Response to Tim Rice

Abstract

First, I'd like to say, as a historical musicologist nosing around the fringes of ethnomusicology, that I find very appealing the idea that the agenda of a whole field can be distilled into one comprehensible sentence. Rice has come up here with a kind of Swiss army knife of musicology. In effect, he has chosen those professional tools that are absolutely essential, reduced them to miniature form, and connected them in a smooth, thoroughly portable configuration. Rice himself calls his model deceptively simple. And indeed, the question How do people historically construct, socially maintain, and individually create and experience music? does lack the portentous ring that one might expect from a comprehensive new model. But presumably, like the army knife's blades, it cuts more sharply than one might guess from seeing it out of action. Having lived with Rice's model for a few weeks now, I can testify that it has a way of getting into your subconscious and prodding your conscious thoughts too. Its economy and straightforwardness also make it accessible to beginners and experienced scholars, whether as an idea or as a working method. Rice's model is cast in the language of common sense, but unlike common sense, it's based more on tested precepts than unexamined assumptions. I also like the model's structure. The idea of a three-pronged inquiryhistory, society, and the individual-invites musical scholars to keep imagining the larger, complex wholes of which the details of their work form parts. As with the army knife, you can use any one tool separately (i.e., you can study history, or society, or individual creativity). But you can't separate one from rest, and the presence of all as parts of one entity is a constant reminder of their interrelatedness. Rice's paper is written in friendly, welcoming tone. He believes that we are living in an ecumenical age when the disciplines to which we are 'sub' are moving closer together. I'm more inclined myself to think that in our world, the drives toward ecumenicism, on the one hand, and sectarianism, on the other, are both strong, and that we scholars like to feel free to dip into both. But in either case, Rice's model is ecumenical in spirit, for it affirms a broad common ground between ethnomusicology and historical musicology. More than that, it envisions a musical scholarship in which each is urged to work the other's back yard. From my viewpoint, the real