Richard Todd writes:

>There is so much extant great music from both periods.  Who needs more?
>
>No matter what he did, the modern composer could only imitate and there is
>no way that he could avoid sound like either an imitator or a very third-rate
>baroque or classical composer or, more likely both.

I don't understand the rationale behind either these statements.  They seem
to imply that there is a finite upper bound on the amount of music that can
be "meaningfully" written in any given style, and that that upper bound has
always been reached for any given era.  This would be, to me, a miracle of
serendipity.

Surely, the fact that the "modern" composer does *not* live in the same
milieu as an earlier composer could be used to argue that the modern
composer's take on an earlier style would necessarily be innovative and
nonimitative.  How could it be otherwise? How can someone imitate something
that you seem to be arguing is inaccessible to them?

len.