Well, once again, I'd ask if anyone really has that sort of response to an article in a scientific journal or, say, with many detailed historical works? Musicology does aim to explain rather than entertain. And I believe that is important.

What seems to come up regularly in these criticisms of musicology is the argument that 'musicology is more interested in itself than music', or words to that effect. But the aspect of musicology that I think sometimes provokes such comments I would describe differently: musicology aims to consider music from wider perspectives than is afforded simply by uncritically adopting those of the composers/performers. And that is a strength rather than a weakness, I believe. It aims for a wider understanding of works of music, of music as a cultural phenomenon, of muisc history, than one finds, say, in the essentially propagandistic writings that one gets in stuff written for publishers' blurb and the like. The same is true of scholarly study of literature, the visual arts, and so on.

Analytical work at best tries to do more than simply reiterate how a piece was constructed, but attempts through varying means to elucidate how fundamental units of sound and perception combine to make the work, how various structures and hierarchies are manifested in sound, the relationship between foreground and background, and so on. Not all methodologies are equally successful in this respect, of course, and it would be a brave person who suggested the method they have arrived with reveals all there is to know about a piece. But what is uncovered can be of great value to composers looking to learn from other music when writing their own, for performers wishing to articulate more clearly certain processes at play in a work, or to listeners who are interested not simply in the 'what' but also the 'how'. Cultural history or cultural study of music tries to examine and understand the relationship between works of music and their composers, and the wider culture that existed at the time, sometimes suggesting that the rise to predominance of certain composers/genres/etc. might have been as much to do with a variety of cultural and political factors as somehow emerging from merely immanent superiority of the works themselves. And this entails question of funding and subsidy, asking why certain types of music were supported (perhaps 'artificially') rather than others, and how this all fed into the process of canon formation. Furthermore, how various assumptions relating to gender, class, ethnicity, and other factors underlay these processes. These may seem esoteric questions, but they actually strike at the very bases of musical infrastructure as it exists or has existed. Certain canonical traditions are institutionalised in concert halls, the recording industry, universities and conservatoires, and so on; certain pieces/traditions/genres are privileged above others. Certain types of music are more likely to get commissioned than others, certain types of programmes are deemed more worthy, certain approaches to performance are favoured, certain 'traditions' are taught in universities, and so on and so forth. And some would argue, sometimes powerfully, that whole systems of exclusion grounded upon questions of gender, class, ethnicity, and their musical constructions, are embedded within these processes. It's not simply of interest, but vital that such things are examined and questioned, though this is obviously something that places musicologists at some distance from those working in the heart of those very systems. But in the long run, the results may have some knock-on impact upon institutional decisions in this respect. Asking whether one 'loves every minute' of reading such work seems a highly inappropriate question. Personally, I do very much enjoy reading material I find to be insightful, well-researched, and far-sighted in its conclusions.

As far as musicology 'serving' music is concerned - do historians 'serve' history? An awful lot of the history they consider is quite awful in nature; one would hardly expect them to be arguing the merits of what happened continuously. In a broader sense of the term, that is to 'serve' history, I think. And musicology can 'serve' musical history in a similar way. A lot depends upon what one defines as the 'music' that is to be 'served'. At the conference I've just been at, there were a variety of very interesting papers (and of course some less good ones, but that's par for the course) on such subjects as the political reception of Berio's Passaggio upon its first US performance, the relationship between Penderecki's St Luke Passion and the particular cultural/political situation in Poland at the time it was written, compared with its British reception (courtesy of our own Tim RJ), the psychological workings of free improvisation as perceived by the players, and how that might come across to listeners, the somewhat askew relationship of Wolfgang Rihm's song cycles to the Germanic lieder tradition, the reception of Lachenmann's music and constructions of its political meaning and significance, the Thatcherisation of performing rights, and so on, as well as some on more obscure subjects, most notably one on the role that gospel music plays in the North-Eastern Scottish fishing community, which I missed but apparently was fascinating. And most of these generated stimulating discussions and dialogues and hopefully contribute to greater understanding of the issues at stake. And one way or another, these debates may eventually permeate the wider musical world. I think that would be most valuable and that the issues concerned are relevant to all involved with or interested in music. They certainly 'serve' the wider need to understand the workings of music, its relationship to society and culture, the valorisation and institutionalisation of music (not just in the classical sphere, either, musicology nowadays often considers popular and other genres as well as the role of music in the media, advertising, public spaces, and so on), as well as illuminating further specific works and composers. That all 'serves music', in my opinion.

