Valuing the Surplus: Perspectives on Julian Horton's Article ‘On the Musicological Necessity of Music Analysis’, Musical Quarterly, 3/i–ii, pp. 62–104.Contributors: Kofi Agawu, Gurminder K. Bhogal, Esther Cavett, Jonathan Dunsby, Julian Horton, Alexandra Monchick, Ian Pace, Henry Stobart and Simon Zagorski‐Thomas, compiled and edited by Esther Cavett

Abstract

ABSTRACTJulian Horton's 2020 article on the ‘necessity of analysis’ delineates previous critiques of music analysis into the performative and the historicist and counters their assumptions. He proposes that analysis remains viable in light of historical, ontological, systemic, discursive, phenomenological and political imperatives. Seven respondents critique his account from the perspectives of pedagogy, performance, traditional literacies, popular music, ethnomusicology, world music and the postcolonial. Horton responds to these responses, and Jonathan Dunsby concludes with a summary of key issues. This Critical Forum is proposed as a kaleidoscopic collection rather than a single review and raises fundamental questions about the nature of analysis within the academy, and the very purpose of musicological research.