New Post from McLaren

From: mclaren
Subject: The idea of a "canon of recognized
masterworks" of Western music
--
Enrique Moreno with great acumen
pointed out that one of the greatest
obstacles to the adoption of microtonal
ideas (viz., the harmonic series as a
basis for music theory) in higher education
is that it would require music teachers
to throw overboard the "recognized"
canon of Western musical "masterworks."
This is a very convincing argument, until
you realize that there's no such thing.
Semiotics and sociology have taught us to
view critically institutions which purport
to purvey the truth. Thus, seen objectively,
it becomes clear that college music depts.
are engaged in a form of advertising. The
idea is to sell "high culture" to students who
will get swanky jobs and buy tickets to the local
concert hall. "Modern music" courses attempt
to create an elite cadre of "consumers" of
"new music," whose patronage (it is hoped)
will pay for the continuation of the cycle.
Presumably all those warm bodies will provide
evidence that an NEA grant is not only
deserved but need to fund musical "R & D" that
produces even newer, even more complex
"high concept" modern music.
This is advertising, pure and simple, no
different from boob tube ads for asswipe
and armpit goo. The object to be consumed
("modern" musical "high culture") is different,
but the methods are identical.
Thus the claims of college music departments
must be subjected to the same skepticism
that we customarily apply to the yelping of
flackmeisters on television who try to sell us
Preparation H or late-night "get rich quick
in real estate with no money down" schemes.
In the case of college music departments, the
advertising is straightforward: it's a classic
high-pressure "hard sell." Hey! LISTEN UP! Here's
the world's greatest music, only the very finest
works throughout the centuries are represented
here, only the very finest performers are allowed
into our concert halls to interpret these great
musical masterwork
he seating in concert halls
is limited, therefore...buy this set of CDs now!!!"
Special offer!
Not available in stores!!!
Order now!!!!!!!
Does this sound familiar?
The college music departments take this late-night
TV advertising even further:
CD sound can't compare to the *real thing*...
therefore you should go to live symphony concerts
to *really* listen to Beethoven. And you should be
prepared to pay *plenty* of hard cash for those
symphony tickets, right, boychik?
The problem is that most of these claims are
dubious, and some are verifiably false.
Are the performers in symphony orchestras
"the very finest" performers around? Jazz
and pop guitar virtuosi cast doubt on this idea.
Moreover, when a pimple-faced teenager with
a sequencer and a digital piano can churn out
virtuosic piano music that would tie Paderewski's
fingers in knots, the whole idea of "virtuoso"
performance becomes meaningless.
Does Lincoln Center really have to cost $500
per seat?
Festivals like the AFMM (which offers superb
music el cheapo mondo) cast doubt on *that* idea
too.
And how about the claim that there's a recognized
canon of universally acknowledged musical
masterworks...?
Is this idea credible?
Or is it just another case of "New, improved,
bigger, tastier!" just like the latest ad for
Chicken McNuggets?
Looking over the historical record, we see that
this "universally recognized" pantheon of great
composers and great compositions has a weird
way of...eh, uh, well...changing over time.
For example, back in 1826 Handel was universally
recognized as the greatest composer of the
Baroque era. Nobody had heard of Bach. His
manuscripts were used to wrap fish.
Then, Felix Mendelssohn "rediscovered" Bach and
put on large orchestral festivals of Bach in the
late 1830s.
Suddenly, the pantheon changed... Suddenly,
the "universally acknowledged" great composer
of the Baroque was someone different--someone
few average folks had heard of.
Around 1826, the "universally acknowledged canon
of Western musical masterworks" ran something
like this: Palestrina's motets and masses,
Haydn's symphonies & quartets, Beethoven's
symphonies and quartets, Bach's fugues & organ
music, the piano sonatas and symphonies of
Spohr, Hanon and Czerny.
Mozart wasn't on the chart. Nobody had heard of
Purcell other than a few antiquarian specialists.
Names like Ockeghem and Binchois and Jehan
Suzay and Baude Cordier were regarded as
mere curiosities...just as we regard Spohr,
Hanon and Czerny today.
Let's fast-forward to 1896. Now the "great"
composers are: Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Mendelssohn,
Wagner, Schumann, Chopin, Mozart, Saint-Saens, Gounod,
D'Indy, Cesar Franck, Richard Strauss, & of course Mahler.
Gosh.
The list has changed, hasn't it?
Names like Ravel and Debussy are oddly missing.
In fact, in musical textbooks as late as the 1920s
you can read that Debussy "certainly produced very
tuneful music, but he could not be called a great
composer." Ravel was popular but not yet a "great
composer." The Mexican composers Chavez and
Falla weren't on the charts.
Let's fast-forward to 1926.
Suddenly those "great composers" Gounod and Faure
& D'Indy & Franck are gone. They're minor footnotes.
Suddenly Bach is "the greatest" of greats. The "great"
American composers are obvious: Edward Macdowell,
Charles Griffes, George Antheil, John Alden Carpenter.
But Charles Ives isn't even on the radar scope: ditto Carl
Ruggles. Gershwin is a schmuck pop composer, not
worthy of consideration by lovers of "serious" music.
Now let's move ahead to 1946:
Sudden Wagner has become invisible. But now
the harpsichord revival has begun, and with it a
host of strange new names who (it is suddenly
discovered) are also "great composers:" Girolamo
Frescobaldi, Diderik Buxtehude, Giovanni Gabrieli,
Domenico Scarlatti. Of European composers, the
"greatest" are Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky.
