Relevance and Marginalisation in Scandinavian and European Performing Arts 1770–1860

Questioning Canons

Randi Margrete Selvik, Svein Gladsø, Annabella Skagen, Randi Margrete Selvik, Svein Gladsø, Annabella Skagen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000296570
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art général

Relevance and Marginalisation in Scandinavian and European Performing Arts 1770–1860: Questioning Canons reveals how various cultural processes have influenced what has been included, and what has been marginalised from canons of European music, dance, and theatre around the turn of the nineteenth century and the following decades.

This collection of essays includes discussion of the piano repertory for young ladies in England; canonisation of the French minuet; marginalisation of the popular German dramatist Kotzebue from the dramatic canon; dance repertory and social life in Christiania (Oslo); informal cultural activities in Trondheim; repertory of Norwegian musical clocks; female itinerant performers in the Nordic sphere; preconditions, dissemination, and popularity of equestrian drama; marginalisation and amateur staging of a Singspiel by the renowned Danish playwright Oehlenschläger, also with perspectives on the music and its composers; and the perceived relevance of Henrik Ibsen's staged theatre repertory and early dramas.

By questioning established notions about canon, marginalisation, and relevance within the performing arts in the period 1770–1860, this book asserts itself as an intriguing text both to the culturally interested public and to scholars and students of musicology, dance research, and theatre studies.

1The (pre)history of canons

Svein Gladsø

Introduction

The starting point and the basis of this anthology was a series of conferences staged by a research project examining, among other topics, canonisation and marginalisation processes in the history of performing arts. Canonisation, in particular, was brought to the forefront in a concluding conference of the project in 2016: ‘Re-searching relevance; Questioning canons of music, dance and theatre, around 1800ʼ.¹

The issue of canonisation was approached in the last conference through two related questions: (1) in what way have criticism and academia contributed to canonisation in the three artistic fields in question? and (2) what role has academia played in bringing marginalised works of art back to attention? The questions were stated generally but were intended to act as invitations to reflect on processes of canonisation within the specific fields of music, theatre, and dance.

As the questions indicate, the conference chose to focus not only on the situation around 1800, but also on the contemporary situation, hoping to display continuities and differences in the approaches to canonisation in general. We know from other fields of canon studies that there are different lines of interest; above all, there is a division between historically oriented studies and works on contemporary curricula and education. In the literary discourse on canon formation, which in many ways has led the way in the debate concerning the concept of canon during the last decades, the relationship between canon and curricula has been a core concern. Harold Bloom’s (1994) The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages represented a watershed in the debate. Bloom’s work was, to some extent, an answer to widespread worries over alleged threats to the Western literary canon by political and ideological streams of thought found in higher education. On the other hand, many scholars and critics regarded the contribution by Bloom as an attempt to restrict the influence of deconstruction and the attempts to revise the established canon promoted by feminists and other critical voices in academia.

German literary historians Robert Charlier and Günther Lottes reflect on this predominantly political emphasis in what they term the ‘relatively young field of canon research’ in their 2009 volume Kanonbildung: Protagonisten und Prozesse der Herstellung kultureller Identität.² According to Charlier and Lottes, it was understandable, in light of globalism and the focus on reversal of cultural hierarchies, that the new discourse of canon in literature around 1990 became polarised and political. To enrich the understanding of canon formation, making it less ‘political’ and more general, they promoted a connection between the political focus of the 1990s and the older tradition of research in ‘classicism’ as it was practised by Germanists and other literary scholars. Following Charlier and Lottes, to understand the processes and their outcomes – whenever they take place – it is necessary to look at canon formation as Herstellung (making) of Klassizität (classicism), and in particular, in the perspective of cultural identity. The understanding of canonisation as identity formation can be found at least implicitly in theatre studies, musicology, and dance studies, and most clearly when the process is identified as a part of nation-building processes. The notion of classicism is aptly used in all three areas covered by this anthology, though based on the theoretical traditions belonging to each field, rather than the literary one. One important point in the study of the history of canons, stressed by Charlier, is the distinction between canonisation as a contingent and/or incidental development based on different conditions, on the one hand, and the norm-based and deliberate production of ‘poets and thinkers by their admirers, critics, academic or media institutions’, on the other hand.³ This opposition is touched upon frequently also in ‘our’ fields when scholars address the core question of how canons come to exist. As we shall see, the study of canons also benefits from a host of other oppositions, ideal types as well as those based on empirical studies. Some of these are touched upon in the German discourse exemplified by the work of Charlier and Lottes, for instance, the opposite poles of Materialer Kanon versus Deutungskanon (the canon as performed vs. the interpretations of the same), Idealer Kanon versus Realer Kanon, and Gruppenkanon versus Institutionelle Kanon, to mention the most recognisable.⁴ The authors remind the readers that even in the field of literature, one has only recently seen the development of ‘intersubjectively accepted concepts’.⁵ Written in 1998 as a characterisation of the situation in the productive field of literature studies, this is even more true in the performing arts today.

Therefore, the observation made early during our research project that there was a lack of systematic and subject-specific approach to canon issues within the scholarly fields in question came as no surprise. At the same time, this may seem to be a paradox, considering that certain concepts of canon in fact have been used actively for some time, especially in theatre and music criticism. As a more academic approach was gradually established within the fields of music, theatre, and dance during the 1980s, it was, not surprisingly, musicologists who led the way. Music criticism has for centuries focused on ways to ‘objectify’ music in order to obtain the status of work of art in a much more definite way than within theatre and dance – especially dance.

