Bernard Chasan: >>The relevant question to ask is why composers don't write 18th-century >>music. The answer is, roughly, because John Adams has heard more >>different kinds of music than Mozart had. > >I don't believe that this explanation holds up. Well, I did say "roughly." >Bach's sons did not write like their father. Fifteen years after Haydn >died Beethoven was no longer a classical composer, Schubert had invented >the lied, and in another twenty years Chopin was Chopin. Great composers >develop their own footprints. That is the way of the world. Haydn and >Mozart did eighteenth century music on the highest level. Why should any >creative and ambitious soul go there again.? There are reasons why one might, although I admit the probability isn't likely. For example, while I'm not particularly ambitious or creative, I've just performed the Beethoven Missa Solemnis and have been improvising at the piano late-Beethovenian passages. Some of them strike me as reasonably good. Why not turn them into something larger? I say this as someone who has previously had no urge to reproduce Beethoven. Really, only my own laziness prevents me from doing so. On a far more exalted level, Carlos Chavez composed a lovely piano sonata indistinguishable in style from a Haydn sonata. Various orchestrations of earlier composers by modern ones seem to me to fall under this category. But in general I agree. Composing is a lot of work. Why spend the effort trying to compete with something that's been brought to a peak, unless you feel the need to compete? Steve Schwartz