New musicology is a wide body of musicology since the 1980s with a focus upon the cultural study, aesthetics, criticism, and hermeneutics of music. It began in part a reaction against the traditional positivist musicology (focused on primary research) of the early 20th century and postwar era. Many of the procedures of new musicology are considered standard, although the name more often refers to the historical turn rather than to any single set of ideas or principles. Indeed, although it was notably influenced by feminism, gender studies, queer theory, postcolonial studies, and critical theory, new musicology has primarily been characterized by a wide-ranging eclecticism.
In 1980 Joseph Kerman published the article "How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out," calling for a change in musicology. He asked for "a new breadth and flexibility in academic music criticism [musicology]" (Kerman, 1994, 30) that would extend to musical discourse, critical theory and analysis. In the words of Rose Rosengard Subotnik: "For me...the notion of an intimate relationship between music and society functions not as a distant goal but as a starting point of great immediacy...the goal of which is to articulate something essential about why any particular music is the way it is in particular, that is, to achieve insight into the character of its identity."[citation needed]
Susan McClary suggests that new musicology defines music as "a medium that participates in social formation by influencing the ways we perceive our feelings, our bodies, our desires, our very subjectivities—even if it does so surreptitiously, without most of us knowing how" (Brett, 1994). For Lawrence Kramer, music has meanings "definite enough to support critical interpretations comparable in depth, exactness, and density of connection to interpretations of literary texts and cultural practices" (Kramer, 1990).
New musicology combines cultural studies with the analysis and criticism of music, and it accords more weight to the sociology of musicians and institutions and to non-canonical genres of music, including jazz and popular music, than traditional musicology did. (A similar perspective became common for American ethnomusicologists during the 1950s.) This has caused many musicologists to question previously held views of authenticity and to make assessments based on critical methods "concerned with finding some kind of synthesis between [musical] analysis and a consideration of social meaning" (Beard and Gloag, 2005, 38).
New musicologists question the processes of canonization. Gary Tomlinson suggests that meaning be searched out in a "series of interrelated historical narratives that surround the musical subject" (Beard and Gloag, 2005, 123) – a "web of culture" (Tomlinson, 1984). For example, the work of Beethoven has been examined from new perspectives by studying his reception and influence in terms of masculine hegemony, the development of the modern concert, and the politics of his era, among other concerns. The traditional contrast between Beethoven and Schubert has been revised in the light of these studies, especially with reference to Schubert's possible homosexuality (McClary in Brett, 1994; Kramer 2003; Mathew, 2012).
Relationship to music sociology
New musicology is distinct from German music sociology in the work of Adorno, Max Weber and Ernst Bloch. Although some new musicologists claim some allegiance to Theodor Adorno, their work has little in common with the wider field of Adorno studies, especially in Germany. New musicologists frequently exhibit strong resistance to German intellectual traditions, especially in regard to nineteenth-century German music theorists including Adolf Bernhard Marx and Eduard Hanslick, and also the twentieth-century figures Heinrich Schenker and Carl Dahlhaus.
A fundamental distinction has to do with attitudes towards modernism and popular culture. Influential, oft-cited essays such as McClary 1989 and McClary 2006 are highly dismissive of modernist music. German music sociologists tend to be more favorable towards modernism (though by no means uncritically) and severely critical of popular music as inextricably tied to the aesthetics of distraction as demanded by the culture industry. Metzger describes "a fascistic element" in the music of the Rolling Stones. New musicology, on the other hand, often overlaps with postmodern aesthetics; various new musicologists are highly sympathetic towards musical minimalism (see McClary 1990 and 2000 and Fink 2005).
Criticisms of new musicology
Vincent Duckles writes, "As musicology has grown more pluralistic, its practitioners have increasingly adopted methods and theories deemed by observers to mark the academy as irrelevant, out of touch with 'mainstream values', unwelcoming of Western canonic traditions or simply incomprehensible. Paradoxically, such approaches have distanced music scholarship from a broad public at the very moment they have encouraged scholars to scrutinize the popular musics that form the backbone of modern mass musical culture."