The "great American composers" in 1946 were
well known by all--William Schuman, Roy Harris,
Roger Sessions, Randall Thompson, Walter Piston,
Wallingford Riegger, Carl Ruggles.
But now George Antheil, John Alden Carpenter and
Charles Griffes have disappeared.
Let's fast-forward to 1966.
*Big* change.
Now Mozart is "greater" than any other "great"
composer--he's suddenly the greatest composer of
all (although a nonentity in the 1820s). Brahms
in on the wane. Wagner and Mahler and Richard
Strauss have largely vanished, except for lip
service. Telemann has been rehabitated;
now he's a "great composer," ditto Vivaldi.
But Mendelssohn, Schumann, Scriabin, et al. are now
footnotes.
Aaron Copland has vanished--too tonal. Roy Harris
and Wallingford Riegger and Walter Piston are
gone. Roger Sessions is barely visible, mainly because
of his later serial compositions. Paul Hindemith
is treated like the Ebola virus. But Charles Ives
is suddenly a "great composer."
And now there are a host of new "great composers:"
Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stockhausen, Boulez,
Cage. These "great composers" replace
the former cadre of "great composers:"
William Schuman, Roy Harris, Roger Sessions, Randall
Thompson, Walter Piston. The list of "great"
composers sure changes a lot, doesn't it?
Now let's fast-forward to 1996:
Schoenberg is being attacked daily in books like
"Schoenberg's Error" by Thompson (1992). Berg and
Webern are still "great" composers, although their
music is very seldom played. Stockhausen and Boulez
and Cage have vanished from the concert halls.
Instead, we have a new set of "great" composers--
except now they're an *old* set of "great" American
composers: Roy Harris, William Schuman, Aaron
Copland, Carl Ruggles...all nonentities in 1966.
So what have we got here?
Is it not apparent that there is no uniform
canon of "musical masterpieces"?
It is not obvious that composers come into
fashion in one generation, go out of fashion in
another generation, come back into fashion,
then go out of fashion again...ad infinitum?
Georg Muffat was considered a great composer
who produced masterpieces in the late 17th
century. If you mentioned "Apparatus Musico-
Organisticus" around 1700, anyone who knew
anything about "real" music would tell you it
was one of the greatest sets of compositions
in European history.
By 1850, Georg Muffat was out of fashion. If you
had mentioned "Apparatus Musico-Organisticus"
you'd get a strange look.
By 1950, Georg Muffat was a great composer again.
By 2050, will Georg Muffat be out of fashion?
Who knows?
But I'll give you 3-to-1 odds.
My point, simply, is that the idea of a uniform
canon of "recognized masterpieces" is a bizarre
notion concocted as best I can determine by
concert managers and symphony boards of
directors.
Quite a few members of the younger generation
(like, say, moi) consider Mozart a no-talent
Muzak specialist [a superb technician, a godawful
musician] and Jehan Suzay and Petrus de Doldescalc
and Guillaume Binchois and Guillaume Dufay and
Josquin de Pres and Johannes Ockeghem to be
an apex of western music far more interesting
than the irremediable musical desert between
1790 and 1890 (except for Beethoven and Saint-
Saens and Schubert, perhaps).
I've asked around among my friends, and most of
'em share my opinion--you could flush out 90%
of the 19th century like sewage and we wouldn't
miss it. The 14th through the 18th centuries,
however were chock full of superb music, and
1890 through 1930 and about 1978 through the
present were also extremely fertile eras.
The point is, in today's ultraconnected Internet
media-soaked speed-of-light CD-ROM-archived
xerox-crazy fax-and-scanner world, the idea
that there is any ONE single "recognized canon"
of Western musical masterworks just doesn't
wash.
Nowadays, we all *create our own* musical
realities.
I have friends who can give chapter & verse on
the kinds of effects boxes Jimi Hendrix used, and
they "know" that the period from 1957-1969 is the
apex of Western music. They compare notes,
and they all pretty much have the same "canon"
of musical "masterworks."
Other friends, who happen to be rabid xenharmonists,
"know" that an entirely different (and very strange) canon
of "recognized" musical "masterworks" is the TRUE
corpus of Great Western Music--yet their list of
"great" music is entirely different from the (to me) utterly
bizarre "canon" of "great" musical "masterworks" adored
by the age-55-age-75 crowd (3 B's, Mozart, Hanon, Czerny,
Faure, Carl Maria von Weber, Edward Elgar)...
And so it goes.
As we head for the 21st century at the speed of light,
the music departments of universities need to wake
up and realize that there's a very real question
as to whether colleges will even *exist* in any
recognizable fashion in 20 years.
In such a fluid globally connected Internet world,
everyone creates hi/r own informational reality...
And the notion of a single "canon" of recognized
Western musical "masterworks" just begins to
look like a bizarre hallucination.
To base university music curricula on such a
chimera seems the ultimate in faulty logic. Thus
I can see no reason whatever for college music
departments to fail to include the harmonic series,
the history of tuning, etc. in the curriculum--especially
when great works of music from prior eras (like
Johann Kuhnau's "Combat of David and Goliath,"
which deliberately uses the meantone wolf notes
in the "battle" section) cannot even be understood
without some consideration of the tuning involved.
--mclaren


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