Canonicity and Collegiality: "Other" Composers, 1790-1850
Rent from DeepDyveA paradigm shift occurred in musical culture in the early nineteenth century, whereby revered old works—newly called "classics"—began to rival contemporary ones as the guiding authority over taste. This article explores the less well‐known composers found on programs in the period when classical repertories were becoming established. A kind of professional collegiality developed during this period on concert programs among pieces of diverse age and taste, reaching far beyond the iconic composers (now seen by most of us to have been Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn). Many of the "other" composers came from Italy, France, or Britain and became famous for opera selections and songs, some termed "popular," and a substantial number of their pieces were performed throughout the nineteenth century. The present‐day narrative of music history has canonic blind spots for composers then widely performed—Louis Spohr, Thomas Arne, Giovanni Viotti, Etienne‐Nicolas Méhul, George Onslow, Louise Farrenc, and Robert Franz, for example. To understand musical life of that time, it is necessary to rethink the language of canon and canonization. The concept of canonization and the concept of the masterpiece have narrowed musical thinking harmfully. We need to look back at the fruitful collegiality that existed between canonic and contemporary music in the early nineteenth century, involving as it did a wide array of composers and tastes not yet bound by rigid assumptions about supposed "levels" of taste.
A paradigm shift occurred in musical culture in the early nineteenth century, whereby revered old works—newly called "classics"—began to rival contemporary ones as the guiding authority over taste. Having outlined this profound change in musical culture in a previous contribution to this journal, I will here explore the less well-known composers found on programs in the period when classical repertories were becoming established.1 A kind of professional collegiality developed during this period on concert programs among pieces of diverse age and taste, reaching far beyond the iconic composers (now seen by most of us to have been Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn). Many of the "other" composers came from Italy, France, or Britain and became famous for opera selections and songs, some termed "popular," and a substantial number of their pieces were performed throughout the nineteenth century. The present-day narrative of music history has canonic blind spots for composers then widely performed—Louis Spohr, Thomas Arne, Giovanni Viotti, Etienne-Nicolas Méhul, George Onslow, Louise Farrenc, and Robert Franz, for example. To understand musical life of that time, it is necessary to rethink the language of [End Page 105] canon and canonization. These are terms that tend to endow music history with a fixity and grandiosity foreign to what-went-on, when it was going on.
Linking the term collegiality to canonicity can help us get past presuppositions that obstruct understanding. A tradition of professional collegiality existed in the eighteenth century and survived well into the nineteenth. It was common to speak of leading composers in collective terms, honoring them in common as the most highly respected musicians of the time. For example, in 1776 Carl Junker, a composer in southwestern Germany, published Twenty Composers: A Sketch, which offered a subtle set of opinions about prominent musicians of the day. He began the discussion by invoking the long-standing principle of musical progress ("les progrès de la musique," as was said in France) and declaring that "revolution" and "advances" had occurred recently to a historic degree. While Junker lent the highest praise to Joseph Haydn and had doubts about the originality of Carl Ditters, he treated all twenty musicians on a common basis, characterizing each one in evocative words.2 Junker spoke of caprice with respect to Haydn and attributed special originality to Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach. But he also found a modernity and loftiness in music by the latter's brother, Johann Christian Bach, whose spectacular success in London had drawn criticism from some...
