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Poor Chopin. A genius with impeccable musical taste, capable of the greatest finesse and beautifully singing melodies on the piano, Chopin lived his life battli

Poor Chopin. A genius with impeccable musical taste, capable of the greatest finesse and beautifully singing melodies on the piano, Chopin lived his life battling against Tuberculosis. It's wild to think that with modern medicine, he would have lived a fuller and much more productive life. What if he died at 70 instead of 39, and produced double the number of pieces he did? His works are already lauded as the the top echelon of piano music, which is easy to hear in Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8p0VcTbuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce8p0VcTbuA If Beethoven's or Bach's late periods are any indication, brilliant composers can continue innovating and moving forward well into their 50's and beyond. Such a shame that Chopin and Schubert died such premature deaths, though one could argue it's lucky they did indeed live long enough to give us compositions.

smortaz 8y ago
Yep. If I had a time machine some of the first stops would include dropping off some meds for Chopin, Mozart, Schubert, Pergolesi, ...
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  What blows my mind: which composers would you be able to save that never got old enough to get famous? Or would antimicrobial resistance kick in? Alas, the pitfalls of time travel
byproxy 8y ago
His preludes are top-notch. He packs so much story into those short forms. That first prelude...what a damn tender 30 seconds (or so).
furgooswft13 8y ago
A bit unrelated but I sometimes wonder what Bach would have thought of, and how he might take advantage of modern day electronic keyboards. The ability to change voices at will (even on different areas of the keyboard), and importantly for Mr. Well Tempered, the ability to change tunings with the press of a button. Surely even these days keyboards should be sensitive to key aftertouch to get a clavichord like vibrato that Bach was fond of. It'd be like Switched-on-Bach^10 but improvised live by a single madman on his electro-organ.
- tsunamifury 8y ago
  Thats a plot point played for gags in the original Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8UGAbAPPkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8UGAbAPPkk

smortaz 8y ago

Yep. If I had a time machine some of the first stops would include dropping off some meds for Chopin, Mozart, Schubert, Pergolesi, ...

WhompingWindows 8y ago
What blows my mind: which composers would you be able to save that never got old enough to get famous? Or would antimicrobial resistance kick in? Alas, the pitfalls of time travel

byproxy 8y ago

His preludes are top-notch. He packs so much story into those short forms. That first prelude...what a damn tender 30 seconds (or so).

furgooswft13 8y ago

A bit unrelated but I sometimes wonder what Bach would have thought of, and how he might take advantage of modern day electronic keyboards. The ability to change voices at will (even on different areas of the keyboard), and importantly for Mr. Well Tempered, the ability to change tunings with the press of a button. Surely even these days keyboards should be sensitive to key aftertouch to get a clavichord like vibrato that Bach was fond of. It'd be like Switched-on-Bach^10 but improvised live by a single madman on his electro-organ.

tsunamifury 8y ago
Thats a plot point played for gags in the original Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8UGAbAPPkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8UGAbAPPkk