Bernard Chasan wrote:

>It is hard to get hold of this.  But I think that every great composer has
>a very characteristic sound, beyond the arrangement of notes.  Bach sounds
>like Bach - his music leaves, switching metaphors, a Bach footprint.  So do
>Sibelius, Elgar, Janacek, Schubert, etc., etc, leave very characteristic
>footprints, at least in their mature work.  The footprint is theirs- it is
>the world that they have created.  To write works in their styles is not
>only to counterfeit, it is to impersonate.  And that activity is not art.

Humm, I don't know if I quite agree with professor Chasan.  Didn't Strauss
write a piece in the style of Corelli or some other Baroque composer?
What about Stavinsky's interpolation of Pergolesi? Prokofiev's Classical
Symphony is in a style after Haydn.  I don't see that paying homage to the
great work of the past is either derivative or invalid as art.  At the very
least it is an interesting excercise, as no matter how hard they thy, most
composers sound like themselves no matter who they are imitating.

Kevin Sutton