Scholars seem to agree that a clear-cut concept of canon did not circulate within music, theatre, and dance in the decades that the anthology covers – the late 1700s and the early 1800s. This does not imply an absence of reflection on what we, in hindsight, may designate as canonic processes. Scholars working with canonisation duly point to the conceptual problems dealing with the issue. Using concepts covering similar processes and phenomena (such as ‘masterpieces’ and ‘classics’) has been a recurrent answer to the challenge. Another preferred position, admitting that it may produce anachronisms, is to claim that the processes observed are, in fact, best described and analysed precisely using the concepts of canon and canon formation. This, in turn, urges for the development of a consistent framework, capable of dealing with both historical and contemporary phenomena. As we, the organisers of the conference, chose to ask for contributions covering the role of art criticism and academia in the formation of canons around 1800, this was done exactly in accordance with the latter perspective – discussing canonisation both before and after the age of explicit formulation of canons. We chose to invite discussions about the turn of the century (around 1800) as a ‘pre-canonic’ phase, without using a very clear definition of canon or linking it to other similar or overlapping concepts. The ambition was to have contributions discussing the early establishment of frameworks relating to institutions, craftsmanship or aesthetics for what later in the century emerged clearly as canons. In this introduction, we will give a survey over seminal contributions by scholars from different disciplines – demonstrating possible approaches to conceptualisation and methodology. This account is also meant to be a backdrop for the reading of the anthology, presenting a rough and tentative genealogy of the theory of canon and canon formation within the disciplines in question. The selection of scholars and theories is done explicitly with the scope of an anthology in mind, and the prime criterion for the selection, in addition to covering the disciplines, has been to have typical and relevant positions represented.

As already mentioned, no specific theoretical framing was presented for the purpose of the 2016 conference and the subsequent anthology. The contributors have been invited to utilise whatever understanding of canon and canon formation they might find appropriate. The consequence of such an open approach to the concept of canon is that the individual chapters are to very different degrees based on clear-cut and formulated understandings of what canonisation means. In any case, the chapters either contribute with accounts of circumstances that led to what we later have recognised as canon, or they describe phenomena that were marginalised and ‘left out’ during the establishment of the hegemony of canons. The thematic scope of the chapters spans the role of performance practices in the formation of canon, canon as ‘idea’ versus canon as manifest repertory, and canon’s dependence on political and ideological bearings (such as nationalism). Also, some of the chapters use the concept of canon referring to artistic phenomena that we today know never reached canonic status. This includes genres and forms that gradually were defined as entertainment (not art proper) or matters that had a character of unpredictability or privacy that did not allow inclusion in a concept of canon.

Music

As noted earlier, musicology was the scholarly field that first followed in the wake of literary studies in developing a discipline-specific theory of canonisation. A thematic issue of Critical Inquiry in 1983, which was almost exclusively dedicated to the literary canon, included a chapter with the unassuming title ‘A Few Canonic Variations’ by musicologist Joseph Kerman, which has become a recurrent reference for later studies. The editor of the issue, Robert von Hallberg, pointing to the proliferation of studies on the formation of canon in educational arenas in general, identified a threefold motivation for drawing attention to reflection on canon and its formation: (1) how do performers influence the formation of canon through their professional choices?, (2) in which ways do critics and academia construct canons? and (3) in which ways do established canons impinge on teaching and professional training?⁶ Obviously, these are the questions with a strong relevance to performing arts, and in his article, Joseph Kerman linked the discussion of musical canon to the more general discussion of canons. Kerman did not propose a definition of canon for musicologists, but rather identified some core issues for further analyses of canons – historic as well as contemporary. The most ‘theoretical’ point presented by Kerman – and the most controversial – was his sharp divide between canon and repertory.⁷ According to Kerman, canons are produced by critics, while repertories are produced by performers/artists. Of course, the relationship between canon and repertory must be historicised and treated adequately for the field in question, but, to Kerman, the main point was that canon formation presupposes the kind of discursive activity typical of critics. Kerman also emphasised that parts of canons are formed independently of the choices of performers and producers and concert managers. In fact, there are several good examples that composers were added to the canon before they appeared regularly in repertories (Bach and Lully being the most obvious examples). Just as important, Kerman pointed out that the repertories of performers were often very little affected by established canons and the judgements of the critics. To performers and audiences, the market, with its exchanges of supply and demand, was often more important than the opinions of connoisseurs. Furthermore, Kerman emphasised how material factors always affect the formation of canons, which in the field of music has been demonstrated most strikingly when recording technologies occurred, radically changing the conditions for the establishment of canons. And finally, Kerman asked when the use of the concept of canon is adequate at all; strictly speaking, we should not use the notion of canon before the times when repertories started to be supplemented by ‘old’ music, that is, music composed more than 40 years before the present time. With some exceptions (i.e. Lully), this kind of supplementation first happened around 1820–1830. Before this, according to Kerman, it does not make sense to speak of canon in music. Regardless of discussions about such criteria, Kerman points to important preconditions for real canonisation processes evolving around 1800, and in particular three factors: (1) the development of the institution of concerts and of virtuosos, (2) the rise of the bourgeois citizen as audience member, dilettante per...