I've said many times here that I think that the canon, whether we are referring to those pieces that are generally recognized as being "classic" or "core" or "mainstream" are those of the general public or of scholars and musicians, is always in a process of flux as some works and composers seem to diminish over times, while others become more widely recognized.
Over at The New Neo, she has a post up on Greatest Books in which she questions a lot of the choices made on another website. This is how it works on the individual level, so let me take a stab at it. Taking as a model, here is The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music according to Wikipedia. Just looking at the first few, it is obvious that this is the list corresponding to the tastes of the general public. I'm not sure where to find the scholarly equivalent as it is probably more spread around in various places. Who has the most coverage in the Oxford History would be a place to start. But let's just stick with the Wikipedia list for now.
Beethoven Symphony No. 5, certainly on everyone's list, though I don't listen to it much these days. Honestly, I would skip the next four: I don't listen much to Wagner or Grieg and I would listen to something else by Vivaldi. Barber Adagio, probably not. Chopin Nocturne? Sure, along with the Ballades and Scherzi. No to Pachelbel and Orff. Yes, to Bach of course, but the orchestral suites are not the most interesting works by him. The Mass in B Minor, the Passions and the Cantatas as well as the Well-Tempered Clavier is what I would put on my list. Holst is an interesting choice, and Debussy, of course, but La Mer and the Nocturnes as well as the Preludes for piano over the Suite bergamasque. Verdi? I'm moving in that direction, but I'm not there yet. Mozart, god yes, all the piano concertos, big thumbs up. More Bach, for sure. Massenet, Dvorak, Strauss, no. But I'm growing more and more fond of Brahms, but I prefer the symphonies, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn and the Ballades. Tchaikovsky and Satie, sure, but I don't listen to them very much. That takes us through the first twenty.
So now you guys want to weigh in?
For your listening enjoyment while you contemplate, here is Grigory Sokolov playing the Brahms Ballades, op. 10:
A while back I linked to an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the classics curriculum at Howard University. I don't want to return to the debate we had then, but instead take up one particular paragraph in the piece that makes an interesting point:
The Western canon is an extended dialogue among the crème de la crème of our civilization about the most fundamental questions. It is about asking “What kind of creatures are we?” no matter what context we find ourselves in. It is about living more intensely, more critically, more compassionately. It is about learning to attend to the things that matter and turning our attention away from what is superficial.
This is very much true of the musical canon in particular. Some obvious examples are how the Mozart string quartets are a response to the Haydn string quartets, so much so that the set of six quartets Mozart published in 1785 are simply known as the "Haydn Quartets" as they are not only inspired by him, but also dedicated to him. In turn, some of Beethoven's string quartets can be seen as emulating ones by Mozart. Indeed, the whole genre of the string quartet is like an extended dialogue over generations of composers right up to those by Bartók and Shostakovich.
Another very ethereal dialogue involves the variation form. J. S. Bach really threw out a challenge to the ages with his Goldberg Variations of 1741 consisting of an aria and thirty variations that have taken on an almost legendary status in the classical music world. Glenn Gould based his whole career on them and there is a notorious anecdote about them. Late in the 1920s pianist Rudolph Serkin (father of pianist Peter Serkin) gave a recital in Berlin. It went very well and he was called back for an encore. He chose to play the Goldberg Variations with all the repeats which easily takes an hour. After each variation some members of the audience trickled out so at the end when he finished there were only two listeners still in the hall: the great pianist Artur Schnabel and Albert Einstein.
Perhaps the most famous response to the Goldberg Variations are the Diabelli Variations by Beethoven in which he too attempts to simply exhaust the possibilities of not only the theme, but the form itself. I did a rather overgrown post on them here. Beethoven ups the ante a bit by writing thirty-three variations.
The variation form has not had the same extended genealogy that the string quartet has, but one interesting 20th century example that may continue the dialogue is the thirty-six variations on "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" by Frederic Rzewski (pronounced "Chefsky"). Igor Levit released a three CD box with the Bach, the Beethoven and the Rzewski all together so we can hear the resonances. Perhaps some young composer will write forty variations in response.
The idea that some art is a direct response to much older art, and is enriched by it, is a long-standing truth. One more example? James Joyce's Ulysses is a response to Homer's Odysseus.
In the world of science the latest research may trump all older knowledge (but does it really?), but this is emphatically not true in the world of art.
