Denis Fodor <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>>Why can't a newcomer go straight to Britten, Copland or Philip Glass
>>without first going through Mozart and Bach?
>
>There's nothing to stop him/her.  That's the best way to get acquainted
>with the music of Britten,Copland and Philip Glass.  But it's no way of
>getting to know the heartland of clsical music, which is the Received
>Canon.It's true, though, that by listening to B&C&PG, you may, just
>incidentally, garner some useful inferences about the heartland.

But Denis, these twentieth century composers are as much the "heartland"
as any old German B's, much though we might love them.

Certainly we do learn more about Bach, say, by listening to Britten's Cello
Suites, but that's not their justification.  They are in themselves as much
"heartland" as his predecessor's pieces.  Again, Britten had no time for
Brahms, and little for Beethoven.  These composers were not his "heartland"
and it is meaningless to try and talk him into being some sort of satellite
colony for them.

No, these arguments supporting a Received Canon simply can't bear the
strain of the reality.  Music's too big a country to be constrained by any
such arbitrary borders, and attempts to define and limit it serve to show
the theoretical as well as practical impossibility of the exercise.  Even
Spohr is still heartland, It's just that nobody visits him any more.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"