Famous Last Words - Composers

[tompilk]

Hi. I was just wondering if any of you knew any last words of composers? I got a book about famous last words and there was a section on composers. If anybody could add to the list, I would be grateful to see what people come up with!!!

"Harmony" - Arnold Schoenberg

"Dear Gerda, I thank you for every day we have been together" - Ferruccio Busoni

"Ah! That tastes nice. Thank you!" - Johannes Brahms

"One tousand greetings to Balakirev." - Hector Berlioz

"What's this?" - Leonard Bernstein

"Hier, hier ist mein Ende." - Franz Schubert

"Mozart" - Gustav Mahler

"Well, if it must be so" - Edvard Grieg

"Weary, very weary" - Felix Mendelssohn

"I am a pianist" - John Field

"I look like a Moor." - Maurice Ravel (looking at bandaged head)

"Too bad! Too bad! It's too late!" - Ludwig van Beethoven

"I am in a cold sweat. Is it the sweat of death? How are you going to tell my father?" - Georges Bizet

"Plus" (no more) - Frederic Chopin

"I will, whatever happens" (go to sleep) - Johann Strauss

"What the devil do you mean sing to me, Priest? You are out of tune!!!" - UJean-Philippe Rameau

"My dear hands... Farewell, my poor hands." (after diagnosed with cancer) - Sergei Rachmaninov (only last words I could find)

"Silence! Silence!" Mozart called out one day while she was singing. "Now Hofer is taking her high B-flat." - Mozart

Thanks again,
Tom Pilkington

[xvimbi]

John Cage: "... (goes on for 4:33 minutes) ..."

I made this up, of course

I like Rameau's last words

[jeremyjchilds]

"The sad thing is that i leave with so much to say"  Bela Bartok

[phil13]

"I would give anything just to have written this." -Richard Strauss, holding a score of Mozart's clarinet quintet.

[larse]

on a very late interview, I'm not sure it's the last one he gave, Jean Sibelius was questioned:

"Is there something else you want to tell the public about yourself that they don't know about?"

in which he replied:

"You may tell them...that I have the biggest cock in Finland!"

[dinosaurtales]

"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do!"

Actually, I dont think a composer said this.

[llamaman]

No, it was Oscar Wilde.

[stevie]

on a very late interview, I'm not sure it's the last one he gave, Jean Sibelius was questioned:

"Is there something else you want to tell the public about yourself that they don't know about?"

in which he replied:

"You may tell them...that I have the biggest cock in Finland!"

 

[stevie]

and i heard elsewhere that beethoven's last words were -

'relax, the comedy has finished'

or something to that effect

[da jake]

Alkan: "DAMN!!!!"

...Or something to that effect! 

[Waldszenen]

Mozart: "So these two women enter a bar, right, and this is what the first one says..."


j/k

[mlsmithz]

Probably not their real last words :

Lully: "I should have just used a baton."

Webern: "Hey!  Who's out there!?"

Chausson and Alkan: "Oh $%#@!!!"

Kotzwara: "I tell you it enhances the experience.  Here, I'll show you."

(I'm sure these weren't their real last words but given the absurd ways in which these five composers died (or are alleged to have died in Alkan's "case" ) it's easy to make up joke last words.)

[steinwaymodeld]

Probably not their real last words :

Lully: "I should have just used a baton."

Webern: "Hey!  Who's out there!?"

Chausson and Alkan: "Oh $%#@!!!"

Kotzwara: "I tell you it enhances the experience.  Here, I'll show you."

(I'm sure these weren't their real last words but given the absurd ways in which these five composers died (or are alleged to have died in Alkan's "case" ) it's easy to make up joke last words.)

Love the Webern one, in case people don't know what it means, find out how Webern die tragically.

What happened to Chausson? Something fell on top of him?

[pianistimo]

...the elephant smoked too much (explaining why the keys of his piano were yellow)
  victor borge

[llamaman]

Were those his last words?

[Torp]

"Hold my beer, watch this..."

Oh, alright, not a single composer has said this as their last words (that I'm aware of).  But they could have!

[pianistimo]

dear llamaman,

no, those were the piano's last words via victor.

[lisztwasgod]

bach - if i only had a well-tempered heart

[mlsmithz]

Love the Webern one, in case people don't know what it means, find out how Webern die tragically.

Well, the quotes above make a bit more sense if you know the bizarre and sometimes tragic, sometimes comic circumstances under which those five composers died.  Lully, Alkan, and perhaps Webern are the most well-known (though Alkan's death story is possibly apocryphal), Chausson less so, and Kotzwara less so again.

What happened to Chausson? Something fell on top of him?

Apparently he lost control of his bicycle and crashed into a wall.  Whether he died instantly or as a result of injuries sustained in the accident some days later I don't know.

Kotzwara is probably the least well-known of the five composers above - he was a contemporary of Haydn and Mozart, only really known today for his chamber work 'The Battle of Prague' and the bizarre, even comic, circumstances under which he died - of autoerotic asphyxiation in a London brothel.