Bernard Chasan wrote:

>>Let's take it from the other end.  Suppose you came across a piece of music
>>and you didn't know the composer.  The only thing you could say about it
>>was that it was written in a late Classical style.  Do you really have to
>>know who the composer is before you can decide whether it's any good?
>
>Of course not, if the work were an authentic contemporary product of
>the classical era.  But if the work was a recent imitation, no!!!  The
>"composer" is simply impersonating a great composer.

I don't think that, when Mozart, Beethoven, or Schubert, at least in
some of their earlier works, appeared to be writing in the style of Haydn,
they were "impersonating" a great composer, any more than when they later
developed styles of their own, each distinguishable from those of the
others.  Nor do I think that those earlier works necessarily lacked musical
merit.  Simply because I don't believe it has happened, I don't think a
composer today could create works of musical merit that were in the style
of Haydn, but I would reject such a composition simply because of its
recency.  Schoenberg's First Quartet and chamber music by Foote (neither of
whom may have deliberately written in the style of X, but who nevertheless
remind me of one or more earlier composers) come to mind.

wm