Also to add that musicology is in some sense an extension of what we all do here on these messageboards - talking about music, comparing perspectives, attempting to understand it better, and so on. Just that there are, at best, much higher standards demanded in terms of reasoning, accuracy of data and comprehensiveness in collecting and assessing it, and so on, when this is done in a musicological context.

I'm interested to know what others here who are either musicologists or who have a foot in the musicological profession think about all this? Tim? Martle? Biroc? Chafing Dish?

Of course it is. My point was in answer to Aaron's devilish advocacy of the idea that modern music is just as obscure as musicology. Of course nobody has "that sort of response" to scientific and historical articles either. Music, on the other hand, as we're all aware I think, is intended to engender an emotional/sensual/motor response as well as (indeed inseparably from) an intellectual one, which the work of scholars basically isn't. "Musicology does aim to explain." Yes, exactly. And what does it aim to explain? Primarily music, I'd say. Much of it fails to do so because much of it doesn't even attempt to do so, being, as Aaron points out, a parallel activity with an agenda and audience of its own, and this aspect of it is what I find uninteresting, because, as with all of us, time is running out, and for me there's always something more useful to spend it on. Which is why I think I shall now get on with one of those somethings and leave this argument to the professionals...

I recently had to deal with some of the issues raised here at a roundtable discussion in Huddersfield, so here's my (edited) tuppence-worth with apologies to anyone who' heard this tosh before...

The question we had to deal with was: Does the Composer Need the Musicologist?      

"I’m going to deal with the question in 2 ways – as it reads, and as I thought it read when I first heard about the roundtable, that is, “Does the Musicologist need the Composer?”…I think the two are interlinked anyway.
So, does the musicologist need the composer? No. What for? The composer is a liar who will be reluctant to assist anyone in discovering her ‘secret’ (after all, music composition seems to be the last bastion of the ‘creative artist who is superstitious about revealing her craft’), a prankster, intent on throwing a spanner in the works of history and analytical discourse and an antisocial loner, incompetent and incapable of communicating in any way other than through ambiguous dots and meaningless sounds.  The last thing she wants is some definitive interpretation of her precious baby, her music.  No superficial truth value, thanks very much.

While this is clearly an exaggeration of the response, particularly in this slightly more enlightened time (academically at least) when composers are more predisposed to engaging with musicologists or indeed engaging in musicology themselves, there is still a grain of truth to my representation.  Having been the subject of musicological research by a student, I know how one has an instinctive reaction to be unhelpful and over-protective about my work – indeed, reading my answers to the questionnaire that formed part of his research, I found myself appalled at the negative, curt and at times plain rude responses.  I think most composers probably find it difficult to let go and be objective about their work.

However, the main question here is somewhat vague and requires some expansion for a meaningful discussion to ensue.  Both musicology and composition can mean different things: historical musicology, analysis, issues of performance practice, aesthetics/philosophical approaches, and the myriad ways that composition as creative act can exist – traditional notation, graphic, electro-acoustic, improvisation, comprovisation, conceptual, others and combinations of these.  I agree that some assimilation of these compositional approaches under the general bracket ‘musicology’ is necessary, but the level at which the musicologist needs the composer will vary according to the creative approach.