Critics of new musicology include Pieter van den Toorn and to a lesser extent Charles Rosen. In response to an early essay of McClary (McClary 1987), Rosen says that "she sets up, like so many of the 'new musicologists', a straw man to knock down, the dogma that music has no meaning, and no political or social significance. (I doubt that anyone, except perhaps the nineteenth-century critic Hanslick, has ever really believed that, although some musicians have been goaded into proclaiming it by the sillier interpretations of music with which we are often assailed.)" (Rosen 2000). For David Beard and Kenneth Gloag, however, writing at two later moments (2005, 2016), the methods of new musicology have been fully incorporated into mainstream musicological practice.
Heile, Björn (2004). "Darmstadt as Other: British and American Responses to Musical Modernism" in twentieth-century music, Vol. 1 Issue 02, pp. 161–178.
Hisama, Ellie M. (2001). Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon. Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-64030-X.
McClary, Susan (1987). "The blasphemy of talking politics during Bach Year," in McClary and Leppert, Richard, eds. Music and Society: The politics of composition, performance and reception. Cambridge University Press.
McClary, Susan (1989). "Terminal Prestige: The Case of Avant-Garde Music Composition" in Cultural Critique 12 (1989), pp. 57–81.
McClary, Susan (2000). "Women and Music on the Verge of the New Millennium," in Signs Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 1283–1286.
McClary, Susan (2006). "The World According to Taruskin," in Music and Letters Vol. 87 No. 3, pp. 408–415.
Mathew, Nicholas (2012). "Political Beethoven." University of California Press.
O'Neill, Maggie, ed. (1999). Adorno, Culture and Feminism. Sage Publications.
Rosen, Charles (2000). "The New Musicology," in Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New, pp. 255–272. Harvard University Press.
Rycenga, Jennifer (2002). "Queerly Amiss: Sexuality and the Logic of Adorno's Dialectics," in Gibson, Nigel and Rubin, Andrew, eds. Adorno: A Critical Reader. Blackwell.
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This article possibly contains original research Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations Statements consisting only of original research should be removed November 2017 Learn how and when to remove this template message New musicology is a wide body of musicology since the 1980s with a focus upon the cultural study aesthetics criticism and hermeneutics of music It began in part a reaction against the traditional positivist musicology focused on primary research of the early 20th century and postwar era Many of the procedures of new musicology are considered standard although the name more often refers to the historical turn rather than to any single set of ideas or principles Indeed although it was notably influenced by feminism gender studies queer theory postcolonial studies and critical theory new musicology has primarily been characterized by a wide ranging eclecticism Contents 1 Definitions and history 2 Relationship to music sociology 3 Criticisms of new musicology 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External linksDefinitions and history EditNew musicology seeks to question the research methods of traditional musicology by displacing positivism working in partnership with outside disciplines including the humanities and social sciences and by questioning accepted musical knowledge New musicologists seek ways to employ anthropology sociology cultural studies gender studies feminism history and philosophy in the study of music In 1980 Joseph Kerman published the article How We Got into Analysis and How to Get Out calling for a change in musicology He asked for a new breadth and flexibility in academic music criticism musicology Kerman 1994 30 that would extend to musical discourse critical theory and analysis In the words of Rose Rosengard Subotnik For me the notion of an intimate relationship between music and society functions not as a distant goal but as a starting point of great immediacy the goal of which is to articulate something essential about why any particular music is the way it is in particular that is to achieve insight into the character of its identity citation needed Susan McClary suggests that new musicology defines music as a medium that participates in social formation by influencing the ways we perceive our feelings our bodies our desires our very subjectivities even if it does so surreptitiously without most of us knowing how Brett 1994 For Lawrence Kramer music has meanings