Here are the three sets of variations. First the Goldberg Variations recorded by Trevor Pinnock (not in one clip, but it should continue if you have autoplay on):
Next, the Diabelli Variations performed by Grigory Sokolov.
Finally, The People United Will Never Be Defeated played by the composer:
MOST BOOKSTORES have a section marked “classic literature” and another, much larger one where the “fiction” is shelved. What’s the difference? A classic work of literature is an accepted archetype of the genre, a book that has withstood the test of time and taste, while fiction is…everything else. I’d define a classic wine in much the same way: an archetype and an ideal.
No matter how hard we try to get away from the concepts of "classic" and the related one of a "canon,"* they are indispensable ideas if you admit the idea of quality at all. Classic wines, like a Chablis with its fresh minerality and unoaked fruit or a Champagne with its elegance and balance, are wines that have stood the test of time, that are a kind of archetype. In a somewhat related context, Matthew Arnold wrote that “Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world."
Often the "best," the most characteristic, Chablis that tastes like Chablis ought to taste, is a regional concept. A classic Chablis is totally different, and should be, from a classic Barolo. Or, switching to music (as you knew we would!) a classic symphony would be one by Mozart (a classical era composer) whereas we would call a symphony by Mahler a classic example of a Romantic symphony. Different eras, different characteristics.
It is interesting that the whole post-modern project of demeaning and dismissing the whole idea of classic and indeed, quality, is also associated with the idea of doing away with genre, i.e. regional characteristics. The music of Billie Eilish, for example, is described as "genre-bending." Any time a new artist comes along, like Lil Nas X, his music is "genre-defying." You see, if you want to get rid of all the traditional concepts of quality like "classic" and "canon" then you also want to get rid of the idea of genre. Because if there is such a thing as genre, an artist can be criticized for failing to deliver a good example of the genre. If Mozart were a lesser composer he might have written a poor minuet qua minuet. But if we are bending and defying genres, then the critic has no ground to stand on.
Isn't that convenient?
In fact, if what you want to do is remove all possibility of criticism so you can foist pretty much anything on an unsuspecting public, then removing possible grounds for criticism is an excellent tactic. Notice how remarkably feeble criticism is these days. When a new movie comes out that no-one wants to see, the main criticism is that no-one went to it. Then, as in the case of Cats, critics can lambaste it for all sorts of failings. But genuine criticism, such as came from Martin Scorsese recently, is so rare that it is front page news.
The concept of classic involves being true to a regional characteristic. The terroir in the case of French wine, or the varietal in the case of most wines outside France. In the case of music, the genre of "symphony" even in the 21st century, has certain fundamental characteristics. A symphony by Haydn, Mahler, Shostakovich or even Stravinsky, shares some basic aesthetic goals.
Can the post-modern project do away with all this? Yes, of course, but it will severely compromise all non-commercial art forms because it takes away the fundamental ways to understand and appreciate art and replaces them with nothing more than political correctness.
*Isn't it cool to have a footnote in a blog post? A "canon" is simply a list of the most classic examples of a given art form or genre. The canon of classical music includes pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and so on. The canon of great poetry includes poems by Homer, Shakespeare, Dante and so on. There are canons with a narrower scope such as "great lieder" or "20th century symphonies." There is always, lurking in the background, the idea of greatest or best. The classical canon does not include mediocre examples. The tactic of the post-modern progressives is to say that all categorization of art works by quality excludes oppressed minorities because of racism or sexism or some other bigotry. This strategy has proven somewhat less successful with music than it has with literature. While we are striving to have more contemporary women composers and conductors, for example, there seems to be no real possibility of "canceling" Mozart and Beethoven in favor of Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn.
Talk about overwhelming whiteness! I guess a lot of present-day academics would be severely triggered, but so much the worst for them. Now what about music? What would be the ten books on music everyone should read. Ok, let me take a stab at it:
I'm looking for books that are detailed and informative without being excessively technical and obscure--ones that the general reader with some musical knowledge would find interesting and stimulating. I also lean towards those few authors who combine both excellent writing skills and profound knowledge of their subject. There are lots of other possibilities: I was tempted to include biographies of Bach and Shostakovich and some collections of essays on Sibelius and Shostakovich. There are also several collections of essays by Taruskin that are well worth reading. But these ten books are the ones that I have, in recent years, found the most valuable.
