What is musicology 2013

What is Musicology?

l What is your definition?

What is it for?

l And why study it?

Cook’s Very Short Introduction to Musicology

A book about thinking about music. Buy it and read.

This Lecture

l About the history of musicology. l Questions of what it is for. l  Introduces Nicholas Cook’s book. A Very

Short Introduction to Musicology.

What is musicology l • A search for a common all embracing way

of thinking and talking about music. l • An investigation of the credibility gap

between music and how we think about it. l • but - Most musicology writing reflects the

way music was in 19th century Europe.

Words and Music:

l  We have inherited from the past a way of thinking

about music that cannot do justice to the diversity of practices and experiences which that small word `music' signifies in today's world.

l  100 years ago ‘music’ meant European art music

- all the Bs – an approved corpus of musical works, specific to time and place.

l  Comparison with 19th-century production of

goods, musical culture a process of creating, distributing, and consuming works of music - concept of aesthetic capital.

Quote from Cook l The language of music assumes that

musicianship is the preserve of specialists: that innovation is central; that the key players are composers; that performers are middlemen, apart from the exceptionally innovative, and listeners are consumers and passive. All these assumptions are unnatural constructs of culture and vary from time to time and place to place.

Beethoven

Back to Beethoven

l  19th-century saw the capitalist model of society in

full swing - a construct of bourgeois society. l  Artistic movements were dedicated to personal

expression. Privileged role of music within Romanticism as seen in the writings of Carl Dahlhouse.

l  Finding your voice as a composer meant defining yourself in relation to Beethoven.

l  The role model – Beethoven refused to take a salaried position, and wrote music he wanted to write – his music is experienced as speaking directly to listener as an individual.

More on Beethoven l  His deafness - acknowledged in his day as the

greatest living composer. l  Heroic Plot - critics sought to explain Beethoven's

music as demonstrating some kind of heroic plot - a self-portrait in music - to overcome the blow of his deafness.

The model artist- Romain Rolland book La vie de

Beethoven (1907) held up Beethoven as a model for less heroic age. Concept of : Joy through suffering.

The Beethoven Myth l  The Beethoven cult - ideas embedded in thinking about

music came out of ferment of ideas that surrounded the reception of Bee's music.

l  Ideas of authenticity - power of music to transcend time and space.

l  Centrality of composer - performer and listener given a minor role.

l  Appreciation of music - something taught as the basis of class teaching in music at school level - strong in American liberal arts courses until the 1980s.

l  How to listen - attentively, respectful detached manner, informed with knowledge. Today listening is linked back into composing and performing.

State of Crisis by the end of the 20th century

l  Musical culture of early 20th cent had moved on - but our ways of thinking about music had not.

l  Music now a Global resource - internet. l  In the 19th century piano and sheet music were

still central to the learning of art music – by late 20th the recording increasingly becomes where ‘music’ resides.

l  Difference between 19th and 20th century mindsets on what represents high and low art.

Crisis by 1980s l  According to 19th century mind-set high equals all

the Bs and low everything else. l  Most music history books tell the story of Western

art music with possibly a chapter or two on popular music (Jazz?), and non-western music gets a mention at beginning.

l  Old thinking thought that Western music equals progress.

l  But a sea change since 1980s

Death and Transfiguration.

l  Audience statistics for many art music concerts are now

very low – especially for early 20th century music l  The new language of 12-tone music – the new tonality – of

modern music became ghettoized. Schoenberg thought people would eventually learn to like it.

l  Failure of modern music of early 20th century. Plurality of subcultures that has replaced the monolithic.

l  Modern music a niche product that flourishes on fringes. l  Classical music also a niche but a much larger one. E.g.

Classic FM. l  If there is a crisis in classical music it is not in music itself,

but in ways of thinking about it.

Old habits that are ingrained and inform the way we think about music:

Old Habits:

l  • to explain away time and think of music as an imaginary object - something which is in time but not of time.

l  • to think of language and other forms of cultural representation, including music, as if they depicted some kind of external reality.

Music as an imaginary object.

You cannot grasp music.

l What are crotchet's and quavers for? l 1. conservation l 2. communication l 3. conception - the way composers,

performers and all others imagine or think about music.

l But notation is not ‘music’

Notation l  Egyptian example of wanting to preserve

everything. l  l  1. Old notation does not tell all. l  2. Problems of nuematic notation. l  3. Example of castrati recording. l  l  If we don't know how music sounded at beginning

of century, how can we for much earlier music. l  Notation conserves music but it conceals as music

as it reveals. It is a form of code only readable to those that understand its conventions.

Two ways of notating music:

l  1. representing sounds l  2. representing things performers do to get sounds l  l  1. is Western notation - but it only has meaning if

you know the conventions. Many elements not included.

l  2. is tablature - you don't have to understand you just do. But it is limited to just one instrument.

l  Problem of sheet music for popular music - written by non-literate musicians.

Music between the notes

l  • Musical notations are highly selective in what they record - contrast with DAT recorders and samplers.

l  • Staff notation treats all music as though it was producing distinct separate notes - it's not.

l  • But staff notation distorts all music - including western music - you have to know the tradition and context for it to work.

l  • Notations have to simplify - melograph of Charles Seeger - not used.

l  • Tablature of chinese qin does not notate rhythm. l  • It is in the realm of communication that western notation

really scores (pun) transmits a way of thinking about music.

The paradox of music

l  Hermeneutics - developing illuminating metaphors to describe individual compositions - implying it sought out meaning in music.

l  When music moves (up or down on stave) what

moves – nothing - thus an imaginary object. l  We experience music in time, but to manipulate it or

to understand it, we pull it out of time and falsify it. l  The musical museum is built out of a confusion of

imaginary objects and temporal experiences.

Music and the Academy

l Kerman ' s book o f 1985 Contemplating Music - a social history of musicology was an attack on current state of musicology. He advocated a c r i t i ca l approach to the discipline - not the prevailingly unreflect ive or posi t ivist approach.

Academies, Universities and conservatories

l Difference between what musicology means in Am and Brit/Aust. Problems of authority in music the preserve of Academies - producing authoritative versions - but did not go on to critically engage with work. Historical contextualising needed to connect with the music as music.

And how to get out of the crisis

l  1. Historical performance movement - musicologist had a real contribution. What authenticity meant to them. But then historical performance referred to the approach you brought to music - how composer intended it? But it put performance at centre of activity.

l  2. Contribution of ethnomusicologists was `to get real’ - had to be self-critical - political situations of real importance. e.g. Beta Israel communities of Africa/Ethiopia. Looking at use of folk music in Balkan Wars.

Music and Gender

Part of the repositioning of Academies and critical theory. Used to placing theory above practice. Music education a battle ground. The key area in the repositioning was gender studies. Study of music (composer dominated) appeared to be without women. New ways of writing on music had to be developed that recognize the activities of women.

Conclusion

l  Music not a phenomenon of the natural world

but a human construction - artifice disguised as nature.

l  • Music has unique powers as an agent of ideology.

l  • We need to understand its workings, not just to hear music.

l  • Read it for its significance as an intrinsic part of culture - of society - of you and me.