Steve Schwartz' review of the Lilburn symphonies impelled me to revisit
them, as well as some other Lilburn pieces I haven't listened to in
years.  They are conservative, tonal, and very reminiscent of Sibelius.
What surprised me this time was a feature of Lilburn's music I had not
remembered: unlike Sibelius himself, Lilburn never seems to have written
a single memorable melody.  Lilburn's similarity to Sibelius is a matter
of harmonic progressions and orchestral colour, producing a sort of
undifferentiated Sibelian *sound*.  I liked them, and like them still,
probably because I love Sibelius.

This leads me to think about other composers whose work has a similar
derivative quality.  For example, Dag Wiren (little known outside of
Sweden) is another straightforward Sibelius disciple.  Or, take the
better known Einojuhani Rautavaara.  After various eclectic experiments,
he arrived at an idiom that was essentially a slightly modernized variant
of late Sibelius---"Tapiola" in the Arctic---and flew with it, which he
does very, very well.  Or consider Joly Braga Santos, whose attractive
early works often sound much like Vaughan Williams.

The most striking case I know of is Thomas Canning.  He taught at Eastman
for many years, and his only known composition appears to be the "Fantasy
on a Hymn Tune by Justin Morgan".  In this, he took a haunting shaped-note
melody and treated it in exactly the manner of Vaughan Williams in the
Tallis Fantasia.  The result is an unoriginal but utterly beautiful work,
which RVW himself could not have done any better.

I am not disparaging these composers, exactly.  Although they do anything
but break new ground, I like their work, because they are skillfull in
their use of idioms established by their more distinguished models, and
I love their models.

I wonder if we set too much store by "originality".  In this, we are
influenced by the Romantic movement and by the stupendous, Promethean
figure of Beethoven.  But could it be that originality is over-rated?
Just a question.  There is a great counter-example, of sorts, in Bach:
in his time (or at least in his maturity) I understand that *der Alte*
was widely viewed as backward-looking rather than innovative.  Eventually,
history sure had the last laugh on Bach's contemporaries.  But maybe
"originality" should be viewed in a more complex way than we are used
to doing.

Jon Gallant  [[log in to unmask]]