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:
At the risk of being the fool rushing in, for me the reach/depth of the Canon is very broad. One cannot survive on the symphonies of LvB alone. (The jury is still out on whether a diet of only Bach cantatas can sustain life.) For me, Telemann, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Richard Strauss, Mendelssohn, CPE Bach, Hummel, Liszt, Dvorak, Saint-Saens, Bruckner, Mahler, Handel, Haydn, Purcell, Prokofiev, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, all have a slice of the canon.
ReplyDeleteThe universe of my expanded canon is defined by music that I return to time and time again.
Perhaps by definition, this inclusive approach to what is canonical is antithetical. It probably means that I don't really put much stock in the conventional canon, although it is a good way to get an introduction to the world of classical music. I just wouldn't stop there. To quote Buzz Lightyear, let's go "to Infinity and beyond!"
Wait, Hummel!!?!! But kidding aside, this is how canon-formation works, I think. Just a bunch of people relying on their taste, which changes over time.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing in the post over at The New Neo I thought, was the works that used to be so revered that seem to have lost their zing.
This is probably one of those critical questions where one's answer depends on one's definition of the word 'canonical'. My standpoint tends to rest on the idea of what is being played most in concert halls. From what I see, most recognised symphony orchestras are (admirably) going down the road of providing a mixture of well-known 18-19th century pieces alongside unknown, 'modern' 20-21st century works. The real question for me is whether any post-World War II compositions will eventually be as popular as the 'behemoths' of the canonical repertoire. As an aside, popular consensus is increasingly outweighing the critical view, no doubt due to the fact that everyone's opinion is seemingly of equal value these days, which is not necessarily a good thing from a strictly critical standpoint. Indeed, the very word 'critic' seems to be a pejorative one in today's world.
ReplyDeleteSome have suggested there are two definitions of canon that are used, fairly indiscriminately. The one you propose, based on the frequency of public performances, and another one, based on critical evaluation. As you say, the latter is not highly respected these days! But still, in my idea of the canon, composers like Stravinsky, Bartok, Messiaen and Steve Reich are most certainly included. This isn't just my idiosyncratic evaluation, but I think it would be supported by the amount of critical commentary: monographs, analytical articles, conference papers and so on. But none of these composers appear anywhere on the Wikipedia list.
ReplyDeleteTaruskin used to say there was a gap between what he called the academic canon and the repertoire canon, between the music scholars and historians thought was worth talking about and the music that people would voluntarily part with their own money to go hear. That gap has probably gotten wide enough it won't close and probably has always existed anyway.
ReplyDeleteI think including guitar music in the canon, to put it in self guitaristic terms, would be a nice change. :) Surely guitarist composers have written enough after two centuries that a few things written for our instrument could be considered worth studying by the non-guitarist field of scholars by now but even Villa-Lobos' five preludes seemed to barely squeak in a mention in an academic book on the composer's work that was published in the 1970s.
I encountered the occasional prejudice against the guitar in my academic career. The librarians were very cooperative in ordering a wide variety of guitar repertoire to add to their holdings, but I was destined to be permanently condemned to the ghetto of sessional lecturer even though I typically had eight guitar students including a couple of performance majors. The oboe teacher, who had two students, was given a tenure track assistant professor position solely because she taught an orchestral instrument. I also gave numerous concerts both at the university and with orchestras as soloist, which she did not. But when I saw that the future plans for the music department did not include any permanent position for the guitar instructor, I decided to leave that university. Guitarists who manage to achieve a permanent position at a university are very rare, though somewhat less so over time.
