Three prolific composers who enjoyed particularly fruitful periods in their work: Schubert, Schumann and Saint-Saëns

Inspiration can be a funny thing. You never know when it may strike, and for a creative soul, this can be hard going. Being surrounded by other like-minded people can make all the difference, making up an environment in which creativity can blossom, but even the greatest of artists know that hard graft is an absolute requirement. The expansive melody in the slow movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, for example, was the result of painstaking work by the composer, who cobbled it together two bars at a time. “It nearly killed me!” he remarked, not that you’d know it: it sounds utterly seamless and ranks among his most admired creations.

There are occasions, however, when inspiration flows so freely that composers are left dashing off new scores at a rate of knots, barely completing one before they embark on the next. This was a way of life for Saint-Saëns, who observed that composing came to him as naturally as “an apple-tree producing apples”, and there were certainly times when Schubert wrote several Lieder in a single day. Even a composer as prolific as the latter, however, could experience exceptionally prolonged bouts of creativity.

1815 was one such year. It's an important year in terms of European history – Napoleon escaped exile on Elba in late February and was defeated at Waterloo in June, starting his final exile on St Helena in October – but for fans of Schubert, it’s even more notable for the wealth of new works he wrote. They cover an enormous range of music, everything from orchestral works to opera, but most importantly include nearly 150 Lieder, the genre with which he is most associated. It may admittedly have provided a welcome escape from the mundanities of his everyday life (he was unhappily employed as a teacher in his father’s school at the time) but even so, this is truly exceptional, even before considering the fact he was only 18 years old.

It's generally referred to as Schubert’s miracle year, and the term is sometimes used to describe similarly fruitful periods in other composers’ lives. Perhaps unexpectedly, Bach isn’t among them: he was an exceptionally busy musician, but like Saint-Saëns, he seems to have taken this in his stride, taking on the composition of a new cantata every week in 1723-24, at the beginning of his tenure at two churches in Leipzig. His friend Telemann is known to have been even more prolific, but if he did experience a miracle year, it’s difficult to pin down when: it’s believed that he wrote in excess of 3000 works, but around half of these have been lost, and lack of surviving documentation has made dating those which have come down to us decidedly problematic.

If Mozart might be said to have had a miracle year, there would be a good case for making this 1784. It was then that he reached the pinnacle of his career as a pianist, premiering no fewer than six piano concertos (Nos. 14-19), each one showing a growing mastery of the genre that would culminate in the great masterpieces (Nos. 20-25) of the next two years. Come the late 1790s, Beethoven – also seeking to make his mark as a great pianist – wrote the first ten of his 32 solo piano sonatas before the turn of the century, but while he was unusually prolific at the time, there isn’t really a single year that could justifiably be singled out.

This takes us past Schubert in 1815 to Schumann in the 1840s, when he arguably had not one but two miracle years. The first is by far the better known: his marriage to Clara Wieck in 1840 prompted an extraordinary outpouring of new works, as if in celebration. This so-called ‘Year of Song’ hints at their significance – the cycles Liederkreis, Myrthen, Frauenliebeund -leben and Dichterliebe are all dated 1840 – but perhaps more importantly, these were his first works for something other than solo piano. Fast forward to 1842 and he suddenly turned his attention to chamber music (again, for the first time), composing three string quartets, the Fantasiestücke for piano trio and, most notably, the Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet. Written mere weeks apart, the last two are warm, effusive and brimming with youthful confidence; you can hear them both at our last chamber music concert of the Season, Maxim and Friends (22 February).

Other composers have had what could be termed miracle years since – Shostakovich, for instance, had an unusually busy 1934 – but we should probably beware of reading too much into the concept. Going back to Ravel, he may not have been the most prolific of composers, but we don’t think any the less of him as a result. Whether a composer’s music is born from a sudden outburst of inspiration or careful, intricate crafting, it is ultimately the quality that matters.