Music educators (particularly anyone in HE covering 'classical music' (WAM): thread with real talk and big questions, on the role of the 'canon', ongoing critiques of it, and why we might need more of it, rather than less (bear with me...)

Lots of our teaching (well, mine at least) builds on conversations from the 80s/90s about the function of the classical 'canon', how it reflects inequalities, racism, colonial attitudes, gender relations, etc.

We coach students through critical thinking that seeks to question and expand the 'canon', to understand the reasons for its formation, and then to think beyond it (and rightly so).

A big obstacle to all of this keeps coming up every year I teach it, and it's getting bigger and bigger: increasingly, students don't know the 'canon' of classical music.

I stress first and foremost, this is not the students' fault (and I'm not trying to find fault with anyone, here). If anything, it should be up to music departments to adapt to the changing needs of their students.

Historically, traditional school-level teaching (GCSE, A-Level, other curricula) focused very heavily on teaching music history as the 'canon', perhaps alongside youth ensembles that played stalwarts of canonic repertoire.

Over time, music education has changed (a great deal, in many cases). The education that most music instructors received no longer exists. HE instructors in classical music can't take it for granted that new students already know the vast body of the 'canon'.

The biggest challenge that arises: we skip straight to 'critique of the canon', without students actually learning any of the core knowledge of classical music (putting to one side ethics of this knowledge - it's still knowledge that the far majority of classical musicians know).

Without the core body of knowledge, classical music as an object of study doesn't necessarily become a field that can (and should) be expanded from a central body of knowledge, concepts, and repertoire: instead, it becomes an amorphous collection without a centre.

We're potentially failing in our duty to students if they emerge from a degree with specialism in 'classical music' and they don't actually know the pieces/styles/composers that are widely assumed to be the core knowledge.

It's a class issue: private-school students more frequently receive the 'traditional' type of education, with well-funded youth ensembles that still perform the stalwart repertoires. State schools rarely even provide subsidised music lessons today.

The students who come into our classes ready to critique the canon (because they already know it) are more likely to be privately-educated. Those from state schools are less likely to know the core classical repertoire in advance, so can be left 'adrift'.

Of course, ideally, graduates should be able to do both: intimately know 'core' repertoire, but also think critically to move beyond and expand it. At the moment, I'm worried we're focusing on the latter without much consideration of the former.

In short, I think music HE should be considering re-investing in some sense of 'core canonic teaching' if a degree that includes 'classical music' is to mean anything. (end).

(appendix 1): I taught 'intro to classical music history' course years ago. I thought I'd be radical and teach everything 'beyond' the canon (topics included 'the Symphony after Beethoven', 'opera in the wake of Wagner', etc). After 2 weeks, I had to re-write the whole course.

Students just simply did not know the assumed 'basics' of the classical repertoire, so there was not much point trying to teach everything 'beyond and around' it. I stress, it wasn't students' fault - but it's a microcosm of the whole issue I laid out in the thread above.