Ravel commented that "if a composer has nothing to say, he would 'do well to repeat what has been well said.'" He added that if a composer does have something to say, it will emerge from his "unwilling infidelity to the model." In other words, "originality" in music (or any art) is like the fiction of memory that results when we attempt to construct an exact replica...
Quotes are taken from the research journals of Kyle Vanderburg.