Semantics to the rescue

Semantics to the rescue! Three-score-and-ten looms large in measuring my small existential, blessed plot of the extant, giving rise to inspired flights of fancy as I approach its arrival. It is a certain memory -- reading that the latest thinking is that the blooming of the baby boomers demonstrates two new states of being (Early Old Age and Late Old Age!) – that makes me think back. I remember that as a young music student, I found a certain satisfaction in ‘knowing’ that Beethoven’s creative output could be pigeonholed into either the Early, Middle or Late periods. (for instance Op.1 Pno Trios, Op.2 Pno Sonatas, Op.18 String Quartets – Early, the Op.53 Waldstein and Op.57 Appassionata – Middle, the late quartets, Op 127, 130, 131, 132, 133 and Pno Sonatas Op 109, 110, 111 – Late). As time passed, and other of my own observations interrupted this tidiness, I came to believe that the concept of five periods could be used to organise Beethoven’s unbelievable and difficult to comprehend fecundity/development. I would argue that the big three periods were separated by stretches of experimentation and transition … So … where are we going here? In the direction of tossing out a new concept – assuming that one accepts the idea of Early Old Age and Late Old Age, how about something in between, a transition between the two. (am I channeling Bernie Sanders?) If Middle Old Age (it has a certain ring to it “the Middle Old Ages”?) is created, will that make it easier to ease on down the road into Early Old Age?