Western music not the only“masterwork”

To the Editors:

I wish the best of luck to the new incarnation of the Oberlin String Quartet, reported on the Oberlin website. I was struck, though, by the wording of Mr. Fulkerson’s “hope to represent the highest musical ideals of the Conservatory by performing the great masterworks of the quartet literature in meticulously prepared and compellingly envisioned performances.” While I don’t mean to construe this language as intentionally polemical, it does raise questions about whether the “great masterworks” can be accepted uncritically and whether some might object to representing all Conservatory community members as striving for the same goals.

Deep strains of exclusion, classism and misogynism forcefully inform this literature and the latter-day mythologies that surround it. We can certainly cultivate the aesthetic joys to which Mr. Fulkerson alludes, but we must also recognize and celebrate perspectives which ignore, subvert or otherwise do violence to the primacy of the Western Music canon.

I hope that the Oberlin Quartet ponders these issues; I also urge them to espouse, as our representatives, a broad and vigorous critique of existing musical pedagogy in their activities as chamber music performers and teachers. —Aaron Judd, Double-degree senior
 
 

About us
Subscriptions
Advertising

Previous issue
Older issues