ReplyDeleteYes, there is a lot of great repertoire for guitar by Villa-Lobos, Ponce, Rodrigo and others. The problem is it is still minuscule compared to the repertoire for piano, violin, cello and orchestra. There is also, we have to admit, a problem of quality. Fine as Ponce's Sonata Romantica is, it does not really compare with its models, the Schubert piano sonatas.
so if Schubert cribbed Matiegka's trio to make it a quartet then that's another reason I should put together a big set of posts for 2023 to commemorate the 250th of Matiegka's birth. ;)
ReplyDeleteBesides the body of music itself not being as big I suspect another problem over the last two centuries is that the instrument is barely more than two centuries old whereas the rest of "classical" music had a convergence of popular/academic canons being shaped just as guitarists playing the modern six-string were getting started. Mozart and Haydn and Bach and Beethoven had been functionally canonized by the 1820s, right? By then the big name guitarist composers had contributed a bit but two or more centuries behind isn't the best starting point in terms of longevity of rep to draw on.
But there is, I've been thinking, a third issue, which is that within the 19th century all the non-guitarist composers we have to study made formal, conceptual, theoretical innovations that became part of the canon. I agree with Matanya Ophee that guitarists should not have an inferiority complex about our instrument and its repertoire and he urged guitarists to step up their game and win respect from other performing musicians. I suspect, lately, another element is that guitarists composers or performers alike should be thinking through what theoretical/conceptual contributions we can make. Given how cringe-worthy most "fusion" attempts have often been from the pianist composer side of things maybe we guitarists will have better odds of thinking through how to restore a synergistic relationship between highbrow and lowbrow that may actually benefit from our comparative marginality in classical music (see, I'm trying to give as much benefit of a doubt to Gioia's thesis as I can despite disagreeing with it. ;) ).
Looking back at the history of the guitar and related instruments, the last time they were really on an equal footing with their keyboard cousins was in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The French courts had Robert de Visée who really had equal prestige to any other instrumentalist. Another example is Francesco Corbetta who had wide ranging success in the courts of Italy, Spain, Germany, England and France. The last example is probably Sylvius Leopold Weiss who was lutenist to the court of Saxony. But after him, the keyboard ruled supreme. When the modern guitar came on the scene with Tarrega in the late 19th century, it was very much on the fringes.
ReplyDeleteYes, I know I am glossing over a bunch of 19th century guitarists, but, apart from Fernando Sor, they were on the periphery of the music world.
ReplyDeleteInstead of Barber's Adagio I would have his opera Vanessa -- spectacular work! If Pachelbel has to be on the list, I remember quite enoying his fugues.
ReplyDeleteCanon lists always seem to be very light on everything from Perotin to Byrd, say, which for me ought to account for about half the list.
Saying all that, thanks in part to posts on this blog I have been disabused of the belief that I know what a musical canon is! I'm now veering towards the view that I don't find the idea of a canon useful. For one thing, it smells of trying to make music into a religion, which I instinctively distrust. I don't anymore see how you can divide works into canonical and, by implication, uncanonical. It's too impossibly contentious and, for me, more confusing than helpful. Maybe it's just not a category that belongs within music. Would something like 'Classics' be better?
Thanks, Steven, for a comment that might start to clear away some of the underbrush! The canon is probably just that group of pieces that seem to keep coming back every season as they are pieces that most listeners enjoy. The academic equivalent is the same definition, but for professional musicians, composers and musicologists. It is just what we like. There have been attempts to portray the canon as a celebration of white supremacy or as an imperialist conspiracy, but that is just ideological puffery.
ReplyDeleteIf that's all it is then the use of 'canon', which in most people's minds surely still suggests something essential and formal and reverential, seems to me inappropriate.
ReplyDeleteI've not read up on the history of the musical canon. But am I right in thinking that it really took hold in the 19th century? If so, then music managed very well without the idea for centuries, and it would raise the question why do we need it now.
For a thorough discussion of canon formation, have a look at volume 3 of the Oxford History of Western Music. Taruskin delves pretty deep into the how and why. I'm just trying to describe how it is working at present, for the history, read Taruskin. The whole idea of art as religion developed during the 19th century and it lingers still. For me, music has mysteries that are unfathomable, but I try to resist making it into a religion. The use of the formal, reverential view of the canon now is mainly, I think, to use it as a club to beat traditionalists with.
ReplyDeleteI will do that, thanks!
ReplyDelete