Music Chat: Can An Artist "Own" A Musical Masterpiece?

You've heard it said before: "X's performance of work Y is so amazing that they own it!" But what does this really mean? How does an artist come to be so strongly identified with a specific work, and how long does pride of "ownership" really last? In this chat, I discuss a dozen examples of this phenomenon to see just how much of it depends on the actual music, and now much is mere puffery and hot air.