Steve Schwartz wrote:

>The relevant question to ask is why composers don't write 18th-century
>music.  The answer is, roughly, because John Adams has heard more
>different kinds of music than Mozart had.

I don't believe that this explanation holds up.  Bach's sons did not write
like their father.  Fifteen years after Haydn died Beethoven was no longer
a classical composer, Schubert had invented the lied, and in another twenty
years Chopin was Chopin.  Great composers develop their own footprints.
That is the way of the world.  Haydn and Mozart did eighteenth century
music on the highest level.  Why should any creative and ambitious soul
go there again.?

Bernard Chasan