The Christopher Small Reader. Christopher Small G.

      

      The Christopher Small Reader

       ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER SMALL

      Music, Society, Education

      Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African American Music

      Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening

      Edited by Robert Walser

       THE CHRISTOPHER SMALL READER

      Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

       www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      © 2016 The Estate of Christopher Small

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill

      Typeset in Minion Pro

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Small, Christopher, 1927–2011. | Walser, Robert, editor.

      Title: The Christopher Small reader /

      Christopher Small; edited by Robert Walser.

      Description: Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, [2016] |

      Series: Music/culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2015048308 (print) | LCCN 2015051357 (ebook) |

      ISBN 9780819576392 (cloth : alk. paper) |

      ISBN 9780819576408 (pbk. : alk.paper) | ISBN 9780819576415 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Music—Philosophy and aesthetics. | Music—Social aspects. |

      Musicology. | Small, Christopher, 1927–2011.

      Classification: LCC ML423.S58 A25 2016 (print) |

      LCC ML423.S58 (ebook) | DDC 780—dc23

      LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048308

      5 4 3 2 1

      Cover illustration: Painting of Christopher Small and Neville Braithwaite performing in Sitges, Spain (Unsigned and undated.) Formerly in the collection of Christopher Small and Neville Braithwaite, now in the collection of Robert Walser and Susan McClary. Photo by Robert Walser.

       CONTENTS

       Editor’s Introduction by Robert Walser vii

       Autobiography (2004; rev. 2008) 1

       Introduction to Music, Society, Education (1977) 15

       A Different Drummer—American Music: From Music, Society, Education (1977) 20

       Introduction to Music of the Common Tongue (1987) 50

       Styles of Encounter III—Jazz: From Music of the Common Tongue (1987) 62

       Whose Music Do We Teach, Anyway? (1990) 87

       Introduction to Musicking: Prelude: Music and Musicking (1998) 95

       A Solitary Flute Player: From Musicking (1977) 114

       Interview by Robert Christgau (2000) 120

       The Sardana and Its Meanings (2003) 150

       Why Doesn’t the Whole World Love Chamber Music? (2001) 153

       Creative Reunderstandings (2005) 173

       Rock Concert (2002) 186

       Exploring, Affirming, Celebrating—and Teaching (2003) 189

       Deep and Crisp and Even (2008) 200

       Six Aphorisms and Five Commentaries (2007) 207

       Afterword: On Music Education (2009) 217

       Pelicans (2009) 227

       Afterword by Susan McClary: Remembering Neville Braithwaite 230

       Acknowledgments 233

       Index 235

       INTRODUCTION

       Robert Walser

      I am 75 years old and I have learnt that we are on the earth to enjoy it together. Music serves to explore our identity, helps us to know who we are, and to celebrate it.

       Christopher Small ¹

      Christopher Small was born in New Zealand in 1927 and died in Spain in 2011 at the age of eighty-four, having spent much of his life teaching in London. I believe he was the most profound musical thinker of the twentieth century. I say that because the breadth and depth of his work, in which he drew upon his training as both a scientist and an artist, his accomplishments as a classical musician and as a devoted student of African American music, and his practical experiences as a composer, a pianist, an accompanist, and a teacher, enabled him to become the consummate insider/outsider who could empathetically challenge our assumptions about the nature of music and help us account for the pleasures that it gives us.

      Mikhail Bakhtin wrote powerfully about the importance of outsiders for helping insiders understand the significance of things they had taken for granted. Chris, as a New Zealander, as a gay man, as someone without a doctoral degree who had strong opinions about higher education, and as an enthusiastic amateur musician, had forged an identity that didn’t quite fit into the contexts he inhabited during most of his life. And that helped enable him to become an original thinker. Yet it is also true that the insider brings to bear crucial intimate knowledge. The writers who are normally ranked highest in explaining the significance of the classical music tradition have been mostly quite parochial, and they usually did not even imagine that they should try to place that sort of music making in a larger context of human activity. More anthropologically oriented scholars have typically not had