# Discussion of the 'canon' of music?



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

In classical music, as in other arts, there is a canon of music that is put on a pedestal as ultimate examples of a certain musical genre, for instance.

In Wikipedia, the canon in general is described as:

The Western canon is a term used to denote a canon of books, and, more widely, music and art, that has been the most influential in shaping Western culture. It asserts a compendium of the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the development of "high culture." Although previously held in high regard, it has been the subject of increasing contention through the latter half of the 20th century. In practice, debates and attempts to actually define the Canon in lists are essentially restricted to books of various sorts: Literature, including Poetry, Fiction and Drama, autobiographical writings and Letters, Philosophy and History. A few accessible books on the Sciences are usually included.

There is a list of the canon of great literature here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books

*So how wide should the 'canon' in classical music be?* Should it not only include symphonies, concertos, ballets & operas but also operettas, film & incidental music, for example. Does this distinction matter? I mean, composers like Alfred Schnittke & Astor Piazzolla, for example, incorporated much popular-type music into their compositions. Some composers like that combined both high and low artforms quite well.

I myself have quite a radical view of this. To me, a shorter piece by Varese such as _Hyperprism_ or _Ionisation_, for example, can be just as great as a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera, and perhaps even more pertinent to life today. So, basically, I think that the 'canon,' if it ever existed, needs redefinition.


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## nickgray (Sep 28, 2008)

Personally I'm against drawing a strict line between "canon" and "non-canon". There should be a big gray area left open for interpretation by anyone, not just by some smartass people who write books about this stuff.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Andre said:


> *So how wide should the 'canon' in classical music be?* Should it not only include symphonies, concertos, ballets & operas but also operettas, film & incidental music, for example. Does this distinction matter? I mean, composers like Alfred Schnittke & Astor Piazzolla, for example, incorporated much popular-type music into their compositions. Some composers like that combined both high and low artforms quite well.
> 
> I myself have quite a radical view of this. To me, a shorter piece by Varese such as _Hyperprism_ or _Ionisation_, for example, can be just as great as a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera, and perhaps even more pertinent to life today. So, basically, I think that the 'canon,' if it ever existed, needs redefinition.


I no longer make the distinction between "high" and "low" art. The genres are not good or bad in and of themselves. There are only good and bad examples within the genres. I fully believe that in 200 years when all the pop divas and lip synch boy bands are long forgotten, there will be a handful lesser marketed pop or rock (or whatever it's called now) musicians from our time that will be as recognized for their genius as Beethoven is today. Frank Zappa may be one of them and he was heavily Varese influenced.

My reaction to Varese is unfortunate however. The general listening public is exposed to this type of music daily and may not realize it. Music that is rather atonal or with no clear cut hummable melody has been used for decades in movies and TV shows, especially where action scenes are occurring. So when I hear Varese or other contemporary composers, I feel I am hearing cheesy action music from an old TV show. Since TV usually sends me running out of the room, that cheapens and excludes these pieces from my personal canon. I wonder if the same thing happens subconsciously with the more scholarly types.

I guess what I am trying to say is, we may need more distance in time from contemporary works to see their true relevance.


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## Wernmeister (May 16, 2009)

Andre, you have some strong points of pointing out that other music, whether it be genre related or style related can/could also be included into what we call "the musical canon" and nickgray, I agree with you that this should most definitely be treated as a gray area in the music academy today. Actually, alot of articles and information exists on the purpose of having a canon but I would rather go with having no canon at all for it implies that certain music have the right to be called autonomous music. The canon came into effect because of certain events in music history that ritualized music and the way it is performed. Thus music that were repeated over and over again in concert halls from as early as the Romantic period also contributed towards what we call the "genius" in music.

As you may know, Beethoven was considered to be "genius" because of the music he wrote but Bach rarely achieved this status though Bach was also the master of several new styles and changes within music. The thing is that music was not intended to be repeated over and over again in the great composer's times for it was simply seen as another way of life or part of the specific nation's culture. There were rarely ever money to stand still and re-listen to a composed piece.

Thus I see this term as a by-product of the modernistic society to wrongfully create a hierarchy in classical music (and many other musical genres), one that was not intended to be implied onto music.


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## LvB (Nov 21, 2008)

As Andre suggests, there's an ambiguity the term 'canon' which must be kept in mind when discussing it. On the one hand there is the list of works considered, at a given time, to be canonical; on the other hand there is the underlying purpose of having a canon in the first place. The second meaning of canon refers to a structure of examples for future creators; in effect, it says something like 'this is what is possible, these are the creative challenges you face, and these are the works against which yours will be measured. It serves as an aid to listeners (or viewers, or whatever, but I will just use musical examples here), to teachers, and to creators, a way of indicating that you will be least likely to waste your time exploring these pieces, because they have stood the test of time and different perspectives.