definite enough to support critical interpretations comparable in depth exactness and density of connection to interpretations of literary texts and cultural practices Kramer 1990 New musicology combines cultural studies with the analysis and criticism of music and it accords more weight to the sociology of musicians and institutions and to non canonical genres of music including jazz and popular music than traditional musicology did A similar perspective became common for American ethnomusicologists during the 1950s This has caused many musicologists to question previously held views of authenticity and to make assessments based on critical methods concerned with finding some kind of synthesis between musical analysis and a consideration of social meaning Beard and Gloag 2005 38 New musicologists question the processes of canonization Gary Tomlinson suggests that meaning be searched out in a series of interrelated historical narratives that surround the musical subject Beard and Gloag 2005 123 a web of culture Tomlinson 1984 For example the work of Beethoven has been examined from new perspectives by studying his reception and influence in terms of masculine hegemony the development of the modern concert and the politics of his era among other concerns The traditional contrast between Beethoven and Schubert has been revised in the light of these studies especially with reference to Schubert s possible homosexuality McClary in Brett 1994 Kramer 2003 Mathew 2012 Relationship to music sociology EditNew musicology is distinct from German music sociology in the work of Adorno Max Weber and Ernst Bloch Although some new musicologists claim some allegiance to Theodor Adorno their work has little in common with the wider field of Adorno studies especially in Germany New musicologists frequently exhibit strong resistance to German intellectual traditions especially in regard to nineteenth century German music theorists including Adolf Bernhard Marx and Eduard Hanslick and also the twentieth century figures Heinrich Schenker and Carl Dahlhaus A fundamental distinction has to do with attitudes towards modernism and popular culture Influential oft cited essays such as McClary 1989 and McClary 2006 are highly dismissive of modernist music German music sociologists tend to be more favorable towards modernism though by no means uncritically and severely critical of popular music as inextricably tied to the aesthetics of distraction as demanded by the culture industry Metzger describes a fascistic element in the music of the Rolling Stones New musicology on the other hand often overlaps with postmodern aesthetics various new musicologists are highly sympathetic towards musical minimalism see McClary 1990 and 2000 and Fink 2005 Criticisms of new musicology EditVincent Duckles writes As musicology has grown more pluralistic its practitioners have increasingly adopted methods and theories deemed by observers to mark the academy as irrelevant out of touch with mainstream values unwelcoming of Western canonic traditions or simply incomprehensible Paradoxically such approaches have distanced music scholarship from a broad public at the very moment they have encouraged scholars to scrutinize the popular musics that form the backbone of modern mass musical culture Critics of new musicology include Pieter van den Toorn and to a lesser extent Charles Rosen In response to an early essay of McClary McClary 1987 Rosen says that she sets up like so many of the new musicologists a straw man to knock down the dogma that music has no meaning and no political or social significance I doubt that anyone except perhaps the nineteenth century critic Hanslick has ever really believed that although some musicians have been goaded into proclaiming it by the sillier interpretations of music with which we are often assailed Rosen 2000 For David Beard and Kenneth Gloag however writing at two later moments 2005 2016 the methods of new musicology have been fully incorporated into mainstream musicological practice References EditAgawu Kofi 2003 Representing African Music Postcolonial Notes Queries Positions Taylor amp Francis Beard David and Kenneth Gloag 2005 2nd edition 2016 Musicology The Key Concepts Routledge Carter Tim 2002 An American In review article of McClary Conventional Wisdom in Music and Letters Vol 83 No 2 pp 274 279 Vincent Duckles et al Musicology Grove Music Online Oxford Music Online 4 Oct 2011 lt http www oxfordmusiconline com subscriber article grove music 46710pg3 gt Feldman Morton Earle Brown and Heinz Klaus Metzger 1972 Morton Feldman Earle Brown and Heinz Klaus Metzger in Discussion Heile Bjorn 2004 Darmstadt