The Rest is Noise reports on French composer Henri Dutilleux receiving the Kravis Prize today, which consists of a $200,000 grant and a commission with the New York Philharmonic. The most interesting part to me is this phrase:

” . . . Henri Dutilleux, who turns ninety-six next month.”

Wow. Go him. But it really makes me wonder what the probability of him completing this commission is. I guess anyone could die at any second so handing out a huge sum of cash and a work order to someone who’s particularly old isn’t much different from handing it out to someone who is particularly young, but I still suspect that the probabilities of dying before the work’s completion are incredibly out of wack. Is it wrong to even take this into consideration? I mean, there are plenty of young up-starts who would kill to get this opportunity. I guess the risk in that case is they may not write something that anyone wants to hear… That brings us to a discussion of the general lack of taking risks on new music in the classical world. But then, Dutilleux doesn’t write safe romantic-style music so I guess he’s a bit of a risk in that sense.

In any case, things like this simply don’t come up in the pop music world where you’re old once you hit thirty.