Adventures in Fear and Discovery: Learning Music Outside the Canon, Part 2

Before we get into it, I’m going to be totally honest with you guys: I was floored by the reaction to my last post. The subject was so niche and I thought the issues were so dense and complex that I figured maybe three people would skim it, and I would have been thrilled—thrilled!—if one person eventually said something nice to me about it.

I did not expect the link to get liked and tweeted hundreds of times, both by professionals in the field who I deeply admire, and by total strangers who sent me messages saying they had experienced the exact same things. (I got enough of these messages and comments that I realized my assumption that there’s no demand for published non-standard historical works was totally wrong. There is a demand, and it’s high time publishers did something about it.) I did not expect people in music to write to me telling me that I’d changed their perspective on their work, or people outside of music to tell me that they’d learned a lot about classical music from my post. I did not expect to get messages of advice and support from librarians, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside because, man, I love librarians so much.

It all made me painfully cognizant of one thing: I was a dolt who had referred to an esteemed composer as “my homegirl” and said things like “my dudes, it was real bad” in an Intellectual Piece of Writing that actual smart people read, you guys.

However, because it would be poor form to suddenly change writing styles on you, you’re going to get more Glib Millennial Writing in List Form Complete With GIFs©, because I must preserve the integrity of the Art.

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So, let’s pick back up where we left off. We’ve been over some of the weird, specific hurdles that stand in the way of playing music by non-canonic composers (which in my experience is women composers, but this also applies to POC and LGBTQ+ composers.)

It would be disingenuous to claim that it’s all downside. I’ve only just embarked on this journey—and I’m in awe of all of you out there who have been doing this work longer than I have—but I’ve already discovered so many beautiful, wonderful benefits to wandering off the beaten path.

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Adventures in Fear and Discovery: Learning Music Outside the Canon, Part 1

It’s been a hot minute since the last time I wrote here—between then and now there have been thousands of miles of air travel, a lot of faffing about on Instagram Stories, even more unprofessional faffing about on Twitter, a whole new language learned(-ish), many performances with and without other people, a move to a new city, a wild midterm election, a truly terrible season of House of Cards, several excellent high-grossing movies, some awful movies that made a lot of money anyway, some excellent movies that didn’t make enough money, the discovery of an awesome TV show, and the slow realization that although I haven’t had enough time for all the sleep I should have gotten this year I somehow had the time to watch a lot of movies and TV.

Hmm.

When I wrote last year’s post about branching out of standard piano repertoire (recap: it’s all by white dudes) to explore music by women and people of color, I’ll admit I had a secret little fear that I wouldn’t be able to follow through and that my good intentions would wilt and I’d go back to my usual diet of Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin.

Well, I’ve been chugging along at my personal crusade of searching out and learning music by female composers, and I’m happy to report that 1) I haven’t given up, and 2) I have a lot to say about the journey so far, which has been a roller coaster of fear and discovery (hence the blog title). There are a lot of unique challenges that come with straying from the canon, as well as a lot of really special bonuses that you don’t get playing music from the standard menu.

This post will be a two-parter, because I started writing this and it got…really long. So Part 1 will focus on the challenges I’ve encountered so far, and Part 2 will be all about the wonderful, magical parts of the process that (spoiler alert!) make the challenges worth it.

So let’s get into this, shall we?

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A list of normal-person things I have done in the past few weeks

For better or for worse, concert season tends to distill my life into a caveman-style existence. Near the end of my March-April-May run, my daily routine involved practicing madly from early morning to late at night, keeping myself awake by overdosing on Earl Grey (yes, the tea—it’s not some fancy new slang for drugs), subsisting on whatever I’d ordered from DoorDash for the day, and never leaving the house.

These long bouts of solitude were punctuated by, of course, my actual performances, which involved putting on real clothes and switching into meet-and-greet, Q&A mode, which thoroughly confused and entertained the atrophied social centers of my brain.

I emerged from the latest spate of concerts, blinking confusedly in the sunlight, having almost forgotten what a normal life looked like. I have since spent the past couple of weeks diving into doing Very Normal Things that I think Normal People do. Here is a list of those things:

    1. I have put on clothes that are not A) pajamas or B) red dresses and I have left the house! Several times!
       
    2. I have re-discovered the joy that is fresh, non-takeout food. I have been joyfully eating kale every single day for…uh, many days. And fruit! [immediately puts “fresh fruit” on all riders from here on out]
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    3. I saw a movie. That movie was Captain America: Civil War and when Chris Evans said [spoiler] “Thank you, Sharon,” in the movie, I said “You’re welcome” out loud in the movie theater.
       
    4. Bryce and I went to Disneyland, where I drove a kiddie convertible.

      A photo posted by Sharon Su (@doodlyroses) on

    5. Then we came back and I got an actual convertible.
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      (This is not a drill. I now drive this car.)
       
    6. I made decorated a cake.
       
    7. Did I mention that I’ve put on real clothes and left the house? I don’t think I mentioned that. Hey you guys, I’ve been putting on real clothes and leaving the house! NORMAL PERSON STUFF.