The Classical Music Listicle

I’m so deeply disappointed in this article series by the Guardian that I don’t even know where to begin. How could they possibly think that, right in the midst of Black Lives Matter, and at a time when many living musicians are having to sell their instruments to survive because there is so little support for artists during covid, that a series featuring the music of 14 dead white male composers, and 0 composers who are non-white, non-male, and/or non-dead, is exactly what people need? When I wrote to express my disappointment with the content of the series, I was told that it had to be all dead white men because it was a series aimed at beginners, and not at a musicologist such as myself. I am not actually a musicologist, but I do write for academic and non-academic contexts, and I know that it’s no harder to write an introductory article about Clara Schumann than it is about Robert (and indeed, no harder to write a specialist article about Robert than it is about Clara). I love many – most, even – of the composers included in the canon, but I can’t believe that there are still people out there who think there’s anything immutable, timeless, or objective about which composers are included. Lists of the “most influential” or “best known” XYZ are never simply neutral accounts of historical fact. They reflect which information has been preserved and which has been forgotten, as well as whatever lens the list-maker sees history through (and this lens is very likely to be affected by both historical and contemporary biases and prejudices). Even more dangerously, they help determine who is going to continue to be “most influential” or “best known” XYZ in the future (whether or not this is the list-maker’s intent). I’m not against making lists: they can be helpful for developing shared bodies of knowledge for enjoyment or discussion, and they can be fun! But from now on I’m going to refer to the Classical Music™ canon as the Classical Music Listicle, as a reminder that any list of the most important, best, and/or best-known composers is inherently subjective, context-dependent, and a bit silly.