And actually, I forgot something. I don’t hold those guys to the same standard because you’re forgetting something: media.
I wrote a piece when I was 14 or so, and later on I started wondering if I had stolen it. If I’d heard it at a chamber music festival, or something. But then again, I thought it might be some something I wrote before I knew you could write down music....like 3rd or 4th grade. Because even now, I still remember a few of those.
But everything else I can keep straight....because I have recordings. It’s just that one damn piece that makes me crazy because I don’t know who wrote it: me or someone else.
Back then, they might hear a piece once and then go 20 years with their own junk in their head and suddenly have that melody come to mind disguised as their own creation. If they didn’t remember hearing that piece, they wouldn’t know the difference.
It would happen to me all the time if I’d lived back then.
Mozart knew perfectly well that he was using Clementi’s theme in the overture to The Magic Flute. Clementi knew it too. Beethoven used the opening of the Mozart 25th symphony in his first piano sonata. It’s obvious and was intentional. It was standard back then.Serious music isn’t about the material but what you do with it.
As for Mozart not writing anything to keep your interest...what music from the second half of the 18th century do you find interesting? Usually people who say that don’t like Gluck or Haydn either (they don’t like the period).