For our envoi, let's have the Sonata in A major, op. 110 by Beethoven performed by Hélène Grimaud:
One of the very best things about this blog is the commentariat who always make valuable contributions. The comments on the canonic posts are an excellent example, so this will constitute an addendum of works that I should have mentioned in both my posts on 20th century orchestral music.
To the pieces listed as forming part of the canon of orchestral music in the first half of the century should be added a couple of pieces by Benjamin Britten that I forgot (and included in a later post), the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra and the Sea Interludes, adapted from the opera Peter Grimes. I have been convinced that some pieces by Leonard Bernstein, the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and the Prelude, Fugue and Riffs should be included. And by George Gershwin, the Rhapsody in Blue, Piano Concerto and An American in Paris.
As expected, there was a lot more discussion about the second half of the century as it is just a bit too close to us to have much perspective. Here are pieces and composers I just plain missed:
James Mcmillan (I don't have any pieces to suggest yet, but a number of comments have convinced me that I need to get to know his music)
Arvo Pärt --I don't know how I missed him! Here are some memorable and canonic works of his: Tabula Rasa, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten and the string orchestra version of Fratres
Krzysztof Penderecki: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima and his later work Polish Requiem
John Adams: Shaker Loops
Einojuhani Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7
Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel
There were more suggestions and more composers, but these ones I was particularly convinced by. This is all guesswork, of course. A hundred years from now maybe everyone will be listening to Harry Partch and Conlon Nancarrow!
For our envoi, a few clips. First Gershwin's An American in Paris:
The first half of the 20th century was surprisingly easy, but the second half won't be and I expect a lot of disputatious comments whatever I choose. The reason is that the closer you get to the present day, the foggier the picture is. I think that a hundred years is needed to really see what stands out from the crowd with any certainty. By 2100 will it be generally acknowledged that Harry Partch is the great American composer of the second half of the 20th century, or will it be Steve Reich? Will Karlheinz Stockhausen be forgotten or widely loved? I don't think anyone knows for sure at this point, but I have some opinions. So here we go. Bear in mind this is just orchestral music after 1950.
Let's start with France as I find it helps to look at specific traditions in sorting out who's who. Olivier Messiaen is an obvious choice. He made the pre-1950 list with his Turangalîla-Symphonie, one of the most striking pieces of orchestral music of the era, but there are some good candidates from after 1950 as well. Messiaen lived until 1992 and was very productive. I think I would pick out two pieces, Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (1964) for wind, brass and percussion and Des Canyons aux étoiles for piano, horn, glockenspiel, xylorimba and small orchestra (1974). Another composer very active in the second half of the century was Henri Dutilleux, a lapidary composer who wrote a select few outstanding pieces. Among them, perhaps the most memorable are two concertos: one for cello, written for Mstislav Rostropovich titled Tout un monde lointain (1970) and one for violin, written for Isaac Stern, titled L'arbre des songes (1985).
German composition post-war was very different from before simply because of the desolation of war and the departure or loss of Jewish musicians. The sense was that everything had to begin anew, a blank slate as it were. Composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen found themselves in the class of Messiaen at Darmstadt. In the 1950s and into the 60s, there grew up a "Darmstadt School" of composition that included, apart from Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Bruno Madera, Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio, Mauricio Kagel and others. Characteristically, their music was avant-garde, experimental, and, at least in my opinion, hasn't aged well. I think that if we regard "canonic" works as ones that have a special aesthetic appeal to audiences, then hardly any of this music has become part of the canon. That phrase "hardly any" is rather weaselly! So let's have a look: are there any possible candidates? Two that come to mind are Gesange der Jünglinge by Stockhausen, an early electronic piece, and the Sinfonia by Berio. I think that my readers should weigh in on this. Do you think they have achieved canonicity?
Let me know in the comments.
More and more, as the century progressed, we see composers from outside central Europe, not just Russia and North America, but Poland, Greece, Great Britain and Japan. Shostakovich wrote some wonderful symphonies post-war of which I think that the Symphony No. 10 (1953, but possibly completed earlier) is perhaps the most-enjoyed (that is the basic measure of canonicity). There is one enormously popular symphony by the Polish composer Henryk Górecki, the Symphony No. 3 the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" of 1976 that even crossed over to the pop charts in Europe. British composers became more and more prominent after the war, particularly Benjamin Britten, though his strengths are perhaps greatest in opera and vocal music. Still, his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra and the Sea Interludes, adapted from the opera Peter Grimes, would likely qualify. Unfortunately, due to my oversight, they should have been included in the first part as they were composed before 1950! Sorry, Britten fans.
