To my claim that a recent composition in classical style would be a forgery and inauthentic, Steve Schwartz replies: >But that's simply a variation on knowing the composer. Now you know the >time period, and for you, that knowledge affects the worth of the piece. >Implied in this, I think, is the assumption that an "imitation" is less >worthy than "the real thing." In many cases, it probably is. After all, >how many composers are as good as Haydn? However, I can imagine a musician >on the order of Elliott Carter or Carlos Chavez writing such a piece >firmly in the Haydn-Mozart style and quite as good as most pieces by those >composers. I believe that it CAN be done. My argument is that it should NOT be done. And furthermore, I cannot imagine that a composer of stature would do such a thing without commenting on the work in his own voice. WHy in the world would he want to? Another words it would be Mozart filtered through Carter. That is a different thing indeed. Berio and Harbison have done this with Schubert's music. Berio did it in a piece called " Rendering" whivh I don't particularly like, but it is not a forgery. I am sure that there are a lot of other examples. Bernard Chasan