View source for New musicology

{{Short description|Subset of musicology since the 1980s}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2023}}
{{use shortened footnotes|date=January 2025}}
{{Multiple issues|
{{original research|date=November 2017}}
{{Essay-like|date=August 2023}}
}}
'''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 [[Positivism|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.

==Definitions and history==
New musicology seeks to question the research methods of traditional musicology by displacing [[positivism]], working in partnership with outside [[discipline]]s, 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.{{sfn|Kerman|1980}} He asked for "a new breadth and flexibility in academic music criticism [musicology]",{{sfn|Kerman|1994|p=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."{{sfn|Subotnik|1991|p={{page needed|date=July 2023}}}}

[[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".{{sfn|Brett|Wood|Thomas|1994|p={{page needed|date=February 2025}}}} For [[Lawrence Kramer (musicologist)|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".{{sfn|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 (philosophy)|authenticity]] and to make assessments based on critical methods "concerned with finding some kind of [[Thesis, antithesis, synthesis|synthesis]] between [musical] analysis and a consideration of social meaning".{{sfn|Beard|Gloag|2016|loc=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"{{sfn|Beard|Gloag|2016|loc=123}} – a "web of culture"{{sfn|Tomlinson|1984}} For example, the work of [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]] has been examined from new perspectives by studying his reception and influence in terms of [[hegemonic masculinity]], the development of the modern concert, and the politics of his era, among other concerns. The traditional contrast between Beethoven and [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]] has been revised in the light of these studies, especially with reference to Schubert's possible [[homosexuality]].<ref>[[Susan McClary|McClary]] in {{harvnb|Brett|Wood|Thomas|1994|p={{page needed|date=February 2025}}}}</ref>{{sfn|Kramer|1990}}{{sfn|Mathew|2012|p={{page needed|date=February 2025}}}}

==Relationship to music sociology==
New musicology is distinct from German [[sociomusicology|music sociology]] in the work of [[Theodor W. Adorno|Adorno]], [[Max Weber]] and [[Ernst Bloch]]. Although some new musicologists claim some allegiance to 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 {{harvp|McClary|1989}} and {{harvp|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]].{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} [[Heinz-Klaus Metzger]] describes "a fascistic element" in the music of [[The Rolling Stones]].{{citation needed|date=January 2025}} New musicology, on the other hand, often overlaps with [[postmodern]] aesthetics; various new musicologists are highly sympathetic towards musical [[minimalism]].{{sfn|McClary|2000}}{{sfn|Fink|2005|p={{page needed|date=February 2025}}}}

==Criticism==
Vincent Duckles writes, "As musicology has grown more [[Pluralism (philosophy)|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 canon]]ic 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."{{sfn|Duckles|2020}}

Critics of new musicology include Pieter van den Toorn and to a lesser extent [[Charles Rosen]]. In response to an early essay of McClary,{{sfn|McClary|1987|p={{page needed|date=February 2025}}}} 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 [[Eduard Hanslick|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.)"{{sfn|Rosen|2000}} For David Beard and Kenneth Gloag, however, writing at two later moments,{{sfn|Beard|Gloag|2016}} the methods of new musicology have been fully incorporated into mainstream musicological practice.

==References==
===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Sources===
{{div col|colwidth=45em}}
* {{cite book|last1=Beard|first1=David|first2=Kenneth|last2=Gloag|orig-year=2005|edition=2nd|year=2016|title=Musicology: The Key Concepts|publisher=Routledge}}
* {{Cite Grove|first1=Vincent|last1=Duckles|display-authors=etal|title=Musicology|year=2020|id=46710}}
* {{cite book|editor1-last=Brett|editor1-first=Philip|editor1-link=Philip Brett|editor2-last=Wood|editor2-first=Elizabeth|editor3-last=Thomas|editor3-first=Gary C.|year=1994|title=[[Queering the Pitch]]: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology}}
* {{cite book |last=Fink |first=Robert |year=2005 |title=Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |location=Berkley |isbn=978-0-520-24550-1 |jstor=10.1525/j.ctt1pntqm }}
* {{cite journal |last=Kerman |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Kerman|date=1980 |title=How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out |journal=[[Critical Inquiry]] |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages= 311–331|doi=10.1086/448101 |jstor=1343130 }}
* {{cite book |last=Kerman |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Kerman |year=1994 |title=Write All These Down: Essays on Music |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |location=Berkely |isbn=978-0-520-08355-4 |url={{google books|plainurl=y|id=TgPK3AATFnUC}} }}
* {{cite book|last=Kramer|first=Lawrence|author-link=Lawrence Kramer (musicologist)|year=1990|title=Music as Cultural Practice, 1800-1900}}
* {{cite book|last=Mathew|first=Nicholas|year=2012|title=Political Beethoven|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1107005891}}
* {{cite book|last=McClary|first=Susan|author-link=Susan McClary|year=1987|chapter=The blasphemy of talking politics during Bach Year|editor1=McClary|editor2-last=Leppert|editor2-first=Richard|title=Music and Society: The politics of composition, performance and reception|publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
* {{cite journal|last=McClary|first=Susan|year=1989|title=Terminal Prestige: The Case of Avant-Garde Music Composition|journal=[[Cultural Critique]]|number=12|pages=57–81|doi=10.2307/1354322 |jstor=1354322 }}
* {{cite journal|last=McClary|first=Susan|year=2000|title=Women and Music on the Verge of the New Millennium|journal=[[Signs (journal)|Signs]]|volume=25|number=4|pages=1283–1286|doi=10.1086/495561 }}
* {{cite journal|last=McClary|first=Susan|year=2006|title=The World According to [[Richard Taruskin|Taruskin]]|journal=[[Music & Letters]]|volume=87|number=3|pages=408–415|doi=10.1093/ml/gcl001 }}
* {{cite book|last=Rosen|first=Charles|author-link=Charles Rosen|year=2000|chapter=The New Musicology|title=Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New|pages=255–272|publisher=Harvard University Press}}
* {{cite book|last=Subotnik|first=Rose Rosengard|author-link=Rose Rosengard Subotnik|year=1991|title=Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music|page=141|location=Minneapolis|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|isbn=0-8166-1873-9}}
* {{cite journal |last=Tomlinson |first=Gary |author-link=Gary Tomlinson |date=April 1984 |title=The Web of Culture: A Context for Musicology |journal=[[19th-Century Music]] |volume=7 |issue=3 |pages=350–362 |jstor=746387 |doi=10.2307/746387 }}
{{div col end}}

