Aaron Rabushka <[log in to unmask]> takes me to task:

>Now just a cotton-pickin' minute! Bernard Chasan writes:
>
>>What I was referring to was a situation such as the following
>>hypothetical: composer hears Schubert's Trout Quintet, says: I love that
>>music and I can DO that, and turns out a very, very similar piece we shall
>>call the Salmon Sextet.
>
>That's how I got started (although it was Beethoven's 5 or Dvorak's "New
>World" when I said "Whay can't I do that?")

Boy, did I get roughed up for a few innocent remarks.  What started this
off was a consideration of a contemporary musician turning out a fine
trio sonata in the style of Bach and worthy of Bach.  That seemed highly
uncreative to me- more of a counterfeiting than a creation.  I raised the
specter of a computer (Johann Sebastian iMac) turning out great music in
any style you care to dial (Vespers of 1999 by GreeniMac) and this made me
very uncomfortable.  Steve Schwartz says it is alright, good music is good
music.  That needs more thought.  In any case I did not mean to libel young
composers who start by writing like established composers - that is the way
of the world.  Bartok sounded like Brahms at first.  Aaron Rabushka wrote
An Even Newer World Symphony when he was a kid.  More power to him.  I wish
that I could hear his stuff, and Wes Crone's and Judith Zaimont's and
anyone else I have left out sung by Ms. Woerner!!  This bunch is beginning
to feel like a community- a community of anarchists and contrarians but a
community nonetheless.

Bernard Chasan