The Canon as a Dialogue

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:

Now that's a dialogue!