Debat over de toekomst van de muziekwetenschappen

Lsg muziekwetenschap, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Debat over de toekomst van de muziekwetenschappen Een serie open debatten over de stand van zaken en mogelijke toekomstscenario's voor de muziekwetenschappen in Nederland en België. Georganiseerd door de leerstoelgroep muziekwetenschap en i.h.k.v. het NWO-programma Grondslagen van de Geesteswetenschappen. Inleidingen De meeste inleidingen werden gepubliceerd in het Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie (TvM). Zij zullen tzt in gereviseerde vorm verschijnen in boekvorm. • • • • • • • • • • • •

dr Sander van Maas dr Jacques Boogaart dr Henkjan Honing dr Wim van der Meer prof dr Rokus de Groot prof dr Emile Wennekes dr Jan Christiaens prof dr Marc Leman prof dr Mark Delaere dr Michiel Schuijer [ontbreekt] prof dr Karl Kuegle [alleen abstract] dr Ted Dumitrescu [alleen abstract]

Reacties • prof dr Nicholas Cook • prof dr R. Parncutt

hh, 01.10.2008; http://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/debat/

[Zie http://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/debat/ voor meer informatie]

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De toekomst van de muziekwetenschap jan christiaens De muziekwetenschap speelt leentjebuur In de programmatische stichtingsakte van de muziekwetenschap (1885) maakte Guido Adler een onderscheid tussen de historische en systematische muziekwetenschap, i.e. tussen een diachrone en synchrone benadering van het fenomeen muziek.1 De grootste zorg en betrachting in die eerste jaren was de muziekwetenschap het statuut van een echte wetenschap te geven, i.e. aan te tonen dat ‘muziekwetenschappelijke kennis’ kon beantwoorden aan de wetenschappelijke standaarden die toen geldig waren. Dit betekende de facto dat de historische muziekwetenschap leentjebuur speelde bij het wetenschapsmodel van de historisch-kritische filologie, de systematische bij dat van de exacte wetenschappen. De muziekwetenschap als universiteitsvak was tot ca. 1900 hoofdzakelijk muziekgeschiedenis; alle andere inhouden werden gevat onder de toen nog vage noemer ‘muziektheorie’. Vanaf 1900 wint de systematische tak van de muziekwetenschap meer veld, mede door de opgang van de (muziek-)psychologie. Vanaf ca. 1950 stond de methodologische en inhoudelijke tweedeling van de muziekwetenschap ter discussie.2 Pas door toedoen van musicologen als Walter Wiora en uiteindelijk Carl Dahlhaus 1

werd het inzicht in de noodzakelijke verstrengeling (eo ipso in de onwenselijkheid van een stricte methodologische scheiding) van de diachrone en synchrone benadering van de muziek een feit.3 In de laatste decennia van de twintigste eeuw is het wetenschapsmodel dat de muziekwetenschap heeft groot gemaakt, onder een (postmoderne) verdachtmaking komen te staan. Het metafysisch fundament van dat wetenschapsmodel is grondig gedeconstrueerd: absoluutheidsaanspraken en waarheidsclaims ervan blijken op wankele fundamenten te berusten. Ook andere traditionele principes van wetenschapsbeoefening, zoals rationaliteit, eenheid, universaliteit en waarheid, worden onder invloed van het postmodernisme beschouwd als specifieke gevallen van contingentie, pluraliteit, historiciteit en ideologie. Kortom, de postmoderne filosofie heeft een nieuwe conceptuele orde geïnstalleerd, waarin traditionele fundamenten van wetenschappelijke kennis een flink stuk van hun autoriteit hebben moeten inleveren. 4 De gevolgen voor de muziekwetenschap zijn tweeërlei. Wat betreft het studie-object (de

Guido Adler, “Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft”, in: Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1885), pp. 5-20.