==Further reading==
{{div col|colwidth=45em}}
* [[V. Kofi Agawu|Agawu, Kofi]] (2003). ''Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions''. Taylor & Francis.
* [[Tim Carter (musicologist)|Carter, Tim]] (2002). "An American In", review of [[Susan McCleary|McClary]]'s ''Conventional Wisdom'', in ''[[Music & Letters]]'', vol. 83, no. 2, pp.&nbsp;274–279.
* [[Nicholas Cook|Cook, Nicholas]] and [[Mark Everist|Everist, Mark]], ed. (1999). ''Rethinking Music''.
* [[Morton Feldman|Feldman, Morton]]; [[Earle Brown]]; and [[Heinz-Klaus Metzger]] (1972). [https://www.cnvill.net/mfmetzgr.htm "Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Heinz-Klaus Metzger in Discussion"], cnvill.net (Chris Villars)
* Fink, Robert. (1998) ''Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of the Canon''.
* Heile, Björn (2004). "Darmstadt as Other: British and American Responses to Musical Modernism" in ''twentieth-century music'', vol. 1, issue 2, pp.&nbsp;161–178.
* [[Ellie Hisama|Hisama, Ellie M.]] (2001). ''Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of [[Ruth Crawford Seeger|Ruth Crawford]], [[Marion Bauer]], and [[Miriam Gideon]]''. Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-64030-X}}.
* [[Joseph Kerman|Kerman, Joseph]] (1985). ''Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology''. UK edition: ''Musicology''.
* [[Susan McClary|McClary, Susan]] (2000). ''Conventional Wisdom''.
*O'Neill, Maggie, ed. (1999). ''Adorno, Culture and Feminism''. Sage Publications.
* [[Alex Ross (music critic)|Ross, Alex]] (2003). [https://web.archive.org/web/20080125131043/http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/theodor_adorno.html 'Ghost Sonata: Adorno and German Music']
* Rycenga, Jennifer (2002). "Queerly Amiss: Sexuality and the Logic of Adorno's Dialectics", in [[Nigel Gibson|Gibson, Nigel]] and Rubin, Andrew, eds. ''[[Theodor W. Adorno|Adorno]]: A Critical Reader''. Blackwell.
* [[Richard Taruskin|Taruskin, Richard]] (2005). "Speed Bumps", in ''[[19th-Century Music]]'', vol. 29, no. 2, pp.&nbsp;185–207.
* [[Ben Watson (music writer)|Watson, Ben]] (1995). "McClary and Postmodernism" in ''[[Frank Zappa]]: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play''. Quartet Books.
* Williams, Alistair (2001). ''Constructing Musicology''. Ashgate.
{{div col end}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* [http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.96.2.2/mto.96.2.2.mccreless.html ''Contemporary Music Theory and the New Musicology: An Introduction'']
*[https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/09/22/music-a-la-mode/ "Letters to the editor"] by [[Lawrence Kramer (musicologist)|Lawrence Kramer]] et al., ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', re: "&thinsp;'Music à La Mode', Lawrence Kramer, reply by [[Charles Rosen]]", vol. 41, no. 15, September 22, 1994
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20040423023901/http://www.gregsandow.com/howls.htm GregSandow.com: Beethoven Howls], ''[[The Village Voice]]'', December 17, 1985
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20040223120542/http://gregsandow.com/silver_ticket.htm GregSandow.com The Secret of the Silver Ticket] ''The Village Voice'', April 1, 1986, see [[deconstruction]]
*[https://archive.today/20130112025439/http://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/abstracts/honing-2004f.html The comeback of systematic musicology]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070927122439/http://www.rem.ufpr.br/REMv7/Brett_Wood/Brett_and_Wood.html Original version of article] for ''[[New Grove]]'' on "Lesbian and Gay Music", by [[Philip Brett]] and Elizabeth Wood

{{Music topics}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:New Musicology}}
[[Category:Musicology]]