Bernard Chasan quoted someone as claiming that Bach wrote a choral just
so Berg could use it a couple of hundred years later.  This reminds me
of a friendly controversy between two of my colleagues may years ago.
One of the fellows had no use at all for music between Beethoven and
Bartok.  On the other hand he somehow had it figured out that Mozart was
greater innovator than Schoenberg and further wrote on the blackboard
that if Mozart had lived another five years he would have written Jeux.
When he and I came in the next morning we found that the other fellow
had offered the following reply: If Debussy had been born five years
earlier, he would have rewritten the Jupiter Symphony.

Well, it seemed funny at the time.

Richard

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