Discipline Of Musicology Research Articles

Valuing Whiteness: The Presumed Innocence of Musical Truth

The end of 2020 presents a crucial time to reflect on the challenges that lie ahead for decolonizing and disrupting musicology. While many have flocked to what I call here the “presumed innocence of musical truth” during the time of Covid-19, any move to disaggregate music from political realities—both the contexts within which it was first created, and those that have upheld the musical traditions that are now in place—carries the risk of perpetuating the destructive possibility that loving the canon can also be our alibi for (or, as I propose here, our “claim to innocence” about) why the discipline of musicology has been so slow to engage with antiracist and decolonial debates in a sustained way. Thinking critically about systemic racism at the end of a particularly challenging year, the time is ripe for interrogating how the institutional structures that uphold western art music are still tied to values about aesthetic truths that have yet to be decolonized. In this article I respond to critical race and Indigenous studies theorists Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang in their renowned 2012 article “Decolonization is not a Metaphor,” by outlining three “moves to innocence” that are prevalent in music academia, followed by a proposed “move to disruption” about musical value that contributes to an actively “decolonizing” musicology. Focusing on the themes of truth and value, I argue that the next decade holds an opportunity to engage with the ideas that might productively disrupt our discipline the most.

The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891–1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries by Anna Maria Busse Berger

Reviewed by: The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891–1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries by Anna Maria Busse Berger Sarah Clemmens Waltz The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891–1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries. By Anna Maria Busse Berger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 360 + 25 halftones, 12 musical examples, 2 tables. Cloth $55.00. ISBN 978-0226740348. The disciplines of musicology and ethnomusicology currently exist in an uneasy tension as scholars begin to question what distinguishes "ethno"-musicology from the "historical" musicology developed by German scholars at the end of the nineteenth century. Busse Berger's The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891–1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries exemplifies the historical underpinnings of this tension by demonstrating the original entanglement of those disciplines through the scholarship and valuation of medieval music. The story of how (and what) music was treated in four different missions in the German East African colony (now Tanzania) connects through the foundations of German musical scholarship, contemporaneous German ideals about collective music-making, the development of scholarship and historical narrative about medieval music, and the birth of "ethnomusicology" from the old "comparative musicology." Above all, Busse Berger's examination of scholarship about and in Africa, occasionally by African scholars, suggests the way forward for a less-blinkered musicological discipline. The historiography in this examination makes it a critical read for musicologists, but the book is also very much of interest to the general humanist. Little of a technical nature intrudes except a few excurses on pentatonic (five-note) scales. German scholars' deliberate invocation of comparative linguistics in developing comparative musicology is a fascinating opening, leading to a covert throughline comparing those who claimed the Indo-European proto-language as superior to those who claimed harmony as a peculiarly Western accomplishment. We find, however, that the book's intriguing "cast of characters" (helpfully referenced in an appendix) was not uniformly motivated by evolutionist notions of culture. The work is in three parts, corresponding to the "scholars, singers, missionaries" of the subtitle. Part I explains the beginning of comparative musicology among German scholars (often of medieval music, not coincidentally) and also how the study of ethnomusicology impacted the discipline of historical musicology. Individual scholars' [End Page 159] work is investigated in detail. Their proto-ethnomusicological work provoked a number of theories now verified by medievalists if still overlooked: that medieval polyphony was most likely improvised, and that polyphony—far from being a purely Western development—existed in a global context of improvised multi-voiced music-making. Especially compelling is the chapter on Nicholas Ballanta, an African scholar born in Sierra Leone who, in the 1920s, described African music from an African perspective. Though Ballanta received the first Guggenheim for music research, his story shows how, despite great support for Ballanta's ability, Western scholarship was unprepared for his research, which was derailed by seemingly surmountable issues—various travel roadblocks, recordings he sent which were lost, leading in the end to a loss of support and inappropriately negative reviews of his research. By detailing Ballanta's publications, compositions, and arguments (for the use of African music and against the use of medieval modes and Western notation), the chapter greatly contributes to the restoration of African scholarship's role in African and African American music. Part II is about the role of group music-making, the use of medieval music, and contemporaneous comparisons to music-making in the missions in Africa as reflected in the growing communal music-making movements in Germany: the Wandervogel, Jugendmusikbewegung, and Singbewegung. These chapters re-center our image of medieval music from, perhaps, arcane esoterica toward an Arcadian realm of simplicity in the contemporary German imagination, explaining how many of those called to mission work were attracted to the idea of simple community life, which also attracted them to medieval music. A historiography of medieval musicology, including landmark performances of the 1920s, blossoms from this. Busse Berger notes that revivals of folk song, the Middle Ages, and interest in nature contributed not just to the development of musicology but to ordinary life: "It is no exaggeration to say that this movement profoundly affected every German in...

Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field by Mark Burford

Reviewed by: Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field by Mark Burford Jesse P. Karlsberg Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field. By Mark Burford. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. [xv, 472 p. ISBN 9780190634902 (hardcover), $67; ISBN 9780190095529 (paperback), $36.95; ISBN 9780190634926 (ebook), price varies.] Illustrations, tables, bibliography, index. Mark Burford's excellent book Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field is much more than a biography of Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972) and the first book on the Black gospel luminary in twenty-five years. The book also draws on Jackson's life and work to characterize the dynamics of Black gospel in the postwar United States. In situating the progression of Jackson's career in gospel and popular contexts, Burford's analysis prompts a newly dynamic understanding of prestige in the field and its intersection with race, religion, gender, genre, and politics, opening up new possibilities for the study of gospel music and popular culture. Burford's treatment is also richly interdisciplinary, deploying sociological and critical theoretical frames, historical research methods, and music analysis. On the singer herself, Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field is rich in biographical detail, drawing on an unprecedented array of archival sources. Burford charts Jackson's family history, the singer's youth in Louisiana, her move to Chicago, her navigation of institutions in Black Baptist and Chicago gospel circles as she rose to acclaim as the "Queen of Gospel Music," her recordings for the independent Apollo Records label, her dynamic live performances on Black gospel and mass cultural circuits, and the national fame that accompanied this and her CBS radio and television programs and work with Columbia Recording Corporation. Burford unearths new evidence on dates associated with key events in Jackson's early life—such as her birth in Louisiana and move to Chicago—and traces the implications of these findings on stories of her entwinement with the rise of gospel music in Chicago in the 1930s. Throughout, Burford represents Jackson and those in her orbit as agents in their own stories who engaged in nuanced self-reflection around questions of class, race, place, and religion, and who interrogated their own positions in the Black gospel field. Burford's biographical coverage extends beyond Jackson herself to include others in her circle. He paints vivid pictures of several "omnipresent and shadowy figure[s]" (p. 147) in Jackson's life, including (among a range of composers, record producers, ministers, and others) diarist and jack-of-all-trades Bill Russell, composer Thomas Dorsey, promoter Johnny Myers, record producer Bess Berman, and long-time accompanist Mildred Falls. Burford pairs this biographical account with careful and attentive music analysis to develop helpful characterizations of postwar Black gospel styles in Jackson's music with broader applicability. Burford connects his own informed listening and viewing to historical and contemporaneous contexts within and beyond gospel, including genres such as pop, jazz, and light classical. Burford's adroit music analysis of Jackson's gospel performances represents an important and still radical example in the discipline of musicology, where such methods are still most commonly associated with Western art music. Burford offers a helpful disambiguation of Black gospel song types, enumerating four categories in discussing Jackson's Apollo recordings: religious popular music and three feels—"a 'swing' feel, a 'gospel' feel, and a 'free' feel reserved primarily for hymns," each "established by determinable factors that include tempo, metrical organization, rhythmic impulse, expressive strategies, vocal approach, and even repertory" (p. 174) [End Page 544] . Here and elsewhere in the book, Burford precisely and effectively describes Jackson's music making, conveying challenging musical concepts such as expressivity and feel, as in his description of a "sudden and dramatic but completely controlled eruption" that "rockets a major seventh upward . . . overshooting the blue third—and drifts melismatically back down to the lower tonic" (p. 337). Burford also demonstrates why these music-analytical characterizations matter, charting Jackson's "ambivalent" navigation of the "class politics of voice" (p. 385) through her performance style. Burford's embrace of the theoretical concept of the "field," drawing on the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, helps him connect Jackson's mobility and music making to Black gospel during the postwar...

