Should We Fire the Canon?

Okay, so I originally meant to write this post a long time ago in response to Ed's post about jazz. Then I got sidetracked by sudoku (curse you, sudoku!), and then I got lazy/forgetful. Lucky for all you readers out there (hey Steph! hey Amy! hey Emily!), I'm finally back on track. Get ready for some insight, folks, 'cause here it comes.

Today's topic of discourse is the relevance of the Western canon. (Wait! Don't go away, please. I know it sounds dull, but I promise to throw in some funny witticisms at some point.) I started by thinking about Ed's gripe about the small group of people for whom jazz is life. He was sounding really bitter about how they got to decide who and what was "important" in the world of jazz. He was like, boo to esoteric, be-boppy deconstructions of "My Funny Valentine". It was too think-y. And then he was like, boo to the sappy, soulless smooth jazz beloved by the vapid masses. Greatness in jazz in his view was to be decided by neither the devotees of the hyperintellectual avant-garde, nor the shallow and unthinking proletariat. Rather, the arbiters of greatness would be intelligent people with a sensitivity to musical expression, who nonetheless maintained a studied distance from the mechanics of the music.

In other words, Ed gets to decide. Which is fine, for Ed's Canon of Stuff He Digs. But when it comes to choosing and studying the people and works that represent the achievements of the Western world, to a certain extent, we have to take the experts' word for it.

And that's the canon. Somebody else keeps track of all the greatness so that we don't have to. And because we can't, even more to the point.

Here's a quick exercise: In the blank space on your computer screen, write down the names of ten famous scientists, in any field.











Alright - which names did you write down? Hopefully none, because that could do serious damage to your computer screen. I'll assume you simply thought up ten of them. Let me guess. Einstein. Newton. Galileo. Copernicus. Gregor Mendel. Pasteur. The Curies. Darwin. Maybe Niels Bohr? I don't know. I got a lot of them, though, didn't I? That's because they're in the scientific canon. And I know the basics of why each of them is famous. But my appreciation for them and their work can only go so deep, because my knowledge of their fields can only - well, at one point, it would've filled a couple of textbooks. But there are people who know every last thing about these people, and who know what makes them so significant.

And there are experts in each of those fields that would more or less agree on a general hierarchy of greatness. Louis Pasteur was a great chemist; Daniel Rutherford was a very good chemist. According to Wikipedia, he isolated nitrogen (which he called phlostigated air). That's pretty good. But he didn't invent pasteurization or cure rabies. That was great.
So are there experts in every field - scientific, artistic, economic - whom we entrust with the task of creating, maintaining, and passing along the hierarchy of greatness.

Which means we can say: great composers - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven; great artists - Michelangelo, Renoir, Picasso; great Presidents - Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. And we can say this without qualification, because they're in the canon. And also because I put that in italics. You can't argue with italics.

It's not a perfect system. There are biases, historical accidents, historical intentions, and other quirks that have led to people's inclusion or exclusion from the canon. Why are there so many artists from Florence or composers from Vienna in the canon? Because that's where the money and influence was. Which attracts great artists and composers, to be sure, but also leads to the marginalization of would-be great artists from elsewhere.

But neither is it a static system. New research, new sensibilities, new fashions constantly add to and subtract from the canon.

And you don't have to enjoy something just because it's been canonized. Lots of people hate Jane Austen, Arnold Schoenberg, James Joyce, and Daniel Rutherford (that accursed phlostigator!). Ed apparently has a vehement, visceral hatred of Charlie Parker and his noodlings. But the jazz people tell us he's a good one, so I guess he is. (And I think I also have to argue with Ed's point that the hard core jazz fans are only satiated by novelty - Parker's heyday was during the Eisenhower years - after fifty years, noodling's no longer novel, but some people still wax obsessed about it.)

Great music (and art, literature, etc.) appeals both to the intellect and to the soul (That's a hoity-toity sentence, isn't it?) It's an individual's decision whether a particular artist or artwork strays too far down one road or the other for their own taste, but even Charlie Parker's music (and Karlheinz Stockhausen's - listen to him sometime, if you're feeling masochistic) satisfies the souls of his true fans.

(I was going to investigate the nature of sophistication at this point, but I'm really running out of steam, as I'm sure most of the five of you are, as well. So maybe I'll talk about it some other time.)

My point, by the way, is that the canon is a useful collection of greatness. It has its flaws, but it's served us well over the centuries. So cut it some slack.