Bernard Chasan:

>>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.

Well, I did say "roughly."

>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.?

There are reasons why one might, although I admit the probability isn't
likely.  For example, while I'm not particularly ambitious or creative,
I've just performed the Beethoven Missa Solemnis and have been improvising
at the piano late-Beethovenian passages.  Some of them strike me as
reasonably good.  Why not turn them into something larger? I say this as
someone who has previously had no urge to reproduce Beethoven.  Really,
only my own laziness prevents me from doing so.  On a far more exalted
level, Carlos Chavez composed a lovely piano sonata indistinguishable in
style from a Haydn sonata.  Various orchestrations of earlier composers
by modern ones seem to me to fall under this category.

But in general I agree.  Composing is a lot of work.  Why spend the effort
trying to compete with something that's been brought to a peak, unless you
feel the need to compete?

Steve Schwartz