If you look at my other work, you hopefully you will find a lot of originality. This is my first (student) work in a modern style. As Ahinton suggests, I would have hoped that people find it interesting looking at where I started and how I got to where I am now. Borrowing ideas from Great composers, isn't a new or unique concept. Didn't Picasso say,
I good artist borrows and great artist steals.
This thread is purely for historical reasons and a bit a of fun if I could anyone to guess the less obvious influences!
Gauk, I have tried my best to get people to comment on the quality and the impact of the music. People like Ahinton kindly oblige but it is a never-ending battle. I don't think you have commented; what do you think of it? (Obviously taking into account it was written many years ago as a young man). I am genuinely interested in your opinion.
I think it was Eliot said that, but it is probably one of those quotes that is endlessly re-attributed.
Also, I was being what in another century would have been called "nice" about the word "derivative", meaning simply "derived from something".
About the work, well, I didn't comment mostly because I wasn't sure that you would welcome an honest opinion. Listening to it is not helped by the bad sound, either. I thought it very much a student work. It starts off nicely, then works out some ideas rather prosaically, and then stops abruptly. As a piece, I don't think it hangs together, and sounds very much like an exercise. If you started out with the artifical idea "I will write some music in a modern style" then I could expect this sort of result. Was it Holst who said that one should only write a piece of music if the strain of not writing it becomes unbearable? (The same applies, I strongly believe, to poetry).