2

Tekenend is in dit verband het feit dat in de eerste aflevering van het Duitse tijdschrift Die Musikforschung deze tweedeling zowel bestendigd als doorbroken werd. Zie Albert Wellek, “Begriff, Aufbau und Bedeutung einer systematischen Musikwissenschaft”, in: Die Musikforschung 1 (1948), pp. 157-171, hier p. 159, resp. Walter Wiora, “Historische und Systematische Musikforschung. Thesen zur Grundlegung ihrer Zusammenarbeit”, in: Die Musikforschung 1 (1948) pp. 171-191.

3

Zie, naast de referentie in de vorige voetnoot, ook Walter Wiora, “Albert Welleks ‘Grundriss der Systematischen Musikwissenschaft’ und die Verbindung von systematischem mit historischem Denken”, in: Die Musikforschung 19 (1966), pp. 247-260; Carl Dahlhaus, “Musikwissenschaft und Systematische Musikwissenschaft”, in: Carl Dahlhaus & Helga de la Motte-Haber (hrsg.), Systematische Musikwissenschaft (Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft 10), pp. 25-48, vooral de paragraaf “Systematische Musikwissenschaft und Strukturgeschichte” (pp. 40-43).

4

Lawrence Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, California, 1995, p. xi. tijdschrift voor muziektheorie, jaargang 10, nummer 2 (2005)


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discussie - de toekomst van de muziekwetenschap

muziek) ging de modernistische opvatting van musicologie uit van een negentiende-eeuwse muziekopvatting, waarin het muziekwerk als autonoom en zelfreferentieel kunstwerk (‘opus’) gold, en waarin de bestudering van muziek moest gebeuren van binnenuit, aan de hand van de partituur. De aansporingen om ook andere standpunten te betrekken in de muziekwetenschap – exemplarisch is hier het pleidooi voor de historisch-kritische interpretatie van Joseph Kerman5 werd in het begin afgedaan als irrelevant en onwetenschappelijk. Naderhand heeft de postmoderne kritiek op de traditionele aannames van de muziekwetenschap echter geleidelijk terrein gewonnen, zij het niet in alle milieus. Toch is er een vrij grote consensus over het feit dat het muziekbegrip van de traditionele muziekwetenschap scheuren en barsten vertoont. De ‘identiteiten’ waarmee gewerkt wordt (bijvoorbeeld werkbegrip, de westerse muziek, de kunstmuziek, de partituur ...) worden meer als een constructie dan als een gegevenheid beschouwd. Meer nog, de idee zelf van een ‘discrete identiteit’ op zich wordt in toenemende mate beschouwd als een illusie. Niet alleen het studie-object, ook het subject (de musicoloog) is grondig geproblematiseerd: de muziekwetenschapper is niet langer de eenduidige, objectieve instantie die wetenschap bedrijft, maar wordt nu gezien als gesitueerd in een bepaalde context, sommigen spreken zelfs van een versnippering. Deze heterogeniteit laat vanzelfsprekend sporen na in het discours van de musicoloog over de muziek. Kevin Korsyn gaat zelfs zover te beweren dat de identiteit van de muziekwetenschapper telkens opnieuw moet gecreëerd worden in relatie tot het studieobject waarover hij schrijft.6 Dat de muziekwetenschap er mijns inziens geen baat bij heeft haar verleden de rug toe te keren en resoluut op de kar van de New

