Cannon Fodder

An introduction. I play early music, which is more officially historically informed performance practice. I play music primarily by Dead White European Males on copies or original historical instruments. I research the lives of mostly DWEMS (Thank you, Joan Tower) and teach what DWEMS taught through historical sources. I find myself in a strange place; as a feminist, I want to see more creative work done by women. I want to encourage young girls not to listen to the people who tell them they can’t be great composers. And people are doing this work, creating new music, trying to break down barriers. And I want to do this as well, through the music of the past, music that happened to be written by men, mostly white men, because those are the people in Europe who were creating music in the European tradition. For women, it was generally only allowed if it was a hobby. A few women managed to break through, but only just barely, the barriers to creating art were extraordinarily high. Despite this fact, I love the music that I play, I love playing it with an eye and a ear to history, I love researching, playing basso continuo, I do love it all. So, taking all of this into consideration, because of it’s subject, this blog will be mostly about DWEMS, but DWEMS on the sidelines.

This will be a blog about little-known corners of music history, the people who inhabited those spaces, and my thoughts and opinions about musical canon and why it is both important and not important. This will be my little private corner of the internet in which I can share things that I want to share with others. This is not going to be your typical romp through music history. I might do things that make more traditional musicologists scream, jump to conclusions, come up with theories, speculate. I might even get things wrong. This is just my space to share what I want to share.

While I am a huge fan of most of the composers we have deemed essential enough to include in the Canon, I think it is important to have a complete picture of the past. The reasons are many. To begin with, great composers did not compose in a vacuum; they were influenced by contemporary people and their greatness was often in how they built on the past and innovated within the system in which they were working. They were influenced by other people who had their own musical talents and created great music, but these individuals weren’t talented in the way that history deemed important. Additionally, ‘historically approved Great Composers’ could have been influenced by people creating mediocre music and, well, good riddins to those mediocre musicians, get them away, Cannon. Regardless, it is vital to have as complete a picture as possible. It is also important to remember that composers in the past were, well, in the past. We have a very different musical landscape than Mozart or Beethoven did, and the composers considered essential to the Canon were so because “we” decided it was so. If you think too deeply about it, the logic becomes a bit circular, and I don’t want to go too deep into that particular rabbit hole in my first blog post on the subject. I might never come out again.

However, my point is that if we put the composers of the past on a shelf where we cannot reach them, if we believe that every note that came from their pen was perfect, that we accept them as godlike infallible beings, rather than humans, then we are doing both them and us a disservice. We are creating a great chasm between them and us, and how can we, as classical musicians whose jobs often require us to co-create with dead people, co-create effectively when we believe our co-creators are out of reach?  How can we be creative in our interpretations and create fresh life into the music we play when all we are doing is creating canned museum sounds because we believe our job is to only play accurately, in-tune, and only follow the composer’s wishes? Are we not allowed to bring our own creative decisions into the process? This culture of greatness is dangerous when not looked at with a critical eye. Both for creative people who aren’t deemed great, as well as the people who are.

As a side note, one of the things that I found alluring about historically informed performance practice was that I felt there was room for me, for my own creativity, my own stamp on the process. (Within reason, of course, because my primary job as a classical music performer is to interpret.) It is ironic because outsiders often think that historically informed performance practice is all about rules and regulations. However, especially before the 19th century, performers and composers were on much more equal footing, and many composers were performers, and visa versa. It would have been in poor taste if you hadn’t added your own signature to your performances.

We are all creative beings, and if we think that all great art has occurred in the past, then we lose. I love the music of the past, and I have dedicated my life to it. I believe it will play an important role in our future. Still, I think it is imperative to look critically at our beliefs about our European-centered musical tradition, and how the Canon is taught and reaffirmed without much question, and how this has informed our ideas about what is great and what isn’t great. So, this series will be delving into the lives of the people the Canon killed, the ones you never knew existed and exploring the little corners of music history with me. One never knows what one will find. Additionally, I will add my thoughts about Canon and how it shapes how we think about music, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So…boom!