Avant Garde Canon?

Over the last few days I have been struggling to put together a required listening list for my course, "The American Avant Garde." The process reminded me of part of my work on John Cage's HPSCHD. Cage and Hiller chose canonic pieces from the keyboard canon after Mozart as source material for the composition. Part of my argument regarding the selection of works is that what became "canonic" in the keyboard world was to a certain degree a result of happenstance. Certain works were published, performed, widely distributed, and some had individual champions (like Gottschalk's "The Banjo" and Ives' "Concord Sonata" which were both championed by John Kirkpatrick).

In the selection of "required" listening I used the following criteria:

1. If a piece was featured as a Listening Example in Kyle Gann's American Music in the Twentieth Century (our former text, now sadly out of print) then I did my best to...

2. Locate the score and recording in the music library. If that was impossible...

3. I searched YouTube and other video delivery services for either an excellent live performance or a recording of the piece with scrolling score.

4. In some cases I was unable to locate the pieces featured in the text. In such cases I tried to find a similar piece by the same composer that demonstrated the same techniques, form or process.

5. Some pieces that I decided to require in the syllabus are not featured by Gann. These pieces are either personal favorites or pieces that I personally think are important historically, aesthetically, or stylistically.

There are some intrinsic dangers here, the most obvious of which is that by selecting just one or two pieces from a composer that students tend to believe that this is the total nature of the individual's work. Composers like Stockhausen are especially difficult to fairly represent with just one or two pieces.

The process was surprisingly difficult. While the library does have an extensive collection of twentieth century scores and recordings, there were many works that I wanted to require which were not part of the collection. In some cases a score was available (but no recording), but more often, a recording was available, but no score.

As the list of required pieces grew quite long I had to start editing. One composer that I wanted to feature was Julius Eastman. He is a remarkable character of the avant garde scene who actually grew up in Ithaca, NY and attended Ithaca College for some time, although he did not complete his degree in Ithaca. He is an African American in an almost exclusively white world. He struggled with drugs and mental health issues and was homeless for some time. Unlike Mozart, he really did die penniless and forgotten.

His compositions are minimalistic and he was a notable performer, best remembered, perhaps, for his role in Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King. What I really enjoy about Eastman is his ability to cross over genre boundaries performing with rock/disco ensembles as well as famous experimental music ensembles both in Buffalo and in New York. Check out his work on YouTune, include this piece, Crazy Nigger.

Does Eastman warrant a position in the "canon?" His total output is smaller than his contemporaries. He did not teach--although he was promised a position at Cornell that never materialized. The recordings of his music are few, but important. And he does have some champions, including Kyle Gann. In the end he didn't make the cut, which I think is too bad.

The entire process of creating the required listening list pointed up the difficulty of identifying and capturing an American, twentieth-century, avant garde canon. Hold your protestations that the entire idea should be thrown out! I understand the postmodern tendency to eschew the canon. But the reality is that canons are useful. They are a kind of short hand to a shared cultural experience, which I highly value. Something is lost when we do not have common aesthetic touchstones by which we can measure the relative merit of new work.

Let the adventure begin!