Discuss the physical and mental impact large-scale compositions had on their

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fierydog

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respective composers? For instance Julius Reubke died only a few years after composing his masterpiece of a piano sonata. Many people who knew him attributed his early death and quick atrophy to the work he spent on that single piano sonata.

I argue that if Chopin attempted to orchestrate a symphony - it probably would have taken his life.
 
Large scale compositions of course require lots of time to allocate parts to different instruments. Not just about harmony & melody but also about the blending of the different timbres of instruments together.
 
If Wikipedia is correct, Reubke died at age twenty-four, after a long and steady decline due to tuberculosis, and his health was already at a low ebb when he wrote his later workS.

Mozart had been frail since childhood, and had several conditions, his last illness was a 'big one' which was too much for someone who had a lesser constitution from birth, and many ailments from childhood on through his life.

Certainly, any major-scale creative work, in whatever discipline, takes a fair amount of time (even for Mozart working at record speed) and therefore can be both invigorating and exhausting.

As to references that Mozart's Requiem 'killed him,' or the last organ sonata of Reubke 'killed him,' they are fictional and highly romanticized silliness, best dispensed with.


Best regards.
 
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