Principles of Neglected Musical Repertoire

Abstract

NEGLECTED MUSICAL REPERTOIRE can most simply be defined as music that is good, if not great, but does not receive its fair share of performances. Determining goodness and greatness can be a fruitless exercise in semantics. Trying to find the minimal criterion of musical worth-that a piece deserves to be heard again-calls on at least peripheral examination of the historical, cultural, social, pedagogical, psychological, and physiological aspects of the music in question. Today's musical repertoire is at its greatest extent. The choral conductor's repertoire goes back to the seventh century, the solo singer's to the eleventh, the orchestra and opera conductor's to the seventeenth. Thanks to the activities of musicologists and intellectually curious performers, there is now more music available to be heard and performed than ever before and, with a few exceptions, the main problem in building a repertoire is selectivity. Yet even the standard repertoire needs periodic reevaluation; yesterday's standard item is often today's warhorse and tomorrow's neglected composition. What reasons are there for the changes in musical taste that result in neglected musical repertoire and its subsequent revival? Several answers have been proposed. One is that composers' reputations undergo fluctuations like stocks and bonds. Another view is that neglected musical rep ertoire is the result of a kind of Darwinian natural selection. In opposition, a small group would postulate a musical Gresham's Law, that the bad music drives out the good: the reason why the symphonies of Tchaikovsky are more popular than those of Bruckner. A few perceive the history of music as a giant escalator operating on predetermined laws, with historical necessity dictating the rise and fall of genres and composers; this view is most prevalent among Marxist critics. Those who abandon attempts at formulating systems would say that the success, neglect, or rediscovery of a given musical composition depends on capricious chance and historical accident. All of these statements, contradictory though they seem, contain kernels of truth. But the history of music contains several factors that help explain the neglect and revival of compositions of value. Different procedures have been employed in examining the principles of neglected repertoire: case studies of how and, more speculatively, why