Bernard Chasan writes:

>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.

It's easiest of all to play any darn thing that happens to come to mind,
or is in some other way handy.  What orchestras usually play is what
impressarios, conductors, intendants, critics, and, very importantly,
audiences collectively think will make a satisfying program.  At the
Salzburg Festival, under Gerard Mortier, there was introduced a series
of programs, under the label of Zeitfluss (Flow of Time), comprising
avant garde music.  To be sure, it played not in either of the two main
auditoriums, where the kind of music Bernard 's referring to was preferred
--foremost, of course, Salzburg's own Mozart.  All this has to do with
programming, however, and not with the Received Canon.  Rather, the RC
strives to clarify the term Classical Music.  Inevitably it includes a body
of works by composers that Deryk Barker towards the beginning of this
thread limned out for us.  And, yes, such a canon would inevitably include
Mozart, Chopin, Brahms,Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Beethoven ....

Denis Fodor