The Life of Music:
New Adventures in the Western Classical Tradition
by Nicholas Kenyon
________________________________________
Writing a history of “Western classical music” (for want of a better term) is a daunting task. Apart from the very vastness of the subject, there is the increasingly thorny issue of which composers should be considered to be part of the “canon” and whether any of them can objectively be called “great”. When I was a young student, in what now seems a different era, the “narrative” of the history of classical music tended to start in earnest with the “baroque era” (with anything before that dumped under the generic title of “early music”). Women composers were noticeably absent and it was implied, with little to no sense of challenge and irony, that men were more predisposed to writing music. Thankfully, views have changed quickly over the past of decades. There is greater recognition of the social mores which kept (and sometimes still keep) women back from composing. Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler to name but a few, were dissuaded from composing and/or publishing their music by the male composers in their respective lives. Perhaps it is even more surprising (should it be, though?) that, despite the challenges, there is indeed much music composed by women, even from earlier centuries, which is as yet either unknown or not given the attention it deserves. In other words, this is not just a question of women not having composed music – for whatever reason – but of active female composers having been shouldered off the musical map. The same arguments could apply to other under-represented groups still struggling for visibility.
These matters have become increasingly controversial in musical circles. I remember the 2000 Bach anniversary being widely marked with performances and recording projects, without much controversy. Not so last year’s Beethoven 250th anniversary, which provoked heated debates as to whether Beethoven is really as “great” as we make him out to be and whether the emphasis on his role in Western music was simply serving to entrench a fossilized canon.
Sir Nicholas Kenyon acknowledges these thorny issues in his introduction to The Life of Music, a new history of Western Classical music completed over the lockdown period and just published by Yale University Press. Kenyon, however, does not set out to be polemical. Instead, the underlying theme of his book – which is subtitled New Adventures in the Western Classical Tradition – is that music can only come to life through performance. In line with this approach, he does not just mention musical works, but very often also references specific performances or recordings. This is a recognition that actual music-making, whether live or recorded, not only creates the repertoire, but can actually shape our understanding of how it should sound. This is particularly true of medieval and Renaissance music where performance practice relies more heavily on the musician’s interpretative approach and where expectations will often depend on the recordings we have in our collections (the colour of David Munrow or the ethereal austerity of The Hilliards?). This seems to be an idea which Kenyon has long mulled over – I traced this article of his from 2005 examining precisely this concept, which is developed further in the book.
Another thread which runs through the book is that the history of classical music is not linear, but tends to be characterised by “tipping points” which nudge the course of history into a new direction, without necessarily doing so in a neat fashion.
Kenyon, who was appointed Controller of BBC Radio 3 in 1992, director of the BBC Proms in 1996 and Managing Director of the Barbican since 2007, boasts a wide knowledge of the classical repertoire, including its peripheral reaches, and has a generous enthusiasm to match it. His account starts with music in ancient civilisations, and then takes us, via Gregorian chant and Hildegard of Bingen, to the towering works of Leonin, Perotin and Machaut. Indeed, some of the best chapters in the book are those which deal with “early music”, delving in detail into its development leading to the masters of Renaissance polyphony.
Not that the subsequent chapters are any less questing. Yes, the usual suspects are there – J.S. Bach gets an important chapter (as he deserves, I hasten to add), but rather than being portrayed as some lone beacon in a musical wasteland, Kenyon shows us how much the great composer owed to other luminaries. This account of the Baroque is not monopolized by any one figure, but features a roll-call of composers, from Monteverdi to Francesca Caccini, Vivaldi to Barbara Strozzi, Rameau to Lully, Purcell to Zelenka. Kenyon applies the same approach to more recent eras – the general reader will recognize many well-known composers but will surely discover others in the process. Indeed, one need not be a specialist to enjoy this volume – I would say its ideal reader would be a lover of classical music keen to gain a better understanding of the subject and seek new repertoire.
The book is complemented
by an appendix with “100 great works by 100 great composers in 100 great
performances”. It’s an interesting list
to dip into and explore. You can look up the corresponding playlist on Spotify – its eclecticism gives a good idea of the “new adventures” which
this book takes us on.
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