After all the experimentation in the 50s and 60s, a new kind of approach arose in the 1970s with the so-called "minimal" composers whose music, though featuring a steady pulse and lots of repetition, was hardly minimal. The two names to note are Philip Glass and Steve Reich and I think that there are likely canonical works from both of them. But we have to bend the category a bit: they both tend to write music for unusual ensembles that are somewhere between what we usually think of as chamber music and orchestral music. An example, and I think a piece that is sure to be in the canon, is Steve Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians:
Philip Glass, on the other hand, has written quite a bit for conventional orchestra and the Symphony No. 3 from 1995 is a good candidate for the canon:
Going even further afield, the first composer from Japan to have real recognition in the West was Toru Takemitsu and he might have a bid for canonicity with the piece November Steps for biwa, shakuhachi and orchestra from 1967:
From here on, the number of composers multiplies enormously and the difficulty of sorting out the exceptional pieces becomes harder and harder. For one thing, there are so very many works--and even composers--that I simply have not heard. Here is where my astute and knowledgeable commentators will undoubtedly make a contribution. What have you heard that you think will make the cut?
I took a 20th century music history course as an undergraduate, which means that it was a long time ago. I remember the professor complaining that he had been teaching the course for years and years and every year it got harder, because the century was longer. Heh! That was in 1975. Well now the century is complete and those great revolutionary works of the early part have already had their centenaries: pieces like the Rite of Spring (1913) by Stravinsky and the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune of Debussy ... oops! That was written and premiered in 1894 so not even 20th century. But we, or at least I, think of Debussy as being an inherently 20th century composer even though he was only one, strictly speaking, for the last 18 years of his life (1862 - 1918). Just sticking to pieces composed in the 20th century by Debussy, we could pick instead La Mer, completed in 1905.
But if we do stick to the 20th century, then the later music of Mahler also qualifies. Part of the 20th century canon should include the symphonies from No. 5 on as well as Das Lied von der Erde.
All of these are orchestral pieces (sometimes with voices), so let's stick with works for orchestra and do chamber music, solo music (largely for piano) and opera in separate posts. Another piece by Stravinsky that fits is the Symphony of Psalms from 1930, one of those brilliant commissions by the Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony. Another one was the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen, completed in 1948, also for the Boston Symphony.
Great German orchestral works might include the Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg and the Violin Concerto by Alban Berg. A lot of their most important works are chamber or vocal music, so not included here.
The 20th century saw the growing importance of composers from outside the core nations of Italy, France and Germany, who had dominated music for so many centuries. Foremost among these are Bela Bartók whose Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) is one of the loveliest in the first half of the century. Another great piece from that decade is Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, written in 1937. While we are visiting Russia, we could include Prokofiev's Classical Symphony (1917) and Piano Concerto No. 2 (1923).
While we are talking about piano concertos, there were some great ones written in the 20th century such as the three by Bartók (all good, but let's pick the Piano Concerto No. 3 from 1945).
Also part of the 20th century canon would be some music by Charles Ives. I would pick the Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1) from 1914 rather than one of his symphonies.
You might have noticed that all these works are from the first half of the century. I will do the second half in another post. That will be the really difficult one because there is so much to sift through and the really important pieces have probably not all surfaced yet. It really takes about a hundred years for what is essential to become clear. Semi-clear, at least!
Ok that's a rough try at a list of the core canonic pieces of 20th century orchestral music up to 1950. Now, as is traditional on the internet, you can all weigh in in the comments and tell me about all the ones I missed. Of course, some of those were intentional.
Let me muse for a moment on how I approached this. It was largely intuitive: I did not pore through long lists of 20th century works and then hone it down. Instead I just thought about what orchestral pieces from the first half of the century really stick in your mind--which ones are really essential. I'm sure I missed some important ones, so here is your chance to remind me.