I would consider myself a musicologist, though not of course on the level of the others on this board.  I have had the odd paper published, have delivered conference papers, chaired musicological roundtables, taught twentieth century aesthetics and semiotic analysis.  The early undergraduate composition teaching I do could be considered ‘composition by analysis’, a method based in musicology (for example, doing a semiotic analysis of Ferneyhough’s Etude 1 from the Etudes Transcendentales).  Similarly, it is vital that composition tuition offers a social, cultural and historical context for the works looked at: there is little point discussing Richard Barrett’s Opening of the Mouth, a work that will probably seem strange and potentially alienating to students, without some reference to and explanation of Barrett’s background, improvisation, the history of graphic scores and the poetry of Paul Celan.

For more advanced students, and indeed myself as academic and composer, I look to musicology and writings to enlighten me about musics and related artistic areas in a lucid yet interesting way – a new approach to Maxwell Davies’ 60s music (on which there is much research already) can be as riveting, exiting and revealing as the first article published on a young composer like Pierluigi Billone.  There is, of course, a lot of published musicology that is frankly badly written or completely irrelevant to the composer – I think of a mathematical analysis of a Ben Johnson string quartet that focussed on pre-compositional decisions that were of no significance for the music, for what was actually heard.  When musicologists talk about music, they’re usually very interesting.

And of course, it is essential that composers have the widest knowledge possible about music (or any other subject) – and for that, since we have no time to remove ourselves from our ivory tower garrets and do it ourselves, we need the musicologist."

Apologies for the length and probable irrelevance of this post... 

With all the usual caveats about not really knowing what I am talking about, not being in the business myself....

Just picking up Ian's distinction (Reply 33) between 'analytical musicology' on the one hand and the 'cultural studies' stuff on the other, my impression as an interested bystander is that there is proportionately much less of the former going on these days (at least in UK universities) and much, much more of the latter. That at least is what it looks like in terms of what filters out to us lay members in the congregation in terms of books and articles.

My beef, such as it is, is that there is a serious paucity of the former these days in reasonably accessible form, and an awful lot of the latter, much of it all rather mechanistic, largely preaching to the converted, and not of very high quality. Far from radically 'interrogating' and 'challenging' received assumptions, much of what I have read seems to involve just the opposite. The writer arrives already fully armed with a set of ideological assumptions and proceeds to treat music as just yet more fodder for fitting into their preferred mould. The wider implications aren't so much discovered and drawn out through examining and assessing the primary material; the material is pressed into service to fit the preferred (or possibly 'privileged' ) ideology.

If I were to do any bashing (and I don't really have the build for it) that would be my complaint, that the 'cultural studies' framework too often comes first and the music is made to fit in with the author's favoured 'narrative'. Not so much questioning as self-comforting confirming. And the disagreements that arise between exponents in the field very often seem to come down to differences of ideology (and hence interpretation) rather than substantive differences or discoveries in the source material itself. That's partly what I was getting at when I said that I'd personally prefer them to be a bit more 'scholarly' (hurrah) and a bit less 'academic' (boo).

In that respect  -  and since the comparison with science has been brought up - the way musicology is currently done (or maybe it's the current curse of the humanities generally?) comes off rather poorly in comparison IMHO. Science (including the social sciences) at least tries to be driven by the phenomena rather than preconceptions. The sort of musicology I'm whingeing about almost seems to pride itself in doing the opposite. Which is fine for those doing it, but it might help explain why few outside the business find it that rewarding.

And (while I'm at it ), I think one of the very encouraging developments in the science world is that there is now a realisation that promoting 'public understanding of science' is actually an important and integral part of the scientific enterprise itself. Some of the popularisers jumping on the bandwagon are admittedly pretty dire but, very significant I think, is that many of the academic big beasts in science see it as part of the job to write substantively, clearly and well for a general public. I'm not sure I can think of anyone who is doing quite that in musicology. Charles Rosen and, um, .....? That's a pity, and there is far less excuse for hiding in a protective thicket of technical jargon when it comes to music. If scientists can manage it, I'm sure musicologists can.  