The Wedding Music Industry: An Adaptation of Andy Irawan Music during the Covid-19 Pandemic

This study aims to identify, reveal, analyze and describe adaptation of Andy Irawan Music's efforts to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic in the wedding music industry. The author uses an interdisciplinary approach, by borrowing theories and concepts from the disciplines of musicology, sociology, and economics. The object in this study is industry and adaptation, with the subject Andy Irawan Music. The research design uses an interpretive case study located in Semarang. The data were collected through observation, interviews, and documentation. The results show that Andy Irawan Music could adapt during the Covid-19 pandemic. Adaptation efforts made by Andy Irawan Music include appearing with new formations, optimizing the use of social media/ digital platforms, applying virtual music, following recommended health protocols, participating in wedding showcases, and creating Andy Irawan Disciples. 

Ludomusicology and the New Drastic

In a rereading of Carolyn Abbate's seminal article “Music—Drastic or Gnostic?” this article proposes that the study of game music not only presents us with new research themes but, moreover, has the potential to inspire a major disciplinary reform. Game music studies and ludomusicology can lead to a New Drastic Musicology: an intellectual engagement with video game music that is just as rooted in immediacy, interactivity, and playfulness as the object with which it concerns itself. The New Drastic, I shall argue, can engender significant critical, epistemological, thematic, and analytical innovations in the discipline of musicology. Fundamentally, my argument is that playing with music invites “playing” with critical music theory.

Ecomusicology as an Ecocritical and Naturecultural Approach to Musicology

<div><!--block-->After World War II, the rapid spread of critical theory led to the emergence of many new fields of study under the social sciences and cultural studies. The literary centered ecocriticism, which was developed in the 1980s, and the critical or new musicology studies that developed in similar periods, influenced the existing paradigms with their critical approaches. The field of ecomusicology, which brings together the idea of ecocriticism with the discipline of musicology, has brought a new approach to the environment/nature issues in terms of sound and music, adding nature to the relationship between music and culture. Ecomusicology studies dealing with many issues in the context of environment/nature from an interdisciplinary perspective is both a scientific and an activist effort. By questioning the humannature relationship and trying to find answers to today’s environmental crises and sustainability problems by expanding the boundaries of musicology, ecomusicology has been a rapidly developing field since the 2000s. In this article, the emergence of ecomusicology as an ecocritical and naturecultural musicology approach, as well as conceptual and methodological discussions concerning this field are examined through the main sources. This article is intended to be a guide to future research in the field of ecomusicology in Turkey.</div>

Analysis of Mozart’s Biography with Becker’s Theory of “Art Worlds”

<div><!--block-->Historical musicology, which is a method within the discipline of musicology, is based on composer biographies and works, whereas systematic musicology, which includes analytical and empirical methods, is based on the musical analysis of works. These historical and analytical studies represented the relationship between music and science from the 19th century to the 20th century. After the 20th century, researches about the science of music moved to a new, critical and multi-faceted field in social, cultural, political and artistic contexts as well as historicity ones. The evaluations of composer biographies that constitute the historical knowledge of music have been handled in a holistic and multi-faceted framework with this new orientation. In this article, which is prepared based on a new, critical, multi-disciplinary way of thinking within the framework of New Musicology, the determinant composer of the Classical Period W. A. Mozart was evaluated according to Becker’s Art Worlds, which is sociological theory. W.A. Mozart’s way of thinking shapes his art life and this was examined through the slices of his life and through his own words using the categories of Integrated Professionals and Incompatibles in Becker’s classification of artist behavior. This article aims to create a functional and interdisciplinary meaning for the formation processes of W. A. Mozart’s art life far from philosophical, aesthetic and value judgments. It is considered that this evaluation will bring a different perspective to biography studies in the contexts of generally accepted (canonical) thought.</div>

Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good by William Cheng

Reviewed by: Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good by William Cheng Lauron Kehrer (bio) Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good. By William Cheng. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 160 pp. William Cheng's most recent monograph, Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good, is an optimistic book for an audience of students and scholars grappling [End Page 153] with the ethical concerns of academic life in both the discipline of musicology and its relatives as well as on a larger institutional and political level. His driving question, "What is the purpose of sounding good?" is a somewhat open-ended one that echoes on multiple levels, not least thanks to his skillful blending of memoire-like episodes with theoretical ruminations. Cheng's proposal, "What if the primary purpose of sounding good isn't to do well, but to do good?" particularly resonates with the anxieties of academic life (8). Why put oneself through the perils of graduate work, the stress of the academic job hunt, and the varying hazards of contingent or tenure-track employment if the ultimate goal isn't to do good, whether in an academic position or elsewhere? Despite the inclusion of weighty examples of violence (or, rather, perhaps because of the way they are presented), Just Vibrations' hopeful exposition of a care-oriented approach is a salve for scholars concerned about the more harmful aspects of working in academia and seeking ways to mitigate or even repair some of that harm through their own work. Just Vibrations is a difficult text to categorize: Cheng calls it a "thought experiment," and it moves freely between various modes of investigation and support (17). Drawing primarily on the theoretical foundations of affect theory, care ethics, and queer theory, the author argues that academics should resist enacting paranoid and adversarial readings in our work. Instead, he maintains, we should replace them with reparative strategies that aim to uplift and amplify rather than antagonize or silence the most vulnerable among us. Furthermore, Cheng asserts that we have an ethical imperative to do so. In this short text, he leads us through a line of inquiry that asks what might happen if we stop focusing on sounding good and instead concern ourselves with doing good. The book presents a series of personal anecdotes, case studies, and theoretical musings that explore the questions his premise—that scholars should aim to do good—raises and gestures toward ways in which we might put this approach into practice. Just Vibrations is framed by an introduction and a coda that include reflections on childhood, a rhetorical move that reminds us of a period in our own lives when we may have needed the most care ourselves. The first chapter, "Aching for Repair," focuses on the author's personal experience with chronic pain, putting a new spin on the well-worn feminist axiom, "the personal is political," reinterpreting it as "the personal is scholarly." Cheng reminds us that critical writing that attempts to preclude the author's subjectivity often does so to promote the illusion of pure objectivity. Here, he includes his own autobiographical account neither to universalize it nor to point to it as exceptional but to demonstrate both the root of and the need for his reparative approach. Chapter 2, "Sing the Ivory Tower Blues," focuses on reparative scholarship: its purpose, what it might sound like, and its shortcomings. In this chapter, Cheng draws on examples from the field of musicology, as well as the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and other queer and/or disability scholars. Rather than examining more recent controversies in the discipline, Cheng looks back to past ruptures related to the emergence of feminist and queer methodologies, many of which [End Page 154] proved to be important flashpoints. In outlining this historical trajectory, Cheng demonstrates the need for reparative approaches in the field, as well as models for future reparative work. In chapter 3, "How Hopeful the Queer," Cheng explores the tensions between paranoid and reparative modes within queer theory. Here, too, Cheng refers back to queer episodes in musicology, particularly Philip Brett's groundbreaking work on the relationship between musicality and homosexuality, as well as sessions at...

