As to your question about stylistic appropriation, I find it a very challenging question to answer because it is not a black-and-white situation. I agree with Sarah’s comment, but want to add the caveat that we must draw the line of legitimacy when the composer’s individual voice become lost within the context of the borrowed style. There are many American composers who, in my opinion, succeed brilliantly at stylistic appropriation – Ives, Bolcom, Rzewski, to name a couple – because the references they employ are clear, but their music retains the compoer’s personal identity. I feel other composers – George Rochberg after String Quartet no. 3, Kevin Puts, some John Zorn and Alfred Schnittke, and many young composers (including myself, at times) – invest so much in the style they choose to explore that it is hard to tell how much of themselves is present in the music, if any. I am not condemning these composer’s stylistic predilections, just noting that I think they can get too caught up in imitating a frequently anachronistic style and fail to communicate their individual artistry much beyond the tropes required to make their desired allusions. Remember, many common practice composers appropriated foreign styles, but the masters always retained their identities regardless of how far they ventured.

In my opinion, stylistic appropriation is one of the most pressing and confusing issues in our art. It is also controversial and personal, so I appreciate this posts’ potential to breed a healthy and illustrative discussion on this topic.