Musicology te springen, zal ik verder argumenteren. Niettegenstaande lijkt het mij van groot belang dat de muziekwetenschap de vuurproef van de postmoderne kritiek op de geesteswetenschappen grondig ondergaat. Indien dit niet gebeurt, indien de muziekwetenschap zich niet diepgaand engageert met de beste wetenschapsfilosofische verworvenheden van het postmodernisme, dan dreigen vele pertinente vragen omtrent de muziek ongesteld (en onbeantwoord) te blijven. Het is immers gebleken dat het traditionele wetenschapsmodel, waarmee de muziekwetenschap in eerste instantie haar bestaan zocht te rechtvaardigen, ertoe geleid heeft dat – en wel op een systematische manier – bepaalde vragen niet en andere wel gesteld werden. Het engagement met het postmodernisme verloopt in de muziekwetenschap om verschillende redenen moeizaam. Zodoende is de muziekwetenschap zowat de traagste discipline om de verworvenheden van de postmodernistische kritiek op de geesteswetenschappen te assimileren en om te zetten in winst.7 Uit deze historische schets blijkt dat de muziekwetenschap er in haar relatief korte geschiedenis nog niet in geslaagd is zelf een aanzienlijke bijdrage te leveren tot de ontwikkeling van een specifiek musicologisch wetenschapstheoretisch apparaat, laat staan dat de musicologie een rol van betekenis speelt in de ontwikkelingen binnen de geesteswetenschappen, die momenteel volop aan de gang zijn. In de prille beginfase reeds speelde de muziekwetenschap leentjebuur bij het wetenschapsmodel van de historisch-kritische filologie resp. de exacte wetenschappen. Ook in de omwenteling die de muziekwetenschap momenteel doormaakt komen de wetenschapsfilosofische impulsen van elders, te weten uit de postmoderne filosofie en de

5

Joseph Kerman, Musicology [in de Amerikaanse uitgave: Contemplating Music], Londen 1985.

6

Kevin Corsyn, Decentering Music. A Critique of Contemporary Music Research, Oxford 2003.

7

Vergelijk de titel (en vooral de ondertitel) van het volgende boek, waarin wordt gesuggereerd dat deze vertraging op een bewuste keuze kan berusten: Anselm Gerhard (ed.), Musikwissenschaft – eine verspätete Disziplin? Die akademische Musikforschung zwischen Fortschrittsglauben und Modernitätsverweigerung, Stuttgart/Weimar, 2000.

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tijdschrift voor muziektheorie

(post-)structuralistische literatuurtheorie. Sander van Maas spreekt in deze context terecht van een theoretisch handelstekort van de musicologie.8 Als het op theorievorming omtrent haar statuut en haar werkwijzen aankomt, dan is de musicologie blijkbaar aangewezen op import vanuit andere disciplines. Als je bedenkt welk een diepe impact bijvoorbeeld de literatuurtheorie van pakweg de laatste 50 jaar (structuralisme, semiotiek, discoursanalyse) gehad heeft op alle geesteswetenschappen, en hoe deze stromingen en concepten geleid hebben tot een diepgaande zelfbezinning in de andere geesteswetenschappen (ook in de muziekwetenschap), dan is het bijna aanstootgevend te beseffen dat er vanuit de muziekwetenschap nog steeds geen noemenswaardige impulsen tot theorievorming gekomen zijn die een meer dan locale (i.e. mediumspecifieke) impact hebben. Hoe komt het toch dat de muziekwetenschap zich wat dit aspect betreft moeilijk kan laten gelden binnen de geesteswetenschappen? Ik meen dat het specifieke medium, de muziek als zodanig, hierin een grote rol speelt. Doordat de muziek een volkomen idiomatisch tekensysteem is, dat alleen ontcijferbaar is voor ingewijden, is de muziek als het ware in twee richtingen afgeschermd. Enerzijds heeft de muziekwetenschapper vaak de neiging om zich terug te plooien in een technisch en mediumspecifiek jargon, wat niet bevorderlijk is voor het ontdekken van een meer algemene geesteswetenschappelijke pertinentie van de reflectie op muziek voor andere wetenschapsdisciplines. Anderzijds worden geesteswetenschappers vaak afgeschrikt door de techniciteit van het muzikale discours, zodat ook vanuit die hoek weinig impulsen komen tot het doordenken van de pertinentie van de muziektheorie voor de andere geesteswetenschappen. Het medium zelf verhindert als het ware de ontdekking van een meer dan mediumspecifieke theoretische rijkdom. Dat deze barrière evenwel relatief is, blijkt ten overvloede uit het iro-

nische feit dat, zoals Sander van Maas opmerkt, de postmoderne omwenteling in de geesteswetenschappen mede vorm kreeg door een reflectie op de muziek.9 Dat deze reflectie nota bene door niet-musicologen als Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida en Gilles Deleuze werd ontwikkeld moet voor de muziekwetenschapper wel een bittere nasmaak hebben. De muziekwetenschap lijdt blijkbaar niet in eerste instantie onder een theoretisch handelstekort, maar onder slechte ontginning en marketing door de muziekwetenschappers zelf.