Art of Music Taring In Sanggar Tunas Muda Lahat District In Perspective Aksiologi: Study In The Context Of Socio Culture

The art of Terbangan music in Lahat district is a cultural product derived from the customs of Semende people who migrated to the district of Lahat South Sumatra. With regard to this, the purpose of this study is to examine the issue of the form of the music of Terbangan and the axiological values ​​in it. This research uses an interdisciplinary approach involving the disciplines of musicology and philosophy. Science of Musicology is used to analyze the elements and forms of music on the art of flying. The discipline of philosophy is used to analyze the values ​​contained in the Art of Music Terbangan. Sources of data in this study using a qualitative source consisting of primary and secondary sources with techniques perngumpulan observation data, interviews and document studies. Data validation technique used by source triangulation while data analysis technique is done by reducing data, presenting data, and verifying data. In this verification process, conclusions are drawn with interpretations that use emic point references (field opinion sources) and ethical perspectives based on the theoretical concepts used. Based on the results of research shows things as follows the first form of musical structure among other elements, motives, clauses, sentences or periods that exist in the art of music Terbangan. The two human values ​​in the art of Terbangan which are part of man are holiness, goodness, truth and beauty.

Busking in Musical Thought: Value, Affect, and Becoming

ABSTRACTThe idea of musical value has no doubt played a role in the small amount of literature on busking coming out of the discipline of musicology. The prescriptive and descriptive approaches to value in musicological thought, and the static image of the musical Work both models imply, are problematized when considered within the concept of the “reactive” as articulated in Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche. An alternative concept of value based on principles of affect and becoming enfolds the fragmentary as well as the monumental and is necessary to grasp the value of busking.

A Third Note: Helmholtz, Palestrina, and the Early History of Musicology.

This contribution focuses on Hermann von Helmholtz's work on Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Helmholtz used his scientific concept of distortion to analyze this music and, reversely, to find corroboration for the concept in his musical analyses. In this, his work interlocked with nineteenth-century aesthetic and scholarly ideals. His eagerness to use the latest products of historical scholarship in early music reveals a specific view of music history. Historical documents of music provide the opportunity for the discovery of new experimental research topics and thereby also reveal insights into hearing under different conditions. The essay argues that this work occupies a peculiar position in the history of musicology; it falls under the header of "systematic musicology," which eventually emerged as a discipline of musicology at the end of the nineteenth century. That this discipline has a history at all is easily overlooked, as many of its contributors were scientists with an interest in music. A history of musicology therefore must consider at least the following two caveats: parts of it take place outside the institutionalized field of musicology, and any history of musicology must, in the last instance, be embedded in a history of music.

Manuscript Witness to Power and Politics at Central European Episcopal Centers

Medieval institutions have frequently been considered either in terms of physi- cal edifice or, in the discipline of musicology, in terms of a so-called, often ill- defined, but nevertheless taken as self-evident, music liturgical “repertories.” This contribution discusses a more elusive, yet authentic, relationship between spiritual-social-physical cathedral institutions and the manuscripts produced by these institutions, concentrating on, and comparing, episcopal centers in central France and central Europe.

John Brande Trend (1887-1958) and His Musical 'Iter Hispanicum'

In the 1920s the British Hispanist John Brande Trend travelled extensively through Spain with the brief of reporting on Spanish culture. His interest in music, stimulated by the influence of the musicologist Edward Dent, his mentor during his undergraduate years at Cambridge and lifelong partner, resulted immediately in several reports, notably on Spanish music and theatre, and in a long-standing friendship with the composer Manuel de Falla. Inspired by both these highly influential figures, Trend undertook research in Spanish archives to explore Spain’s then little known musical heritage. This article, based on the correspondence between both Dent and Falla and Trend, aims to assess his achievements in making early Spanish music better known to scholars and the more general public through many publications, talks, and concerts in the context of the relatively new discipline of musicology and rapidly changing cultural politics of the second decade of the twentieth century.

