>What changed around 1800 was how widespread the acclaim for these musicians became. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were the first composers to have European-wide reputations that outlasted them.
A couple of things caused this: 1. development of commercial mechanisms to allow publishing and distribution continent-wide (culture-wide). 2. the rise of a middle class to buy music (and perhaps doing so as a way of taking on the airs of the upper class). Before that time music was largely local (with many notable exceptions, of course, but none with the reach of either of the Classical period's big three). So, I would argue that the beginning of the Classical canon is probably a result of the industrial revolution. There's also a huge role in there for the rise of German nationalism, but that's another thesis entirely. -- David W. Fenton Both 1) and 2) were well established long before 1800, though admittedly not so strongly. As for the localism of earlier music, I would suggest that at the very least Lully and Corelli (not to mention, e.g., Josquin des Prez and Palestrina) had continent-wide fame and influence, and virtually all major Bq. composers had significant influence beyond the borders of their own nations. But the main argument against this theory is that neither the rise of the middle class nor of music publishing could have had any effect on the main cause of music's ephemerality, which was fashion, pure and simple. The aging Schuetz, writing to request a pension from his employer, quoted an overheard conversation in which someone remarked (punning on the Thirty Years War) that "a thirty-years cantor and a thirty-years tailor are of no use to anybody in this world." Even today composers' reputations tend to take a big hit when they are in their seventies, then rise again later (regardless of when they actually die). When I was a college freshman in 1964 the conventional wisdom RE Stravinsky was that he had written a handful of undeniably great works in his youth, but had gone steadily downhill ever since. Ten years later it was fashionable to sneer at Copland, Hindemith, and Shostakovich. In 1900, Gottschalk was considered a bad joke. Only a few years ago Crumb was being dismissed in certain circles as a has-been. I could go on forever. Before 1800, when a composer went out of fashion, the decline was irreversible, and the composer would become totally forgotten. What changed things was the Romantic cult of genius, which held that a great work of art was of permanent and unchanging value, a notion that we still maintain. Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press htp://home.netcom.com/~kallisti _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
