Writes Steve Schwartz:

>...  Certainly if you compose in Bach's style, comparisons will
>inevitably arise, in a lot of cases not to Bach's disadvantage.  However,
>I knew a medical resident who loved Bach's music and composed in that
>style.  He wrote a trio sonata fully as good as any of Bach's examples,
>in my opinion.  I wish someone would publish and record it.

This makes me very uneasy.  It raises the spectre of the computer composing
in Bach's style, or anyone else's for that matter.  What would Steve say to
that? (He could of course say: impossible, can't happen!) George Rochberg
was mentioned on this liszt recently, I have not listened to his music for
many years, but it seems to me from memory, that he writes in one of his
string quartets, music of awesome beauty, but not HIS beauty - not
authentic!!!  It was not just a case of returning to melody and tonality-
it was IMHO an attempt to reproduce melody and tonality created by 19th
century masters.  Let me approach this another way: these enterprises are
more akin to counterfeiting than to creativity.  Needless to say there is
a huge inventory of "conservative" 20th century works which are great and
authentic- no question of that!!  To take one example, Rachmaninoff's Piano
Concertos were clearly inspired by Tchaikovsky and other nineteenth century
masters but he created something unique.

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University