Word and Music Studies: Essays on Performativity and on Surveying the Field.

Word and Music Studies: Essays on Performativity and on Surveying the Field.

New approaches to music history

How to write the history of music? This basic question has exercised many of the best intellects over several generations since the discipline of musicology was born towards the end of the 19th century. The intended readership of music histories has probably changed relatively little: students (and their teachers) and those performers and musical aficionados with the curiosity and desire to learn more, even without the aid of a teacher. Yet music histories surely go beyond their primary didactic role: inevitably they provide a snapshot not only of the state of knowledge in a particular field at a given moment, and inevitably they must respond to the new technologies and the new attitudes to the accessing of information that they create. In addition, as Richard Taruskin has argued so forcibly, they inevitably also reflect the concerns, prejudices, trends and philosophies of the age in which they are written. We cannot...

Noter til musikken: Premisser og konstruksjoner

What is and how do we go about researching it? Obviously, these are important questions, and the backbone of further developments within the discipline of musicology. As far as empirical fields and contextualization goes, this text initially claims that studies within ethnomusicology and musicology today portray a blurring of borders. The making of text as such and the analysis of a musical phenomenon, be it more or less focused on contexts primarily understood as external to the sound itself or the actual production of it, cannot escape the sediments of academic traditions and a multitude of challenges translating music to Music. What is will always permeate academic texts on the matter whether it is an explicit theme or not. Without offering a final solution, nor excluding any takes on the matter, this article offers some critical comments funded primarily on a text by Michael Tanner (Understanding Music) that more or less explicitly treats this question.

Remembering Debussy in Interwar France: Authority, Musicology, and Legacy

This article examines the role Claude Debussy’s supporters and biographers played in shaping the legacy of France’s chef-d’école during the interwar period. The biographies, articles, and commemorative efforts of critics and musicologists such as Émile Vuillermoz, Henry Prunières, and Léon Vallas reveal the extent to which Debussy became a contested symbol of French achievement both at home and abroad. Henry Prunières and Léon Vallas had much in common: both were trained and published musicologists who founded and directed music journals; they organized concert series and were active commentators of contemporary music. Yet they disagreed violently about the value of newly published early works of Debussy and battled over issues of musical influence and ‘borrowings’ in a bitter exchange in France’s foremost music journal, La Revue musicale, after the publication of Vallas’s populist biography, Claude Debussy et son temps (1932). The question of authority is central to debates concerning how Debussy’s life should be constructed and his music understood for posterity. Drawing on documents from Vallas’s and Prunières’s archives, the article shows that the interwar period in France was crucial for laying the foundation of Debussy biography and establishing an understanding of the composer’s significance as a prized treasure of the patrimoine, which persists today, 150 years after his birth. It concludes by arguing that the questions, debates, and methods that preoccupied early Debussy scholars and journalists concerning the value of great musical figures and the place of music in society still pertain today, both within the discipline of musicology and beyond.

History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800. Volume 1: From Antiquity to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century; Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century. Russian Music Studies by Nikolai Findeizen , Miloš Velimirovic , Claudia R. Jensen , Samuel William Pring (review)

