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New musicology is a wide body ofmusicology since the 1980s with a focus upon the cultural study,aesthetics,criticism, andhermeneutics of music. It began in part a reaction against the traditionalpositivist musicology—focused onprimary research—of the early 20th century andpostwar 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 byfeminism,gender studies,queer theory,postcolonial studies, andcritical theory, new musicology has primarily been characterized by a wide-ranging eclecticism.
New musicology seeks to question the research methods of traditional musicology by displacingpositivism, working in partnership with outsidedisciplines, including thehumanities andsocial sciences, and by questioning accepted musical knowledge. New musicologists seek ways to employanthropology,sociology,cultural studies,gender studies,feminism,history, andphilosophy in the study of music.
In 1980Joseph Kerman published the article "How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out", calling for a change in musicology.[1] He asked for "a new breadth and flexibility in academic music criticism [musicology]",[2] that would extend to musical discourse,critical theory andanalysis. In the words ofRose 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."[3]
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".[4] ForLawrence 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".[5]
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, includingjazz andpopular 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 ofauthenticity and to make assessments based on critical methods "concerned with finding some kind ofsynthesis between [musical] analysis and a consideration of social meaning".[6]
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"[7] – a "web of culture"[8] For example, the work ofBeethoven has been examined from new perspectives by studying his reception and influence in terms ofhegemonic masculinity, the development of the modern concert, and the politics of his era, among other concerns. The traditional contrast between Beethoven andSchubert has been revised in the light of these studies, especially with reference to Schubert's possiblehomosexuality.[9][5][10]
New musicology is distinct from Germanmusic sociology in the work ofAdorno,Max Weber andErnst 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 includingAdolf Bernhard Marx andEduard Hanslick, and also the twentieth-century figuresHeinrich Schenker andCarl Dahlhaus.
A fundamental distinction has to do with attitudes towardsmodernism andpopular culture. Influential, oft-cited essays such asMcClary (1989) andMcClary (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 theculture industry.[citation needed]Heinz-Klaus Metzger describes "a fascistic element" in the music ofThe Rolling Stones.[citation needed] New musicology, on the other hand, often overlaps withpostmodern aesthetics; various new musicologists are highly sympathetic towards musicalminimalism.[11][12]
Vincent Duckles writes, "As musicology has grown morepluralistic, its practitioners have increasingly adopted methods and theories deemed by observers to mark the academy as irrelevant, out of touch with 'mainstream values', unwelcoming ofWestern 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."[13]
Critics of new musicology include Pieter van den Toorn and to a lesser extentCharles Rosen. In response to an early essay of McClary,[14] 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 criticHanslick, 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.)"[15] For David Beard and Kenneth Gloag, however, writing at two later moments,[16] the methods of new musicology have been fully incorporated into mainstream musicological practice.