Just picking a couple from the list for our envoi today, here are first, Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. This is from the Deutsche Grammophon box of Boulez conducting Bartók:
And next, Charles Ives' Three Places in New England. This is the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Nicholas Collon:
UPDATE: A frequent commentator helps me out by mentioning Sibelius. I'm pretty sure I was thinking of him but got distracted somehow. But yes, some of the finest orchestral works of the first half of the 20th century are the symphonies of Jean Sibelius. The Symphony No. 2 was written in 1902, so everything from then on qualifies and I would include all of them. I have never been as fond of the tone poems like Finlandia and Tapiola, but that might just be me. This reminds me of another omission: the tone poems of Richard Strauss of which we might want to include Also sprach Zarathustra.
Every other essay you read about the current state of classical music seems to take a swipe at the "Canon". This is defined as the ossified accretion of pieces of classical music by Dead White Guys that orchestras, ensembles and recitalists keep playing despite its elitist lack of diversity. It is as if these much-beloved pieces of classical music are no better than barnacles clinging to the concert hall stage--best if they were scraped off so we can spend more time listening to, well, what? Ah, more compositions by everyone who isn't a Dead White Guy.
I have a different view of the canon. As far as I can see it consists of pieces that have an aesthetic quality that appeals to the listener. There are actually quite a few different "canons" if by that we simply mean lists of pieces that people like to hear. The audience for the Canon by Pachelbel is rather different from the audience for the Hammerklavier Sonata by Beethoven which is different again from the audience for the lute songs of John Dowland and different again from the audience for the music of John Cage. But each of these works is part of a different canon. We might label them as Mainstream Classical, Serious Listener Classical, Early Music Classical and Avant-Garde Classical respectively.
What I'm wondering is if my readers would be interesting in doing an exploration with me of these different kinds of canons? I think they are always in a state of flux and it might be nice to check in and see what the content is at the moment. For example, from our perspective, what would be included in the canon of 20th Century Masterpieces? Is Paul Hindemith still on the list? Where would Henri Dutilleux fall these days? How about John Cage?
But while there is certainly a lot of debate about the 20th century, we might be able to find some controversy even in earlier times. Just how good is the music of Henrich Biber? C. P. E. Bach? This would be a great opportunity for my readers to make suggestions both about different eras and canons and to start some arguments for and against different composers. The reward for this is the potential discovery of some wonderful music we weren't aware of (and maybe some wonderful performers as well).
So leave me a comment! Perhaps we can all distract ourselves from the US election campaign and other horrifying world events!
To whet your appetite, here are some of the those lute songs by John Dowland. These are five songs recorded at Wigmore Hall, London in July 2013 by Iestyn Davies, countertenor and Thomas Dunford, lute:
Classical music is often accused of being a "museum culture" that is, a dusty, obsolete form of music that belongs in a museum. It is even accused of having created its own stilted musical museum by means of the institution of the musical canon, or corpus of works that provide the content of most concert programs.
But is this even a bad thing? In a lengthy and thoughtful article in Commentary Magazine titled "How Art Became Irrelevant" by Michael J. Lewis, he writes:
If one compares the performance of museums to other entertainment facilities in the United States in terms of box office, the museums come off splendidly. According to the American Association of Museums, annual attendance hovers at about 700 or 800 million, and it did not even suffer declines during the recession of 2008. These figures far exceed the combined attendance at major-league sporting events and amusement parks. This is not by accident, for museums have been assiduously cultivating their attendance for quite some time. The process began with the “Treasures of Tutankhamen” exhibition that opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1978 and drew a record 1.8 million visitors. Startled museum trustees, previously accustomed to covering the annual deficit with a discreet check, took notice of the lines stretching around the block. The temptation proved irresistible, and the culture of the museum reoriented itself toward the regular production of a reliable blockbuster.
By any measure, there is hardly an institution in the Western world so healthy as the museum today. By any measure—there’s the rub. For some things cannot be measured but are important nevertheless.
Wow. Annual attendance greater than sports? This reveals a side of contemporary culture that is scarcely reflected in the mass media. Doesn't this show an interest in artworks, many of which are ancient and traditional ("classical" if by that we mean art from times before modernism and post-modernism came to be) far greater than is usually thought to be the case? Now sure, the museums have fallen prey to the lure of the fashionable and not above doing exhibits devoted to the motorcycle or Björk, but still, most of what they display is actual art, leavened with some exhibits of pop culture and the avant-garde. But they have made a great success of it. According to the article, the grandiose Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, recouped the cost of its construction in a mere three years.