REVIEWS 727 Findeizen, Nikolai. History ofMusicinRussia from Antiquity to1800. Volume 1: From Antiquity to theBeginning of theEighteenth Century; Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century. Edited and annotatedby Milos Velimirovicand Claudia R. Jensen.Translatedby Samuel WilliamPring.Russian Music Studies. IndianaUniversity Press, Bloomington andIndianapolis, 2008.xxii+ 467 pp.;xv+ 616pp. Illustrations. Tables.Musicalextracts. Musicappendix. Table ofworks. Glossary. Notes.Bibliography. Index.$60.00; $60.00. The originalRussiantitleof thismonumental and indispensable workOcherki pò istorii muzyki vRossii - is at once moremodestand morerevealing thanthisEnglishtranslation suggests. So manyof the topicsthatNikolai Findeizencoveredwere so littleknown,studiedand understoodat the timethattheprimary taskconsisted ofestablishing a firm documentary and archivalrecordofsources,ratherthanengaging in anykindofoverarching narrative (letalone ideologicalor ideological)history. Despitetheenormous rangeofmaterial discussed (testament totheauthor's ownvasterudition), the useofthewordocherki suggests instead a series ofindividual studies. Moreover, not onlydoes the ocherk attestto Findeizen' s scholarly modesty, but it also constitutes a responseto thefragmented natureofthedocumentary record and theattendant difficulties ininterpreting it(as wellas according withwhat can be recuperated ofthelivedexperience ofour predecessors). Findeizen's scholarly rigourand even-handedness is all themoreremarkable whenone considers thattheOcherki werecompleted during someofthemosttraumatic yearsoftheearlytwentieth century. The completedbook was finally publishedin 1928,thehighpointnotonlyofFindeizen'scareer,butalso ofwhat Findeizendubbed 'the new disciplineof musicology' in Russia (1, p. xxi). Ironically, theauthor diedinSeptember ofthatsameyear,on theeveofthose eventsand processes - cultural revolution, industrialization, collectivization - thatwouldbothcreatea verydifferent climateformusicologists to work in,and transform therelationship betweenpeople,environment and culture thatis described throughout theocherki. In 1928,Findeizencouldstill claimto discern echoesofmedievalpoetry and music,'scattered through theold byliny whicharestill preserved, attimesamazingly so,inthememory ofpeoplewho livein remoteareasuntouched bymoderncultural developments' (1,p. 59). The work'soriginaltranslator, Samuel WilliamPring,was commissioned to producea versionof the Ocherki by the AmericanCouncil of Learned SocietiesbeforeWorldWar Two, althoughthiswas neverpublished.Now, basingthemselves on Pring'sinitialidiomaticrendering, Milos Velimorovic and Claudia R.Jensen,assisted byMalcolmHamrickBrownand Daniel C. Waugh(and manyothers, as theacknowledgements and notesamplyattest) haveproduceda fully annotatededitionofthe Ocherki thatis farmorethan just a straightforward and reliabletranslation (welcomethoughthatwould havebeen).As theeditors ofthiseditionrightly pointout,Findiezen's History ofMusicinRussia from Antiquity to1800is 'a pathbreaking workwhich,in its scope and commandofprimary sources,and in itscuriosity and generosity ofscholarly inquiry, has remaineda cornerstone ofall subsequent studiesof Russianmusic'(1,p. xi).As theyalso note,'Although laterstudies[.. .] have 728 SEER, 88, 4, OCTOBER 2OIO offered manycorrections toFindeizen's compilation, one isstill amazedat the breadthofFindeizen'sresearchand thecare withwhichhe approachedhis sources. Corrections aside,thisisstill thebasisfrom whichalllaterscholarship mustproceed' (2, p. 507). Accordingly, Findeizen'soriginaltexthas been retainedin itsentirety, completewitha largenumberofbeautifully reproducedillustrations and examples.At thesame time,errors have been noted and corrected, unacknowledged sourcesidentified, and up-to-date bibliographiesprovided .In some cases,Findeizen'saccountstillstandsas definitive: the editorscall his studyof the skomorokhi 'trulya masterpiece of research involving a greatwealthofarchivaldata' (1,p. 340). Elsewhere, theeditors pointouthowhisinitial investigations havebeen augmented bymorerecent scholarship, as in thecase of'theearlystagesofRussianchurchmusic'and issuesofmusicalnotation (1,p. 319,n. 86E). Veryoccasionally, Findeizenfelt - forwhatever reasons- thatcertainsubjects did notfallwithin thescope ofhisbook,suchas thesacredmusicbyRussiancomposers thatforms such an important featureof Marina Ritzarev'srecentEighteenthCentury Russian Music(Aldershot, 2006). The new editorial notesat theend ofeach volume are of such lengthand detail thattheycould not reasonablyhave been treated as footnotes; theyoften constitute valuableintroductory essaysintheir own rightto the currentstateof researchon individualtopics.There is also a welcomeglossary, crucialbecause so manyambiguousor difficult to translate Russianterms havebeen retained in themaintext. Although History ofMusicinRussia from Antiquity to1800was first published someeighty yearsago, Findeizen'semphasison 'theconnection betweenthe pastevents ofRussianmusicallifeand thedevelopment ofsocialphenomena' (1,p. xxi)seemsto anticipate our current interest in cultural history, just as hiscommandofan arrayofcritical and scholarly approachessetsthehighest ofstandards forourowninterdisciplinarity. Findeizen's'scopeand command ofprimary sources'and 'curiosity and generosity of scholarly inquiry'have been matchedby thoseofhismoderneditors.Giventheenormouslabours (intellectual, linguistic and technical)that have gone into producingthis translation, nottomention thehighstandards ofitstechnical presentation, its priceis extremely reasonable(theprojectwas supported financially byJoseph Bloch)and oughttoputitwithin thereachofas manylibraries, scholars and students as possible.Findeizenhoped thathisworkwouldinspireothersin 'finding, organizing, and investigating theseresources'(1,p. xxii),and this aspiration is echoedin theeditors'call for'others to becomeinvolved in the studyof thisextremely richRussianmusicalheritage'(1,p. xv). Certainly, thereis stillmuch to be learntabout Russian musicbeforeGlinka,and evenforthoseworking on themusicofthenineteenth, twentieth and now twenty-first centuries, Findeizenand hiseditors aremodelsforus all (notleast as we reflect on theculture oftheResearchAssessment Exercise- and the forthcoming ResearchExcellenceFramework - and howthesehaveshaped scholarly priorities in theUK). WadhamCollege, Oxford PhilipRoss Bullock ...

