Walter Meyer wrote:

>Finally, assume that Mozart, born in 1956, were to exhibit the same
>precocity, and compose the same works that he had actually composed two
>hundred years earlier.

There is a part of me that thinks it would be impossible for a Mozart born
in 1956 to write the same the music.  Mozart never heard a jet plane, a
jack hammer or other sounds of our age.  Nor were many of the harmonies
used today, even in some popular music, ever given consideration in
composition in Mozart's time.  The harmonic language has changed.

Even when one encounters a composer who tries to emulate the style of
Mozart, unless it is done by "observing all of the rules," it is difficult
to capture that earlier harmonic style with any fluency.

I am reminded of the experiments of Hiller.  He programmed a computer
with the harmonic "rules" of various styles of the past.  The result was
"unnatural." For the music to be "natural" it would seem to me that one
would need to be fluent in a "dead language."

Karl