The demand for originality in the arts is a strange but understandable one. One suspects that before the Romantic era and its idea of the artist-as-hero there was much less demand for it. Expertise? Yes. Technical assurance? Certainly. Medicis or “Princes of the Church” were not interested in originality per se. Nor were the bourgeois patrons who succeeded them. All wanted works within established traditions which would flatter them or advance their projects. Certainly a German prince was happy to employ a musician or composer such as Mozart. They were happy, too, with the idea of a “prodigy” but they…