Has anyone cranked out more music on the same level of old composers?

[Bob]

I remember Moondog.     Writing his counterpoint like Bach. 

Someone just posted about Chopin.

Is there anyone writing in the style of older composers?  Cranking out piano etudes, symphonies, piano concertos?

I would imagine if someone cranked out 12 etudes in the style of Chopin or Liszt or piano concertos like Mozart.... Would that get some attention?

If they write one, people will say they're just copying.  They wouldn't have much chance to develop.

I also remember hearing about a modern composer who wrote what sounded like the opening movement of a Mahler symphony.  Why didn't he keep going and write the whole thing?

If someone were to write something on par with older composers, is it just considered crap automatically?  Copying? 

Or is it just that no one's doing it?  I've run across plenty of people who can play well, but I'm not remember one performing well AND cranking out their own etudes.  There are some instrumentalists cranking out crappy teaching-level method-level etudes.  I've seen them.



Does anyone do that?  Actually write a symphony?  Actually write some piano etudes?  (Piano etudes meaning worthy of a concert, not the crappy ones other instrument end up with.  We're lucky that way on piano.) 

And writing in an older style.  Yes, I've heard of modern/ avant garde symphonies being written. 

[stevenarmstrong]

Modernist/avante garde composers didn't but the post-modernists did.
A part from them, heard Prokofiev's music? Poulenc?

I don't think the issue is about quality; imitating the old styles, using the musical language of the old styles, simply offers nothing unique, nothing idiosyncratic, nothing new, nothing interesting.

Re etudes, heard Ligeti? A lot of pedagogues from the Moscow Con wrote a lot of etudes in Romantic style too.

[j_menz]

I've run across plenty of people who can play well, but I'm not remember one performing well AND cranking out their own etudes. 

Marc Andre Hamelin comes to mind.

If you are asking why people aren't writing music in the style it was written 150 or more years ago, the question you need to ask is why on earth it should be. Times have changed, and art must needs keep up.

[Bob]

I was wondering why people were so impressed with the guy who wrote the Mahler-ish music.  That's what I thought -- It's been done before.

But if someone wrote a full Mahler symphony would it get attention?  What if Mahler wrote an 11th Symphony?  Wouldn't that be on the list of greats?  If there was an 11th Symphony, but someone scribbled their name on it, would it be included on the same level? 

Is it that there's no support structure to allow a composer to develop enough sophistication to be on those levels?  That someone could write like Chopin, but when they're at the 'pain by numbers' composing stage, they won't get any support (which would be financial)?

Or that there aren't any new Mozart symphonies of Mozart quality around now because we've got x-amount already.  Why do we need another one?