I doubt if there's any work on anything of which that could not be said. What counts is the fidelity and scholarly rigour with which they treat that musical data, which can be judged on reasonably traditional scholarly grounds. Of course there's plenty of stuff that doesn't live up to that, but the best does. You can be sure that if someone comes up with an all-too-easy paradigm in which to stuff their data, whether or not it fits, someone else will take them to task on it sooner or later (I do a bit of that myself).

Of course there is; I have not suggesed or sought to imply otherwise (and some of really IS awful, too!).

I am not "condemning" so much as offering an opinion, however strongly held it may be and however much you may disapprove of it or disagree with it. The specific problem that I have with it as a whole is in the problems of trying to justify such a "construct" in provable neuroscientific terms (anent which I note that you eschew any kind of response to my example above in your response). It is a "construct" indeed - as distinct from something which is inherently a part of and naturally occurs within the music itself; that is to say that it is something largely "constructed" by certain kinds of musicologist rather than by composers in their compositions.

Again, no "wrath" is being generated, nor need it be, since it would appear that I can safely leave that kind of thing to you, but then since you have no idea how I might respond to any particular composer's "views on woman musicians (and on the working classes, and various other groups...)", you reveal yourself to be doubly off beam here -partly beause you mistake my comments upon certain kinds of musicological expression as "wrathful" and partly because you don't know what I think about certain matters. Aside from that, why in any case might I necessarily be expected - as you imply - to align myself to any other composer's views of such matters? I think that I have as much right, ability and desire to form my own opinions on such things, both in my capacity as a composer and in that as a human being; perhaps, however, you disagree with all or some of that statement and doubtless you'll tell us if so and to what extent.

Furthermore, I am not at all clear that the statements of anyone - even if a musicologist (which I'm not) - about "the working classes, and various other groups" are directly or even indiretly pertinent to the subject under discussion, i.e. musicology; would you disagree with that?

Best,

Alistair

Yes, I don't disagree with that in principle; my problem with it in this case is such "constructs", whether regarded as culturally or neuroscientifically based, are not amenable to incontrovertible proof. The particular "construct" type that you mention here is one where, whilst we know such things have been put forward and written about over many years, is not one that lends itself to anything more substantial and provable than an opinion and, since this one refers to gender, can you please respond to my remarks earlier about gender and the listening experience, since you've still so far avoided doing so. Furthermore, when you write that "such musicology attempts to unpack" such "constructs", you do not go on to declare whether or how it ever succeeds in so doing, still less whether it can do so or can be expected to do so.

"Telling" what? When and where, precisely, have I written about any particular composer's views on women, the working classes or other non-musical issues by "unfailingly defended" them, whether or not you might find any or all of those views offensive? And where have I ever "unfailingly criticised everything about" "feminist musicology"? In my remarks above, I was referring to the infiltration of gender studies in general terms into musicologial work; I did not single out "feminist musicology" there - you did that. In any case, I do not "unfailingly criticise" everything about either as such - what I do, however, is point out that it is very largely, as you yourself rightly say, "construct" based and that our inability to define and account for it unequivocally in neuroscientific or cultural terms risks leading such work into the temptation to parade mere speculations as though they are unchallengeable facts.

Best,

Alistair

That could well be so. But, having recognised that danger, most disciplines do their utmost to avoid it as far as possible. My complaint was that an awful lot of current musicology seems to wear it as a badge of honour (possibly connected with the fact that there is only one big philosopher of music and he has, as a result(?), suffered the worst fate for any philosopher, that of becoming the 'received wisdom' in the field).

But I'm very ready to accept that 'the best' doesn't do this.

And only because I am getting confused..... No one actually takes this 'masculine themes' and 'feminine themes', and 'masculine endings' and 'feminine endings' stuff seriously do they? There aren't arguments and counter-arguments about it, surely, or maybe there are?