Prof. Bernard Chasan responds to Steve Schwartz:

>>Suppose you came across a piece of music and you didn't know the
>>composer.  The only thing you could say about it was that it was written
>>in a late Classical style.  Do you really have to know who the composer
>>is before you can decide whether it's any good?
>
>Of course not, if the work were an authentic contemporary product of
>the classical era.  But if the work was a recent imitation, no!!!  The
>"composer" is simply impersonating a great composer.  The hard creative
>work, the lifetime of learning, development, setbacks, tragedy and triumph
>was the heritage of another.  Now some montebank comes and tries to share
>the unearned glory ...

You are focusing the problem from an ethical point of view, and this has
nothing to do with musical beauty.  A good modern composer could write a
little fugue in the style of Bach, and you --without knowing who wrote it--
could find it beautiful, and perhaps adscribe it to Bach himself (I've
witnessed such a case).  Later, when you discover the lie, you will say
that this fugue is just an imitation, and that it has no value, etc...but
at the first moment you simply *felt* the beauty of that music, without any
ethical complaint.That's art.  Wasn't Aristotle who said that poetry was
imitation, after all?:-)

>A composer who starts off by intending to write in the style of a long
>dead master cannot be considered, IMHO, a serious composer

Actually, great part of the training of a composer consist (or consisted,
perhaps) of writing in the style of a long dead master.  The problem
--which is not very simple-- is when does a composer really "starts off"?.
Did Beethoven start off at his op.  1 trios?.  He wasn't serious until the
Eroica?.  I ve heard recently Bruckner's Requiem, written at the age of 24.
The work is full of Haydn, and is not the best of Bruckner, surely; but
nobody can say that the youngman who wrote it wasn't a serious composer.

Pablo Massa
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