So why are symphony orchestras constantly criticized for doing much the same thing: presenting a traditional canon of masterworks, leavened with the occasional pops concert and some avant-garde. Why is it their budgets are always in arrears while the museums are raking it in?
As I see it, one of the great strengths of classical music is that it is, in part, a museum culture: a canon of the great masterworks from the last five hundred years or so of Western culture, leavened with some semi-popular works like West Side Story and film scores and with more contemporary music from Stravinsky to John Luther Adams. This should be as big a winner as the art museums. But instead, classical music culture is either ignored entirely (as seen by the way it is handled by the music streaming services) or criticized unmercifully for being sexist, racist, or just irrelevant.
The article I cited is mostly about how art has lost its way and become irrelevant to the general populace:
Without a sincere concept of the meaning of civilization, one cannot explain why a masterpiece of Egyptian New Kingdom art counts for more than a creation of 1960s industrial design (other than in dollar value). If one cannot do even that, it is hard to see how one might set out to make serious and lasting art. To make such art—art that refracts the world back to people in some meaningful way, and that illuminates human nature with sympathy and insight—it is not necessary to be a religious believer. Michelangelo certainly was; Leonardo da Vinci certainly was not. But it is necessary to have some sort of larger system of belief, a larger structure of continuity that permits works of art to speak across time. Without such a belief system, all that one can hope for is short-term gain, in the coin of celebrity or notoriety, if not actual coins.
This "sincere concept" that he mentions is what I call "aesthetics" and what I have been trying to revive in this blog. The "larger structure of continuity" in culture and the arts is what we go to a museum to experience. We look at fine art from the ancient Egyptians up to Picasso and beyond and, if we are thoughtful, we start to notice some aesthetic continuities. What has this process arrested is the century-long project of modernism to banish this kind of thinking entirely. As Lewis puts it, we are not being given any help by scholars and critics because:
For a generation they had been schooled by those French 20th-century intellectuals Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida who said that art and literature were best understood as expressions of a structure of power. Better to eliminate altogether the word art, which evokes unhappy images of dominant cultures expressing their hegemony, in favor of the aesthetically neutral term visual culture, which makes no judgments about merit but merely looks at the purposes for which one makes works of art—or, in their terms, “objects of visual interest.”
So my policy is to pay no attention to this kind of approach. Its intent and effect, I am quite sure, is to de-legitimize Western civilization and put nothing in its place but a kind of soulless uniformity. So I feel no qualms about saying away with all that. Similarly, about thirty years ago, I decided to attack the problem of creeping neurosis by rejecting modern psychology. Even notice how if you read books about neurosis, they always make you neurotic? Solution, don't read books about neurosis. I ended up rejecting all modern psychology since Freud and I haven't been happier!
Similarly, rejecting the whole modernist ideology, as exemplified in the works of Foucault and Derrida will have nothing but positive beneficial effects and enable us to recapture some of that "larger structure of continuity that permits works of art of speak across time." They do, you know. Just look at the example of the first great poems ever written, the epics Odyssey and Iliad by Homer, still widely read today.
Classical music does not have quite that pedigree, largely because the Greeks did not have a good musical notation, but we do have a thousand year corpus of great, truly great, musical art. Here is a magnificent Magnificat by Alexander Agricola (1446 - 1506), whose music stylistically lies between that of Ockeghem and Josquin:
A couple of years ago Linda Holmes had an interesting essay on NPR titled "The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything." Well, sure. Right at this very moment I am missing all manner of concerts, recitals, performances, shindigs and hootenannies. Here is the core of Linda's argument:
You used to have a limited number of reasonably practical choices
presented to you, based on what bookstores carried, what your local
newspaper reviewed, or what you heard on the radio, or what was taught
in college by a particular English department. There was a huge
amount of selection that took place above the consumer level. (And
here, I don't mean "consumer" in the crass sense of consumerism, but in
the sense of one who devours, as you do a book or a film you love.)
Now,
everything gets dropped into our laps, and there are really only two
responses if you want to feel like you're well-read, or well-versed in
music, or whatever the case may be: culling and surrender.
Culling
is the choosing you do for yourself. It's the sorting of what's worth
your time and what's not worth your time. It's saying, "I deem Keeping Up With The Kardashians
a poor use of my time, and therefore, I choose not to watch it." It's
saying, "I read the last Jonathan Franzen book and fell asleep six
times, so I'm not going to read this one."
