Let’s Just Say Bach Wrote It
Cleaning Up the Universe of Classical Music
Organists aside, does anyone really care about Baroque organ music? I say this not to denigrate the period or the medium, but rather to lament that fact that so much magnificent stuff goes unnoticed by the public at large, while the same few famous works of Bach get played (and transcribed) over and over again. There’s no question that Bach’s output for the instrument remains incomparably the greatest in existence taken as a whole, but even within this sacred body of material much controversy arises about attribution, mostly resulting from the dearth of original manuscripts in the great man’s own hand. Issuing more and more organ CDs by unknown composers certainly isn’t doing much to change the public’s preferences or repertoire priorities, and one also has to question the practical value of disproving Bach’s authorship of a well loved favorite.
So I propose a solution: relegate names like Walter, Böhm, Pachelbel, and even Buxtehude to the footnotes of history, and simply say that all of their music is by Bach. After all, being greater than any of them he certainly could have written their best works had he wanted to, and the extent to which we value them largely rests on the reputation of those few pieces that can withstand comparison to Bach’s. So let’s just accept the inevitable and be done with it. This approach offers the dual advantage of tabling once and for all the question of attribution with respect to Bach’s own works (the answer to that question being: Who cares?), while greatly increasing the chances that the general public will listen to at least some of these guys once in a while. Purist scholars and performers will, of course, be horrified, but I suspect most organists would enjoy the additional opportunities for employment and recognition that would be created by richly expanding the repertoire of the only Baroque composer for their instrument who enjoys widespread name recognition (OK, Pachelbel is known independently for you-know-what, but Bach could have composed that trifle one morning while sitting on the toilet).
Perhaps this idea sounds heretical. It really isn’t. The art world has been doing the same thing for centuries. How many times have we seen lovely paintings hanging on the walls of museums, or in the pages of art history books, simply labeled “School of Rembrandt,” “School of Titian,” or “Studio of Rubens?” There’s nothing unusual there at all. Many great works of art lack clear attribution but obviously fall within certain stylistic parameters, and, more to the point, are by no means inferior to the authentic article. What fairer way could there be to give “one shot wonders” and otherwise anonymous artists the public exposure they deserve, while at the same time avoiding the confusion of a huge pileup of unfamiliar names or (even worse) encouraging the public to plough through frustrating reams of dreck in search of one or two authentic masterpieces? Let us imagine for a moment how clean and simple the classical repertoire would look if my suggestion becomes general practice.
Sticking with organ music, the entire field could be reduced to four composers. All Baroque music for the instrument would be by Bach. Romantic music would obviously fall to Franck and Widor, while the modern school of organ writing must be the sole province of Messiaen. Anything earlier than Bach comes from Frescobaldi, no matter what keyboard instrument it’s actually written for, and if this starts to get too bulky we can always resurrect Sweelinck, but that’s the absolute limit. All French harpsichord music is by Couperin and all viol music is by Marais. French Baroque operas are by Rameau; all the Italian ones are by Handel. Earlier vocal music with instruments is by Monteverdi. Vocal music without instruments (if sacred) goes to Palestrina, whose bland style (let’s face it) could use a little shot in the arm. Baroque concertos that aren’t by Bach are by Vivaldi. Handel would hardly miss his small handful because he gets Vivaldi’s operas, so it’s a fair trade. Case closed.
The Classical Period has always been dominated by Haydn and Mozart, so why do we need to waste time with names like Boccherini, Hoffmeister, Beck, Dittersdorf, Cimarosa, Stamitz, Richter, Vanhal, and even Hummel? Let’s simply adopt the obvious solution: if the music ends in a minor key and uses chromaticism, it must be by Mozart. If it employs monothematic sonata form and has a sense of humor, it’s a lost work of Haydn. All worthy operas and concertos are Mozart’s; string quartets and symphonies are Haydn’s. In a pinch, if some doubt remains regarding attribution, we can always hedge our bets and say “Studio of Haydn.” After all, he had many students and lived a long life. If the music was composed after 1800 but before 1820 it’s by Beethoven unless it’s an opera, in which case it’s by Rossini or (when in German) Weber. After 1820 or so we have a brief window of opportunity to greatly expand Schubert’s output, after which no one except Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and Schumann wrote orchestral music that anyone cares about until the mid 19th century. Some eras are inherently tidy.
All 19th century German operas longer than four hours are by Wagner. Shorter than that they are “School of Weber.” French grand operas are by Meyerbeer (See ya! Reyer, Halevy, etc.). Italian operas, obviously, must be by Verdi, even if this necessarily means that he composed some of them more than once. Won’t that make comparison interesting? Thickly scored, conservative, late 19th century German-style symphonies are by Brahms, including all of that dull English stuff by Stanford, Parry and their ilk. Flashy 19th century piano music is by Liszt (given the ever expanding size of Hyperion’s ongoing complete edition, this may well turn out to be true in fact), while more soulful, melodically haunting pieces are by Chopin. Ballets are either by Tchaikovsky or Delibes--absolutely no exceptions permitted. All 19th century British music is by Sir Arthur Sullivan (if it isn’t by Brahms). Between 1900 and 1930, it’s by Elgar, and after that Britten. American music is by Copland. Period.
Think of how much more attention a worthy composer such as Chabrier would have received by now if we simply referred to him as “early Ravel.” And just imagine the enormous size and international character of the “School of Debussy.” Why, we could forget about everyone from Cyril Scott to Charles Martin Loeffler and Joseph Marx! Oh happy day! Hans Rott’s entertaining symphony doesn’t just sound like and anticipate Mahler, it must in fact be Mahler’s youthful, long believed lost “Nordic” Symphony. Until the 1950s, all Finnish music worth hearing was unquestionably written by Sibelius, and isn’t it wonderful that his reputed compositional silence after the late 1920s has turned out to be a myth? Shameful, how these stories get started! Oh yes, I almost forgot; all 12-tone music is by Schoenberg and there’s only one minimalist: Phillip Glass. Perhaps he has a split personality.
Proceeding along these lines, I’m sure that the entire world of classical music can be reduced to a mere handful of names, making the basic repertoire really, truly basic and giving collectors a lifetime of fascinating listening discoveries as they follow their personal enthusiasm for the few composers who really matter. Of course, to keep from stretching the bounds of credulity, it may be necessary to change the dates of a few individual pieces, or add some extra years to either end of a composer’s life, but that strikes me as a very small price to pay for the overwhelming advantages in convenience and manageability that would be gained. In considering this elegant and eminently sensible approach, we can only wonder why it is that music, alone among the arts, insists on trying to preserve the individual identities of artists incapable of anything more than the occasional flash of genius, even if this means denying them what small recognition they undoubtedly deserve from the public at large.
It’s high time that musical scholarship started serving the needs of normal people rather than narcissistically celebrating the endless cataloging of tedious facts about the (mostly) tedious works of (mostly) tedious composers. We all know who the great ones really were, and we also know that as long as they remain the standard by which their contemporaries are measured, then they very well could have authored those scattered masterpieces as well. Who knows? Maybe some of them, in a fit of generosity towards desperate colleagues, actually did just that. It could have happened, and the fact that an artist signs his name to a manuscript score doesn’t mean that he’s solely responsible for its musical content. Sure, perhaps he copied the notes down on paper, but did he actually think up the whole work--by himself? Don’t you believe it! By giving the unambiguously great the benefit of the doubt, and the credit that their talents deserve, it would be a win/win situation for everyone, listeners especially.
David Hurwitz
