William Hong at [log in to unmask] wrote:

>Such are the hazards of Canons that cause people to go ballistic....

How can you make puns in the midst of such a serious discussion? Only a
loose canon would do such a thing.  In any case the Grosse Fugue is not
really part of the canon, it is a magnificent oddity, a wonderful
monstrosity, and we are fortunate to have it.

>I tend to go with those who say that one's own canon, like one's own
>religion, is something that has to be internally processed.  I certainly
>recognize many of the classical music works that are often proclaimed as
>being part of some Common Practice, but whether I actually listen to them
>at any frequency anymore is another matter.  As someone who has kept and
>gradually expanded my awareness of the Early Music scene for nearly 30
>years, my own concept of this term in a day-to-day real sense may be quite
>different from others'....

And that freedom is made possible by the huge array of choices which
recorded music makes available.  THE canon is simply when the orchestra
plays a Beethoven symphony and a Brahms concerto this week, and a Beethoven
concerto and A Brahms symphony next week.  It is clearly easier to do this
than to think about program making.

Bernard Chasan