I put little stock in isms. They tend to contract rather than expand the minds that get attached to them. So it was only after long reflection and with considerable circumspection that I finally settled on the expression "musical historicism" to characterize—but not to delimit—my creative activity as a composer.

The term historicism suffers from a plethora of meanings, some of them peevishly contradictory. In certain circles, historicism still refers to the theory that history is shaped not by human agency but by changeless laws. I am not sure I care for that definition. Scholars also use the term to describe the theory that culture is historically determined and must be understood without imposing any personal or absolute values. I am sure there is more to that proposition than meets the eye. Some even use historicism to signify a deep or excessive respect for tradition, which to my ears sounds insufferably stuffy and sanctimonious.¹

Those who espouse or practice some form of historicism are, reasonably enough, called historicists. There are the so-called "new historicists" (evidently to distinguish themselves from "old historicists"), voluminously engaged in postmodern literary criticism. There are legal and constitutional historicists who study how history, sometimes rightly but often wrongly, has affected decision-making. There are theological historicists who contend, contrary to their divine adversaries, the futurists, that biblical prophecy has already been fulfilled. And among anthropologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there were even cohorts of historicists who, as adherents of either diffusionism or particularism, variously argued that culture was the unique creation of the ancient Egyptians, the consequence of independently expanding concentric circles, or simply the result of happy (or unhappy) accidents. (So far as I can tell, neither of these theories prevailed, since the very definition of culture proved far too elusive.)²

Given its hydra-headed semantics, why would any composer risk his reputation—if not his sanity—by taking up the banner of historicism? The answer is simply because that term has long been in use by artists and architects to describe an aesthetic orientation conducive to the creation of new works that are in some significant way informed by the past. What is more, historicism and historicist in this sense are already familiar to contemporary musicians, as the following examples demonstrate:

Brahms's historical awareness found resonance in his own music. His choral music drew heavily on the models of Renaissance and Baroque polyphony, uniting old methods with modern musical language in works that represent a peak in musical historicism. He is currently revising his PhD dissertation—'Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music'—for publication by Cambridge University Press. Like Mendelssohn, Bruckner could be a musical "historicist,'' that is, some of his pieces look back to earlier genres and styles.3