American Musicology in the 1990s

Abstract

A few years ago in Contemplating Music, a book appraising musical studies in the United States and Britain, I characterized the 197os as a decade of disciplinary consolidation. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, published in 1980, had occupied a great deal of the thought and energy of scholars from both countries, young and old; and the result of this team effort was an unmatched compendium of state-of-the-art knowledge, using the term musicological for the moment in its broadest sense. 131 And what about the 198os? If the 1970S was a decade of consolidation, I wrote, the 198os and 1990S might well become decades of disciplinary change, or motion. ... a prediction that hardly takes away any prizes for boldness. Everything else in the world is changing, why not musicology? More problematic, no doubt, was the polemical claim that in previous decades historical musicology had not changed much, or enough, and this claim quite reasonably became one focus of comment by reviewers of Contemplating Music. Change, whether we fear it or welcome it, is surely an expected condition for any branch of learning in our time. Without motion, we might wonder whether our discipline was still viable, exciting, even alive. Writing in 1983--Contemplating Music was published in early 1985-I was able to discern some directions of change in historical musicology, music theory and analysis, and also in the practical world of music making, in the so-called Early Music movement. The invitation last year to join a panel on the topic Tendenze e metodi nella ricerca musicologica, at an International Conference held in Latina,