as Other British and American Responses to Musical Modernism in twentieth century music Vol 1 Issue 02 pp 161 178 Hisama Ellie M 2001 Gendering Musical Modernism The Music of Ruth Crawford Marion Bauer and Miriam Gideon Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 64030 X Kramer Lawrence 1990 Music as Cultural Practice 1800 1900 McClary Susan 1987 The blasphemy of talking politics during Bach Year in McClary and Leppert Richard eds Music and Society The politics of composition performance and reception Cambridge University Press McClary Susan 1989 Terminal Prestige The Case of Avant Garde Music Composition in Cultural Critique 12 1989 pp 57 81 McClary Susan 2000 Women and Music on the Verge of the New Millennium in Signs Vol 25 No 4 pp 1283 1286 McClary Susan 2006 The World According to Taruskin in Music and Letters Vol 87 No 3 pp 408 415 Mathew Nicholas 2012 Political Beethoven University of California Press O Neill Maggie ed 1999 Adorno Culture and Feminism Sage Publications Rosen Charles 2000 The New Musicology in Critical Entertainments Music Old and New pp 255 272 Harvard University Press Ross Alex 2003 Ghost Sonata Adorno and German Music Rycenga Jennifer 2002 Queerly Amiss Sexuality and the Logic of Adorno s Dialectics in Gibson Nigel and Rubin Andrew eds Adorno A Critical Reader Blackwell Subotnik Rose Rosengard 1991 Developing Variations Style and Ideology in Western Music Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0 8166 1873 9 Taruskin Richard 2005 Speed Bumps in 19th Century Music Vol 29 No 2 pp 185 207 Watson Ben 1995 McClary and Postmodernism in Frank Zappa The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play Quartet Books Further reading EditKerman Joseph 1985 Contemplating Music Challenges to Musicology UK edition Musicology McClary Susan and Leppert Richard eds 1987 Music and Society The politics of composition performance and reception McClary Susan 1991 Feminine Endings Subotnik Rose Rosengard 1991 Developing Variations Style and Ideology in Western Music Solie Ruth ed 1993 Musicology and Difference Tomlinson Gary 1993 Music in Renaissance Magic Toward a Historiography of Others Citron Marcia 1993 Gender and the Musical Canon Brett Philip Wood Elizabeth and Thomas Gary C eds 1994 Queering the Pitch The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology Kramer Lawrence 1995 Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge Subotnik Rose Rosengard 1996 Deconstructive Variations Music and Reason in Western Society Van den Toorn Pieter C 1996 Music Politics and the Academy DeNora Tia 1996 Beethoven and the Construction of Genius Musical Politics in Vienna 1792 1803 Schwarz David 1997 Listening Subjects Music Psychoanalysis Culture Kramer Lawrence 1997 After the Lovedeath Sexual Violence and the Making of Culture University of California Press Bellman Jonathan ed 1998 The Exotic in Western Music Fink Robert 1998 Elvis Everywhere Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of the Canon Cook Nicholas and Everist Mark ed 1999 Rethinking Music McClary Susan 2000 Conventional Wisdom Born Georgina and Hesmondhalgh David 2000 Western Music and Its Others Difference Representation and Appropriation in Music Pederson Sanna 2000 Beethoven and Masculinity in Burnham Scott and Steinberg Michael P eds Beethoven and his World pp 313 331 Williams Alistair 2001 Constructing Musicology Ashgate Kramer Lawrence 2003 Franz Schubert Sexuality Subjectivity Song Cambridge University Press Taruskin Richard 2005 The Oxford History of Western Music six volumes Fink Robert 2005 Repeating Ourselves American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice Davidovic Dalibor 2006 Identitat und Musik Zwischen Kritik und Technik Identity and Music Between Criticism and Technique Vienna Mille Tre Ross Alex 2007 The Rest is Noise Listening to the Twentieth Century Farrar Straus and Giroux Szendy Peter 2007 Listen A History of Our Ears Fordham University Press External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to New musicology Contemporary Music Theory and the New Musicology An Introduction The New York Review of Books MUSIC A LA MODE by Lawrence Kramer reply by Charles Rosen Volume 41 Number 15 September 22 1994 GregSandow com Beethoven Howls Village Voice December 17 1985 GregSandow com The Secret of the Silver Ticket Village Voice April 1 1986 see deconstruction The comeback of systematic musicology Original version of article for New Grove on Lesbian and Gay Music by Philip Brett and Elizabeth Wood Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title New musicology amp oldid 1112707823, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
