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The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Musical Canon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

William Weber
William Weber*
Affiliation:
California state University, Long Beach
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Extract

Joseph Kerman has suggested a distinction crucial in defining the meaning of ‘canon’ in musical culture: repertory, he argues, was simply the performance of old works; canon, by contrast, is their reverence on a critical plane and in a literary context. The distinction is a fertile one, for it challenges us to define when works were not just offered by convention, but when they functioned as models for musical taste critically and aesthetically. The distinction can be extremely fruitful in tracing the early history of the canon – its origins in repertory and gradual evolution into its modern form. What I would like to show here is how repertories grew up originally without true status as canon; before canon there was repertory, and that is where the whole tradition began. In inquiring just where the modern practice of performing old music regularly came about we can look into some of the most fundamental social and intellectual bases upon which the tradition was established.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 114 , Issue 1 , 1989 , pp. 6 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Royal Musical Association

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References

1 Kerman, Joseph, ‘A Few Canonic Variations’, Critical Inquiry, 10 (1983), 107–26; repr. in Canons, ed Robert von Hallberg (Chicago, 1984), 177–95.Google Scholar

2 Among my studies of the emerging musical canon are ‘The Contemporaneity of Eighteenth-Century Musical Taste’, Musical Quarterly, 70 (1984), 75–94, ‘La Musique anctenne in the Ancien Régime’, Journal of Modern History, 58 (1984), 58–88, ‘Classical Repertory in Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Concerts’, The Orchestra, ed. Joan Peyser (New York, 1986), 361–86, ‘Wagner, Wagnerism, and Musical Idealism’, Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics, ed. William Weber and David C. Large (Ithaca, 1984), 28–71, and ‘Mentalité, tradition et les origines du “canon” musical au XVIIIe siècle’, forthcoming in Annates, E. S CGoogle Scholar

3 Kerman, ‘A Few Canonic Variations’, 112Google Scholar

4 The most important recent works on canon in the other arts likewise see indigenous roots in each field, see Haskell, Francis, Rediscoveries in Art Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion and Collecting in Nineteenth-Century England and France (Oxford, 1976), and Frank Kermode, The Classic. Images of Permanence and Change (New York, 1975)Google Scholar

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6 Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 17 vols. (Kassel, 1949–51), i, cols. 603–7. I am indebted to Jerome Roche on this matter.Google Scholar

7 Robert L. and Norma W. Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1590–1750 (Detroit, 1978), 129.Google Scholar

8 See the various editions of The Catch Club or Merry Companion between c.1725 and 1800.Google Scholar

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10 ‘Cavalli, Francesco’, The New Grove Dictionary, iv, 24–34. I am indebted to Michael Talbot on this matter.Google Scholar

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13 See, for example, the inclusion of a piece for clavecin by Froberger in a recueil dated London, 1702 (British Library, Add. MS 39659). I am indebted to Bruce Gustavson for this information, see his French Harpsichord Music of the Seventeenth Century (Ann Arbor, 1979).Google Scholar

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16 Ibid, 244–88 The Barnard is in Royal College of Music, MSS 1045–51.Google Scholar

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20 Tomkins, Thomas, Musica Sacra or Musick, dedicated to the Honour and Service of God, and to the use of Cathedrals and other churches of England and Especially of the Chapell Royal of King Charles the First (London, 1668).Google Scholar

21 For related glorification of old music by Catholics, see Brett, Philip, ‘Edward Paston (1552–1630): A Norfolk Gentleman and his Music Collection’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 4 (1964), 51–72.Google Scholar

22 See Bedford, Arthur, The Great Abuse of Music (London, 1711), 183, discussing ‘such who learn our present Songs may be as far to seek in our ancient divine musick, as if they knew nothing at all’. The collection was John Playford'sGoogle Scholar

23 Turnbull, Edward, ‘Thomas Tudway and the Harleian Collection’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 8 (1955), 203–7; Hogwood, Christopher, “Thomas Tudway's History of Music', Music in Eighteenth-Century England A Festschrift to Charles Cudworth, ed. Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett (Cambridge, 1984), 19–17.Google Scholar

24 Tudway to Wanley, 20 September 1719, Portland Loan 29/257. This series of letters in the Portland Loan deserves the close attention of scholars, see, for example, the letters on Tudway's supposed dismissal from the university in 1706 in 29/159. I will be publishing a brief discussion of these letters in a forthcoming issue of the British Library Journal devoted to the final acquisition of the Portland Loan.Google Scholar

25 Tudway to Wanley, 4 June 1716, Harl. 3782, f 58.Google Scholar

26 Programmes of the Academy are to be found in the Leeds Public Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the British Library and the collection of Mr Christopher Hogwood; a set of scores from the first programme of the Academy are in the library of Durham Cathedral, and the Minutes of the Academy, 1726–31, is in British Library, Add. MS 11732 See discussion of its history in H. Diack Johnstone, ‘Maurice Greene: His Life and Work’ (D.Phil, dissertation, University of Oxford, 1967), i, 96–110; and Colin Timms, ‘Steffani and the Academy of Ancient Music’, The Musical Times, 119 (1978), 127–30Google Scholar

27 The programmes are widely available in Words of the concerts of Antient Music at Tottenham Square Rooms for the Year 1776 and so on. See James E. Matthew, The Antient Concerts, 1776–1848', Proceedings of the Musical Association, 33(1906–7), 55–79. I plan to publish a detailed analysis of the first 15 years of the programme at this series in my book in progress, The Musical Canon in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth CenturiesGoogle Scholar

28 Richard Luckett,’ “Or rather our Musical Shakspeare:” Charles Burney's Henry Purcell’, Music in Eighteenth-Century England, 59–77.Google Scholar

29 Pearce, Ernest Harold, History of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy (London, 1904); papers of the Corporation and the Festival, London Record Office, Northampton Row; Nicholas Cox, Bridgmg the Gap A History of the Sons of the Clergy (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar