Pablo Massa wrote:

>Another question: what does the style of a piece has to do with its
>originality?.  Can a good composer write a piece in the general style
>of the second half of XVIII century (for example) and even so, being
>original?.  I believe that he can.

Mucho Gratias Pablo.

That fact is that there is a limited number of styles.  It is doubtful if
anyone is going to show us a way to play the piano as it has never been
played before (like Chopin did, for example).  That instrument, as far as
ways to play it (effects that can be had) is fully exhausted.  The same is
somewhat true for other aspects of music like harmony and form.  But we
have not even scratched the surface when it comes to composing melodies.
There are as many possible melodies as there are stars in the heavens.
(Allowing 5 durations - 1\16, 1\8, 1\4, 1\2, whole note with, say 10 melody
notes inside the tenth (forgetting atonality for the moment), a 16 note
melody could be written in 50 to the 16 power nubmer of ways, a very big
number.  If only 1 out of a billion produced a decent melody or theme,
which requires less lyrical merit, there are still an unimagineable large
number of them.

In fact, there are as many Beethoven-like symphonies as there are stars
in the heavens, same for Mozart-like concertos and Chopin-like scherzos.
These sytles are far from exhuasted.  What we need to do is to remove the
stigma of using them and unleash the creative talent of the thousands of
composers to write in them, if they want to of course.  What we are trying
to do, it seems to me, is forbid any new music that sounds like them, and
search desparately for that "new sound".  Its like I am creative if I can
find a new sound (style) but not creative if I can write a great 19th
symphony.

Bill Pirkle