Jon Gallant writes: >I haven't listened to the snippet, but let me hazard a guess: a >quintet by a 19th century woman composer could be Louise Farrenc We have a winner! (Well, I'm calling it such, despite the hedging "could be".) >---but then it would >be not so much Brahmsian as Beethovenish/Mendelsohnian. I aint getting into that, except to say that I think I've also observed Farrenc referred to as Schubertian/Beethoveny. The snippet is from the first movement of her second quintet (in E, op. 31), played by the Schubert Ensemble of London, recorded on ASV Living Era, a terrific disc which also has the 1st quintet. Two jewels, these quintets. >Appropos the mystery theme, someone commented that it is easy to absorb >someone else's tune, then imagine that one has made it up oneself. Hmmm, >that's virtually all I do when I improvise on the piano, except that I am >SOMETIMES able to remember whose tune I started with. Maybe that is >actually the basis of original composition, except that the composer draws >on and reassembles tiny bits of previously heard music. Could it >be that "creativity" is really a form of very fine-grained reconstruction? Throw in some accidental and wrong notes and that might just account for most of it. Nice going, Jon Gallant! (Dave, tell him what he's won...) Rick [A great big virtual pat on the back. -Dave]