Surrender, on the
other hand, is the realization that you do not have time for everything
that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time, and
that this fact doesn't have to threaten your sense that you are
well-read. Surrender is the moment when you say, "I bet every single one
of those 1,000 books I'm supposed to read before I die is very, very
good, but I cannot read them all, and they will have to go on the list
of things I didn't get to."
She doesn't like the idea of culling and prefers the idea of surrender. Frankly, the distinction appears incoherent to me. It is as if she has absorbed the idea that "canons" are bad, but why exactly is unclear. I don't want to blurt out that 90% of everything is crap, a principle credited to L. Sprague de Camp, but it is certainly the case that not everything is equally worth our attention. For some reason she wants to avoid this simple idea. Long, long ago I came to the realization that if there were eight films playing at the multiplex and I saw one that was really terrific, I would be happier seeing it a couple more times than going to see all the others.
It's the same in music. Do I need to listen to the complete oeuvre of Blue Cheer, one of the early heavy metal bands from the 60s?
Mercifully, no. Do I really need to be familiar with Australian new age relaxation music?
Thank goodness, no! But why not? The plain truth is that there is nothing in Blue Cheer that is not better conceived and executed in many other bands. And the same for the Aussie new age stuff. This is really very generic. The opposite of generic is something that is brilliantly imagined and put together. Something that really captivates and remains fresh for a very long time. Something that is individual, unique.
Even eliminating, or 'culling' all the dreary stuff still leaves us with an enormous amount to listen to. But we can stop torturing ourselves that we are missing "almost everything." Most of "everything" you would be better off missing! I was talking to a player in a fine string quartet a while back and she admitted to me that she would be perfectly happy playing nothing but Beethoven quartets. Well, yeah! There is no other composer for string quartet who quite dominates the form the way Beethoven does. And conversely, if you are not familiar with the Beethoven string quartets, you really know very little about the string quartet repertoire.
Here is the Budapest String Quartet playing the late quartet in E flat, by Beethoven, op 127:
I'm avoiding calling the 19th century the age of Romanticism because it is so misleading. The term 'romantic' is a complex one that can refer to an immense span of things: everything from a particular kind of dinner to a variety of philosophical idealism, to a kind of musical harmony and orchestration, to various literary genres and so on. Romanticism in music is a term that has seen considerable re-evaluation. Richard Taruskin's monumental history of Western music avoids it as a title of a volume, using instead the neutral "Music in the Nineteenth Century". One reason is that there were a host of different currents in the 19th century including romanticism, realism, verismo, nationalism and on and on. The century saw the growth of an immense group of middle-class consumers of music that attended concerts, bought pianos and other instruments, purchased sheet music and in so doing caused the development of many of the musical institutions that still exist today. These include the development of the discipline of musicology, subscription concert series, large concert halls, concert tours, arts management, and professional orchestras in every city. The practice of classical music also spread into territories it had scarcely touched previously such as Russia, the United States, Canada and many other countries that had been on the periphery.
One of the most important and long-lasting consequences of the events of the 19th century was the very creation of that particular body of music we now call "classical" music. The 19th century was when what we now see as the 'standard repertoire' was assembled and, ironically, one of the causes was commercialism. Without the growth of a newly prosperous urban population the great concert halls and professional orchestral concert series would not have been built and developed. This may be hard to believe, but at the beginning of the 19th century there were only two public concert halls in Europe (as opposed to opera houses, which have a longer history): the Hanover Square Rooms in London and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Vienna, the residence of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and later, Brahms, did not have a hall for orchestral concerts until the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde built one in 1831, after the death of Beethoven and Schubert! This was followed by the construction of concert halls in most European cities offering subscription concert series.
Thus, odd though it might seem, the 'standard repertoire' of orchestral works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven augmented by those of Bach, Schubert and others, was a response to demand from a public hungry for music. It was not the creation of a government bureaucracy or a group of elite taste-makers. Though let me hasten to add that the elite taste-makers, in the form of newspaper critics, conservatory professors and professional musicians and composers, were a guiding element in the formation of the repertoire. But they too were responding to a public hungry for music.
