I must say that I had some idea that my little list would cause a
mini-tempest.  Too much experience with lists, I suppose.  I've taken my
shots at the brave souls who offered their own lists.  Inevitably, I left
out people (mostly without meaning to) who should definitely be in, mainly
because I didn't give the list a lot of thought.

What seems to me more important are the criteria for inclusion.  I don't
believe someone should be included simply because I love their music or
excluded simply because I hate their music.  In my list, many favorite
composers don't appear.  I had two major criteria:  the music must appear
today in both live and recorded formats; the music must have demonstrated
historical importance.  Chopin and Liszt solo piano music I think would
appear.  Mussorgsky solo piano music, which I adore, would not.  As far
as Ravel goes, though I can't think of anything but a wonderful piece by
him, I doubt his historic importance.  I can't think of any Ravel work that
has the impact of, say, Debussy's Images for Orchestra or Prelude on the
Afternoon of a Faun.  While Vaughan Williams and Poulenc are composers
personally important to me, I can't think of a single work by either that
fits the criterion of historical importance.

On the other hand, I would argue strenuously for Bartok, Schoenberg,
and Webern as historically important.  Schoenberg and Webern, however,
are seldom encountered live.  With the exception of the string quartets,
Bartok's historically important works also suffer from a similar fate.
Perhaps another criterion should be included:  generally admired works.
But there we have a problem deciding whom to count.  For example, if I said
that Schoenberg was generally admired by composers, I'd immediately get the
protest that it's only certain composers and what about just us plain,
ordinary, salt-o'-the-earth listeners? Well, that's true of anyone you'd
care to name.  So you see the difficulty of setting the franchise.

We can't really talk about popularity, because most people tend to mean "me
and my friends like X." Besides, popularity is fairly fickle (at one point,
Sibelius's symphonies were more popular than Beethoven's), and again we
have the problem of who gets to vote.  Furthermore, we have to allow for
the fact that fifty million Frenchman can indeed be wrong.

It should be fairly suspicious by now that the RC indicates a paradigm
for aesthetic goodness.  Many good, even great composers wouldn't make the
RC according to the criteria I've set up.  Some fairly limited composers --
for example, Rossini -- do make the canon.  Rossini is historically
important to the course of opera.  One still encounters at least one opera
and a whole bunch of overtures with regularity live and recorded.  But,
delightful as he may be, he ain't Mozart or Verdi, either as a technician
nor as a dramatist.  We are far more likely to think of the latter as
canonic than of Rossini.

I have no idea where to go with this, probably because I find for myself
the idea of a canon practically useless.  I don't really see the advantages
of setting one up, unless one is trying to teach a course, and a rather
basic course at that.

Steve Schwartz