>>53936019
>>53936088
>>53936247
>New Musicology
>mfw
Daily reminder that
>The Canon, a word religious in its origins, has become a choice among pieces struggling with one another for survival, whether you interpret the choice as being made by dominant social groups, institutions of education, traditions of criticism, or, as I do, by late-coming authors who feel themselves chosen by particular ancestral figures. Some recent partisans of what regards itself as academic radicalism go so far as to suggest that works join the Canon because of successful advertising and propaganda campaigns. The compeers of these skeptics sometimes go farther and question even Mozart, whose eminence seems to them something of an imposition. If you worship the composite god of historical process, you are fated to deny Mozart his palpable aesthetic supremacy, the really scandalous originality of his operas. Originality becomes a musical equivalent of such terms as individual enterprise, self-reliance, and competition, which do not gladden the hearts of Feminists, Afrocentrists, Marxists, Foucaultinspired New Historicists, or Deconstructors-of all those whom I have described as members of the School of Resentment.