Here is another surprising fact: around 1800, approximately 80% of the music performed in Vienna, Leipzig, Paris and London, was by living composers. By the later part of the century, around 1870, 80% of the music performed was by dead composers! The standard repertoire had truly been formed and the concert hall become a kind of museum. Imagine the consequences for living composers! In order to guarantee the quality of music presented to the public, the promoters demanded music that had stood the test of time, that was 'finished', that was not experimental. And this is the world that we still live in today!
My thanks to Richard Taruskin for assembling and making so much sense of the reams of data we have from the 19th century. And now a piece from this standard orchestral repertoire to whet your appetite for the next post on 19th century music. Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the "Unfinished":
I had some thoughts sparked by my starting to look at the aesthetics underlying Rolling Stone Magazine's list of greatest albums. Canonization is a metaphorical extension of the religious concept to culture and ends up with a list of the greatest figures or works in art and culture. How does canonization happen in the pop world? I have a pretty good idea of how it works in the classical world. But first, let me mention that the idea of canonization is much criticized in musicological circles. Here is an example. There is an ongoing discussion critiquing the enshrining of male composers and the apparent neglect of female composers. It seems as if there is still the acceptance of the notion of absolute quality in music, just disagreement as to where this quality is found. In the classical world, canonization is the slow recognition over time of the quality of a particular work or the work of a particular composer. The case of J. S. Bach is typical. While admired during his lifetime, he was hardly the most famous or most performed composer. Over much of the 19th century his music slowly came to the fore as it won more and more admirers among other composers such as Mendelssohn, among performers and among audiences. Now, as witnessed by the very recent attempt to come up with the ten greatest composers by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times, we see Bach's name at the top of the list. So the frequent objection to a cultural canon, that of asking who exactly has the authority to decide such matters, turns out to be a weak criticism as the decision is a collective one, made over several generations. The canon is also, like scientific theories, constantly subject to revision. Composers may rise and fall. For my money Dmitri Shostakovich is very likely to push either Brahms or Bartok off Tommasini's list over the next couple of decades.
But how the heck does the canon become established in pop music? The awarding of prizes and certificates by institutions, such as the Grammy awards, is fraught with influence and non-aesthetic criteria. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seems to have a bit wider vision, however there are questions about the nomination process which is apparently controlled by a few individuals not themselves musicians. Some of the traditional mechanisms found in the classical world, such as the selection of particular works for performance by orchestras, chamber groups and soloists, seem almost irrelevant in the pop music world. The 'work' itself is the original recording and not a score that others perform. There are instances of musical groups performing a whole album that is considered 'classic', but in the larger scheme of things, these are not very significant. Some songs become canonical by being covered by numerous other artists, such as "Yesterday" which has had reportedly over 2,500 cover versions. Others, like some of the songs of early blues musician Robert Johnson, have had fewer, but more influential covers. The case of Robert Johnson is more analogous to the posthumous career of a classical composer.
We may be forced to look at record sales over long periods of time to get a sense of the importance of a particular popular musical group. If we look at the Wikipedia page on best-selling music artists we find tied at the top of the list the Beatles and Elvis Presley with perhaps a billion sales each. Since these numbers were racked up over a fifty to sixty year period that indeed tells us something. But not necessarily! The late quartets of Beethoven, now recognized to be some of the greatest music ever written, saw very few performances over the first hundred years of their existence. For example, one scholar has collected evidence that in the twenty-five years after Beethoven's death, his home town Vienna--a great musical center--only saw a total of seven performances of any of the late quartets. The Great Fugue was only performed fourteen times in all of Europe in the fifty years after his death. So record sales, analogous to performances, may only obscure the relative quality of musical artists in the pop world.
Now I don't have any answers to these questions except the bromide: only time will tell! But I thought it was worthwhile just musing about it. Let's end with a selection from #27 on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest albums of all time:
UPDATE: I seem to have left out any mention of the influence of historians and theorists on canon formation. I actually pay a fair amount of attention to them. For example, one indicator of the importance of the Beatles is the attention paid to them by music theorists. Walter Everett took two volumes to cover all the songs of the Beatles and, except for a predilection to Shenkerian analysis, they are very well done. The sheer number and quality of books on the Beatles is itself a strong indicator of their importance. As for historians, ones that specialize in popular music are still relatively few and the enormous growth in pop music in the last 50 years has yet to be fully understood.