From this it will be clear that the 'canon' is always mostly retrospective, and that it must therefore be subject to change, because the best contemporary creators are always going to be ahead of the canonical understanding. This is where arguments about the significance of our contemporaries draw their energy and heat; each one of us, intentionally or not, has a canon of musical practices against which we measure other works. The more thoughtful our canon is, the broader its scope will be, but it is not possible for anyone now writing to be certain which works/composers will live and which will fade. In 1860 the top names on the operatic canon would have included Giacomo Meyerbeer (of whom Heinrich Heine said that his mother was the second woman in history to see her son accepted as divine). Now he is seen, probably correctly, as a comparatively minor figure who contributed to the development of operatic orchestration. But there is always room for debate; performers, audiences, and musicologists often discover unexpected things in ostensibly minor works. If those things are seen as important enough for long enough, that composer moves up the list.

So the 'canon' is infinitely malleable as regards the names on it, especially if we break it into sub-canons (the best of operetta, for example), but its function remains unchanged; it is an educational tool. Like any tool it can be misused; there are those who seem to believe either that the canon was somehow created in (fill in the blank) and must never change no matter what else has happened since then, or that their own personal likes and dislikes mark the boundaries of the canon. The former are pedants; the latter are philistines. In reality, any canonical list exists, at its best, to generate thought and understanding. There is always room for debate, but any debate must take into account the value found by so many others over times, value which has led to the canonization of a given work. No work is automatically ineligible for the canon, but few works will evoke responses wide and deep enough over enough time to earn a place thereon.


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## vavaving (Apr 20, 2009)

Andre said:


> So, basically, I think that the 'canon,' if it ever existed, needs redefinition.


In a broader sense, classical music is a canon unto itself. As such, further distinction for the sake of it seems a little redundant. Kind of like determining how many of the total number of classical pieces one could fit on the head of a pin...


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

1812 Overture is my favorite cannon music.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

LvB said:


> As Andre suggests, there's an ambiguity the term 'canon' which must be kept in mind when discussing it. On the one hand there is the list of works considered, at a given time, to be canonical; on the other hand there is the underlying purpose of having a canon in the first place. The second meaning of canon refers to a structure of examples for future creators...It serves as an aid to listeners...to teachers, and to creators, a way of indicating that you will be least likely to waste your time exploring these pieces, because they have stood the test of time and different perspectives.
> 
> ...But there is always room for debate; performers, audiences, and musicologists often discover unexpected things in ostensibly minor works. If those things are seen as important enough for long enough, that composer moves up the list.
> 
> So the 'canon' is infinitely malleable as regards the names on it...but its function remains unchanged; it is an educational tool. Like any tool it can be misused...In reality, any canonical list exists, at its best, to generate thought and understanding. There is always room for debate, but any debate must take into account the value found by so many others over times, value which has led to the canonization of a given work. No work is automatically ineligible for the canon, but few works will evoke responses wide and deep enough over enough time to earn a place thereon.


I agree that a musical canon is useful, as you say, to students and beginners who are just getting into either studying or becoming interested in classical music. But, as you suggest, it must be more of a 'educational tool' to guide the listener, rather than a rigid & restrictive view of what is significant & insignificant.

& I also agree that tastes change over time & sometimes, what was considered to be significant in it's own time (like the example of Meyerbeer which you give) fades into insignificance later. The converse can also be true, as in the case of American composer Charles Ives, whose music was only beginning to be more widely performed very late in his life. Ditto Leos Janacek.

I also think that what makes it into the canon depends, to a degree, on a work's practicality for performance. It is no wonder that some of the more gargantuan works like those of Berlioz, Busoni & Varese haven't found a place in the concert repertoire or aren't that widely recorded due to the massive forces they require. Of course, one can give the examples of Wagner & Mahler, but I think that it is still very rare, for example, to have the whole _Ring Cycle _performed in one go, outside of Bayreuth.


