Steve Schwartz wrote:

>Krishan P. Oberoi tells of the NEC composition student who insisted on
>composing in Mozart's style:
>
>>Eventually the student was forced to withdraw.  All of the undergrads that
>>I spoke with at the time supported the composition department in their
>>rejection of this student's work, the general consesus being that the role
>>of the comp.  dept.  is to help budding composers find and develop their
>>own unique voice.
>
>What if his voice was similar to Mozart's? It seems incredibly wrong to
>me that the NEC composers and budding composers should have taken this
>attitude.

I am reminded of a composition student I had some years ago.  He had come
from a small town in West Texas.  There wasn't any classical radio station
and the only classical recordings in his public library were Symphonies of
Haydn and Mozart.  We he came to his first lesson he had written several
Symphonies!  While his structure was similar to that period, his harmonies
were not totally Mozart's.  He had also been raised on Country and Western
Music!  I never tried to change his thinking.  Within a few years, at his
own doing, he was writing in the more contemporary styles, as those styles
became more of his vocabulary.

My thinking is such that, unless a style comes naturally to an individual,
the music will end up sounding contrived.

Karl