Constructing a Canon

Studying Forty Years of the Norton Anthology of Western Music

Abstract

The Norton Anthology of Music has enjoyed a long and influential history as one of the most important resources in the undergraduate music history classroom and has exerted some influence on almost every musician in the field today. This article studies the repertoire from the eight editions of the anthology to better understand the anthology's creation and development. While the anthology's editors have made significant changes to these editions over the past forty years, this article contends that those changes are not keeping pace with the changing field. Each edition has started with the prior edition as a foundation, which brings a host of prior decisions and potentially outdated values into the new anthology. After a historical study of the eight editions, this article uses that historical context to recommend changes to the anthology, changes that would take more impactful steps to overhaul the modern pedagogical canon. These changes would add greater diversity (both in genre and demography) and challenge the restrictive narrative that pervades many of the style periods in the anthology.