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## LvB (Nov 21, 2008)

Andre said:


> I agree that a musical canon [....] must be more of a 'educational tool' to guide the listener, rather than a rigid & restrictive view of what is significant & insignificant.
> 
> I also think that what makes it into the canon depends, to a degree, on a work's practicality for performance. It is no wonder that some of the more gargantuan works like those of Berlioz, Busoni & Varese haven't found a place in the concert repertoire or aren't that widely recorded due to the massive forces they require.[.../]


Yes-- given the sheer number of pieces out there, it would be crazy to suggest that anyone could possibly have listened to them enough to make a universal and unchangeable assertion about what's best and worst (and this doesn't count the works written after the assertion is made). At the same time, though, once a person has listened to (really listened to, rather than simply heard) a sizeable sample of serious music, they begin to get a sense of the range of expressive and intellectual possibilities which allows them to make defensible claims about other works. That is, they are more likely to be able to assess the structural and emotional demands of the new work in a manner both fair and thoughtful (i.e. to say more than 'this sucks'  ).

Your point about practicality is a good one, and it brings up another point about canons in general: that there are in fact several such operating at any one time. There is the canon of popularity-- the works which have caught the public ear in some overwhelming fashion (the Pachelbel canon, so to speak), or which have some specific association which trumps their musical significance (national anthems, which are played frequently and over a long period historically, but which derive their importance from political, rather than musical, elements) There are the canons of performance-- the lists of works considered by performers to be the best and most interesting works for their respective instruments, the ones which most consistently and continually provide pleasure to player and hearer. These canons may be quite separate; it is amazing to me how many performers on one instrument are all but unaware of the best literature for another. There is, as you say, the canon of practicality-- the works which get done more frequently, especially by orchestras, because they are written in a manner which makes manageable demands on the available resources, whether of money, talent, audience experience, or numbers. Sometimes these demands are underestimated (the community orchestras which tackle Beethoven's fifth and make a hash of it, for example), but generally these works are going to be heard in at least competent performances by more concertgoers than other works which may be just as good. There is what we might call the musicological or academic canon-- the list of important works which music students will be expected to know in general, and which, at its all too rarely seen best, encourages non-musicians to develop their taste and understanding in a coherent and effective way. It is this last one which is potentially the most important and interesting, as it is the one which allows the greatest range of discussion and exploration (after all, a community orchestra is unlikely ever to be able to do works beyond a certain size, regardless of what the conductor would like, whereas a score-based discussion is not bound by any practical considerations).

The canon should always be in flux, but always because of careful thought about the music at hand, rather than the whims of a moment. Ideally, everyone would become a part of the canonic discussion (so long as it was a discussion, not simply an exchange of insults), suggesting and arguing for additions, deletions, and other modifications. It's all part of expanding everyone's understanding of music.


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## PostMinimalist (May 14, 2008)

If you compare the amount of music ever written with what we get spoon fed in concert halls today, you'll soon realise that we are extremely privilaged to have the absolute creme de la creme of classical music ring in our ears. The canon may seem very large but compared to the unimaginably gargantuan jugernot of total dross we might have been subjected to it really is 'die meisterwerke'!
FC


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## PostMinimalist (May 14, 2008)

Nicola said:


> Being "privileged" doesn't come into it, if by that you mean that we owe it to the good judgement of musicians and concert organisers to play only the best material that's available. On the contrary, if consumers weren't given the best material that's available then audience levels would decline. It's far more a matter of the best material coming to the surface by popular demand, and the rest sinking beneath the waves by lack of consumer interest.


There is no doubt that some good music never sees the light of day due to market forces but I'm talking about Mozart and Beethoven. How would you like to have your local symphony orchestra program one concert of Mozart every 5 years and play everything from Salieri to Hoffmeister in between? THe canon is there because it's been generally accepted through the process of a lot (and I mean hundreds of years) of trial and error!

It's not a perfect situation but a hundred years ago it was the best they could do. Trust the maestro to choose a good work and hope he doesn't miss anything you might like. Because in those days live music was all there was and if you couldn't read an orchestral score through on the piano there was only one way of finding out what things sounded like; go to a concert. These are expensive affairs and choosing what he thought was worth hearing was the Maestro's job.

Admittedly, some great stuff might have slipped through the cracks but that is just the weakness in the system. Today we have CDs and MP3s and we can hear almost anything we want to in a computer simulation that is almost indistinguishable from the real thng before we spend a small fortune on getting some one to play it. The result of this is much more music being written and still less time to hear it all which leaves us no different from the previous state.

The canon of great paintings does not contain my primary school art class smudges and of course it shouldn't. In the same way the canon of great classical pieces of music doesn't contain the tens of thousands of trio sonatas written by the likes of Jiri Benda and Danzi's endless screeds of woodwind music!

We are not talking about giving everone a fair shake of the stick here. If as a composer you want a shake, grab the stick and shake it. Just remember you're going to be up against Brawler Beethoven and Masher Mozart!

FC


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