De-Canonizing Music History

This book is about musical canons and de-canonizing music history. Whenever music is critically examined, it is disciplined, ordered, and corrected; the canon functions as a basic tool in defining the scope of this disciplining. In recent music history, however, there has emerged a strong need to redefine the limits of the disciplining and to criticize the principles of canon formation. De-canonizing can be seen as a tool in this critique. This book also shows how different styles and traditions in music have formed their own canons. Its main goal is to deconstruct these canons: to describe, analyze and problematize them in their variety. De-canonizing also refers to artistic crossover and cross-border encounters. In this book art meets popular, ethnic meets education, and avantgarde meets mainstream. Here musical past meets modern musicology, its various trends-and canons.