When I say “last work” I mean the absolute last work of art they created, not the last one they published, or the last one that anybody’s heard of, etc.
I think “Of Mere Being” is Wallace Stevens’ best poem. I have read his major poems: “Domination of Black,” “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” “Anecdote of the Jar,” and so on, and while they’re all great, nothing gets me like “Of Mere Being.” He talks so simply about what we cannot know because it is beyond our minds.
Are there any artists, of any kind, whose last work you consider to be their best?
Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann. It’s my favorite opera, and Jacques never lived to see it staged. The tale of Antonia, about a singer who will die if she sings, is especially moving because Offenbach knew his own end was being hastened by the work he was doing.
Though it strikes many people as cheesy today (understandably), Cecil B. DeMille’s last film was his greatest success: The Ten Commandments.
And while athletes aren’t artists, strictly speaking, in his last NFL game, John Elway was the Super Bowl MVP. HE had a LOT of great games in his career, but probably never a better game than he had against the Falcons.
I’m a big fan of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. Of course, I’m sure that it’s not universally considered his best. It is to me, although technically, I like the 3rd movement the best. I don’t know if that was composed last.
Beethoven’s 9th was his last symphony, but I don’t think it was the last work he composed, so I don’t know that it qualifies.
There are quite a few composers who were at their best toward the end of their life/career, but I don’t know what their absolute last-composed work was.
No, Symphony #9 was not Beethoven’s last work - in the remaining two years of his life, he wrote the String Quartets op. 130, op. 132 and the Grosse Fuge op. 133 (1825) and op. 131 and 135 (1826). (op. 134 is an arrangement for piano, 4 hands, of the Grosse Fuge.) The opus numbers are not chronological, or rather, they are chronological in order of publication, not composition.
Bizet also famously died shortly after the premiere of Carmen. I’ll admit to not knowing enough of Bizet’s work to properly judge if it is his best (I know a handful of songs and Pearl Fishers) but it is by any measure his best known.
I like Van Gogh’s work in general. I don’t know if his last piece was his “best”, but thinking about what was happening to him at the time and considering that in the equation, then maybe.
I would gladly point to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as the pinnacle of Gene Roddenberry’s oeuvre, but since he neither wrote, directed, produced nor acted in it, I’m not sure what kind of credit he should receive to differentiate it from all the posthumous credits he got on all subsequent Trek projects.