Against History: Defining, and Defending, Systematic Musicologies

When first defined by Guido Adler in 1885 in his pioneering article on the new discipline of musicology, systematic musicology appeared simply to be a good idea: after all, since music operates and is created across a range of different contexts, an articulated awareness of the various methods that could be applied to its study seemed necessary to any definition of musicology. But humanistic tradition and institutional politics intervened, and musicological studies became increasingly divided into the historical and the ethnological, with no room left for anything else. The limits of Anglophone musicology as established in the 1930s, and the unfortunate tendency of academic institutions to reproduce their own methodological patterns, created a situation where entire areas of musical study are now considered peripheral or even dubious by most musicologists.This presentation will consider various definitions and studies of systematic musicology in the context of a number of related disciplines as they have been constituted in academe, as well as in the light of Kerman’s 1985 critique of the possibilities and limitations of our field. After examining some of the charts presenting the possible fields of musical scholarship, I offer my own chart of the potential disciplines of systematic musicology. All of these methodological divisions are invoked to recall those aspects of music that are denied by an exclusive focus on history and ethnology, as it reaches into the realms of the physical, the psychosocial, and the abstract.

The Language of Song: Some Recent Approaches in Description and Analysis

Singing is an activity that happens in every society. But the ways that texts and music align with each other and the ways meanings are conveyed, and how the activity fits into larger contexts vary considerably from society to society. The study of song draws in not only the discipline of musicology but also many fields of linguistic inquiry*phonology, poetics, morphology, semantics and pragmatics. Like words and morphemes, songs are form-meaning units to be included in any complete language description. The papers in this volume reveal songs to be highly structured art forms that have the ability to convey complex associations of meaning beyond everyday spoken language. The papers arise from a workshop that aimed to explore the linguistic features of song in a cross-disciplinary context with a view to strengthening ties between linguists, musicologists and anthropologists working in this field.