Epilogue
This brief epilogue addresses the relationship—historical and present—between the exclusivity of the priestly performing persona and the development and perpetuation of canonical compositions. The author suggests that the two reinforce each other; Clara Schumann’s status as a priestess was informed by her selection of certain repertoire, but at the same time her “restrained” performance of the pieces helped mark them as serious works worthy of preservation. Jumping to today’s world of performance, the author analyzes the rhetoric in a New York Times article by Anthony Tommasini comparing two young pianists. The juxtaposition of these sources suggests that some nineteenth-century values of priestly performance, such as “seriousness” and “modesty,” still inform music criticism today.