church composer he wrote his first works.
From the start of his working life, Bruckner studied theory and composition alongside his professional duties.
But it wasn’t until he heard a performance of Wagner’s Tannhäuser in 1863 that he felt liberated from the compositional rules he had studied so laboriously. Bruckner began to write symphonies on a Wagnerian scale and his massive orchestral edifices, rooted in his devout Catholicism, remain masterpieces in the canon.
Late masterpieces: All of the nine symphonies came late and are all wonderful works. You could perhaps argue that the masterpieces start from Symphony No. 4 (1874, but revised until 1888).
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
It's not so much that Charles Ives started late (his first work, Variations on 'America' for organ, was composed in 1892 at the age of 17/18). No, it's rather that he truly came to fruition late in life. Hardly surprising as Ives was the epitome of the composer-with-a-day-job. Yes, Ives was, by day, a prominent insurance agent and actuary.
'How can he let his wife and children starve on his dissonances?'
He formed his own insurance agency with a business associate and was a key figure in the development of life-insurance packages for wealthier clients. For Ives, it was important to remain financially stable while pursuing his love of music. As he memorably commented, if a composer 'has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let them starve on his dissonances?'
Small wonder, then, that, in his younger years at least, he had relatively little time for composing. And that the majority of his major works were composed in later years. For example, he worked on Three Places in New England and the Concord Sonata during the 1910s, while the Symphony No. 4, perhaps his most highly regarded symphony, was revised throughout the 1910s and 1920s.
Ives can be seen as even more of a late-blooming composer, what's more, when we consider that his music received relatively little attention during his own lifetime. Indeed, a large proportion of his works remained unperformed until some time after his death in 1954. Why this critical cold shoulder? Probably because Ives's somewhat experimental tendencies - he often employed dissonance, for example - did not sit well with the more broadly tonal palette of his fellow American composers.
Late masterpiece: Symphony No. 4 ((1912–18; revised 1924–26)
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)
Another composer who took wing after hearing Wagner was Emmanuel Chabrier. Though a gifted amateur pianist, as a young man Chabrier didn’t consider the idea of becoming a professional musician.
Instead he took a post in the civil service and surrounded himself with a circle of artistic friends that included many Impressionist painters.
- We named Chabrier one of the 25 best French composers of all time
Then in 1879 his friend the composer Henri Duparc took him to hear Tristan und Isolde in Munich. Chabrier, profoundly moved, quit his job and turned to full-time composing. His Dix pièces pittoresques, hugely admired by Ravel and Poulenc, and his ever-popular orchestral rhapsody España, date from this first flush of inspiration.
Late masterpieces: Dix pièces pittoresques (1881); España (1883)
Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)
Born in Romania, Iannis Xenakis spent his formative years in Greece, where he trained as an architect and engineer. Passionate about his country, he served in the Greek resistance movement during the Second World War and sustained injuries that nearly killed him. His part in the troubles of that period led to his exile and a death sentence, should he ever return.
It was in Paris where he settled, finding work as an architect. And a fairly decent one at that: Xenakis worked with the great Modernist architect Le Corbusier on projects including the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. He also designed housing developments in France and government buildings in India.
Among all this, Xenakis began to embrace music composition seriously only in his 30s. His ideas around composing were, to many at the Paris Conservatoire, more than a little leftfield and he struggled to be taken seriously by the likes of Darius Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger, one of the 20th century's most influential music teachers.
Olivier Messiaen, however, saw something in him and encouraged his composing, suggesting he look to his experience of engineering and mathematics to aid his music.
This he did and he went on to blaze a trail in experimental music, inspired by game theory, architecture and computer algorithms, establishing the School of Mathematical and Automatic Music in 1966. He shared his passion with students on both sides of the Atlantic, establishing free lectures at Gresham College in London and a centre for mathematical music at Indiana University in the US.
Late masterpiece: Jonchaies (1977)
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Giuseppe Verdi: late bloomer? Surely not - he penned his first major success, Nabucco, at the age of just 27. However, Verdi is definitely a composer who experienced something of an Indian summer.
When his opera Aida was premiered in 1871, Verdi was 58. With 26 operas behind him at that point, the great Italian composer lay down his operatic pen and turned his attention to revising earlier works and composing the Requiem.
But eight years later Verdi’s thoughts turned back to opera and he began sketching ideas for Otello. He finished the work, based on Shakespeare’s play, when he was 73 and it was an instant success.
Verdi soon began to compose another Shakespeare-inspired work, but this time his thoughts turned to comedy. 'After having relentlessly massacred so many heroes and heroines, I have at last the right to laugh a little,' he memorably commented. The subject matter was to be Falstaff, the plump and jolly comic character from The Merry Wives of Windsor who also memorably inspired the British composer Edward Elgar to music.
Verdi set to work with librettist Arrigo Boito and, in his and in his 80th year Falstaff, his final, comic masterpiece was first heard.
Late masterpieces: Otello (1886); Falstaff (1893)
- Verdi makes our list of the greatest Italian composers of all time...
- ... but which of his operas made it to our list of the 20 greatest operas of all time?
Elliott Carter (1908-2012)
This American composer lays claim to being one of the world’s oldest working composers. Carter initially studied English and maths at Harvard before the encouragement of the composer Charles Ives convinced him to head to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger.
On his return to America, Carter began to make his mark, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for his Second String Quartet, and writing the Double Concerto – hailed by no less a figure than Stravinsky as an American masterpiece.
Carter’s final decade was exceptionally fruitful. Premieres include Interventions, Dialogues for piano and large ensemble, Three Illusions for Orchestra; in 2007 alone he wrote seven new pieces. And after his 90th birthday Carter wrote his first opera – a work called What Next?
Late masterpieces: Interventions (2008); Dialogues for piano and large ensemble (2003); Three Illusions for Orchestra (2004); What Next? (1999)
