Speaking of Composing in an Old Style...

I've been meaning to write variations on this theme since I was ten years old.  My previous post was about composing in old styles, and I think I've learned a tremendous amount about thinking intentionally from undertaking this exercise.  How can that be bad for any learning composer?

Composing in the Old Style

If I could paint or at least learn to paint I would want to learn every Medieval and Renaissance technique even though they involve very complex processes of layering and treating.  My wife is an artist, and she recently took a class that taught Renaissance painting techniques, and every time she would learn something new it was if an ancient secret had been revealed.  It was inspiring to see her walk in the footsteps of the great masters and learn their ways. 

This nudged my thinking toward music composition...  Since most of my composition classes were required or taken for fun I never found out if majoring composition students needed to write music in old styles.  How fun would it be to have a class of students writing a harpsichord concerto?  Or write choir works using early polyphony?  Maybe some schools require such exercises, but my school championed "new" music.  I would hear from many a professor how the great composers of old had mastered their genres, and we shouldn't bother trying to mimic them.  We could never possibly do as good a job, so we shouldn't even try.  It is better to carve out our own paths.

Every composer or creator wants to be original, but it seems so important to me to study the masters of old and walk where they walked.  "New" music has jutted in every direction to avoid the past, and it has run into Atonalism, Serialism, Indeterminism, Pointalism, the New Complexity, Sound Mass, Minimalism and a host of others that need to be justified through large thesis papers.  Many of these techniques are good and can be used in creative ways (though usually aren't), but mostly they are reactionary.  One composition student wrote in program notes for his piano piece, "I have cut out all trills, rolls, chords and voicing, because they are in the past and should remain there."  That is such a limiting thought.  My favorite styles of architecture involve old designs blended with new, so why can't we do the same in music?  I better be careful.  I think I just ran into Neo-Classicism.