Een toekomst voor de muziekwetenschap: aandacht voor het ongedachte Ik vermeldde hierboven reeds dat de postmoderniteit vele kansen, maar ook enkele gevaren voor de muziekwetenschap inhoudt. De belangrijkste winst die de postmoderne kritiek voor de muziekwetenschap kan opleveren ligt mijns inziens in een grondige wetenschappelijke zelfkritiek van de musicologie, in zoverre het postmodernisme onrechtstreeks kritiek levert op elke vorm van reductie van de muziek tot datgene wat welbepaalde (i.e. wel-begrensde) wetenschappelijke en metafysische interpretatiekaders ervan aan het licht kunnen brengen. Alleen al de bewustwording bij de musicoloog van de beperktheid van elke waarheidsclaim en elke methodologie ten aanzien van de onbeperkte veelzijdigheid van het fenomeen muziek lijkt mij een belangrijke stap in de goede richting. Op die manier immers groeit een besef van het feit dat een wetenschappelijke methodologie (vorm-analytisch, esthetisch, historisch ...) niet alleen bepaalde dimensies van het fenomeen muziek aan het licht brengt, maar evenzeer vele andere dimensies buiten beeld doet verdwijnen. Positief geformuleerd: het zal erop aan komen de bestaande muziekwetenschappelijke methodiek te herijken in de oorspronkelijke gegevenheid van het studieobject, anterieur aan elk

8

Sander van Maas, “Radicale musicologie”, in: Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 9/3 (2004), p. 239.

9

Ibidem, “Radicale musicologie”, p. 237. 205



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theoretisch of methodologisch denkkader.10 Hiermee bedoel ik dat het aanbeveling verdient in een eerste onderzoeksfase de methodiek zo goed mogelijk af te stemmen op de specificiteit van de te bestuderen muziek. Deze aanbeveling is helemaal niet zo evident als ze op het eerste gezicht lijkt. In die methodiek zullen noodzakelijkerwijze (namelijk vanuit de aard van het studieobject, i.e. de muziek als niet-begripsmatig medium) termen als meerduidigheid, kritische interpretatie, het afwegen van pro’s en contra’s zonder tot eensluidende besluiten te komen, ja zelfs een zekere onbeslistheid een plaats krijgen, althans in zoverre deze termen kenmerkend zijn voor het soort betoog dat het fenomeen muziek in al zijn oorspronkelijkheid poogt te vatten. Dat meerduidigheid, interpretatie en zelfs onbeslistheid een grotere plaats krijgen in de muziekwetenschap wil helemaal niet zeggen dat de aanspraak op wetenschappelijkheid zelf onderhevig wordt verklaard aan de relativiteit die deze termen lijken te impliceren. Mijns inziens is er wel degelijk een heel stringent intellectuele vorm van interpretatie, van meerduidige kennis, zelfs van onbeslistheid mogelijk. Kortom, indien muziekwetenschap de muziek als zodanig (als muzikaliteit) wil bestuderen, dan kan haar wetenschappelijkheid niet uitsluitend afgelezen worden aan het sluitend/verifieerbaar karakter van de onderzoeksresultaten, maar ook en vooral aan de intellectuele gestrengheid waarmee niet-sluitende, niet restloos conceptualiseerbare – en in die zin ‘muzikale’ – onderzoeksgegevens worden geargumenteerd en onderbouwd.

De postmoderne wetenschapskritiek is mijns inziens anderzijds niet zonder gevaren. Twee daarvan wil ik hier onder de aandacht brengen. Er is ten eerste het gevaar van nieuwe monopoliserende waarheidsclaims. In zijn boek Decentering Music betreurt Kevin Korsyn de institutionalisering van de muziekwetenschap, en vestigt hij de aandacht op de marges van de bestaande structuren.11 De muziekwetenschap van de toekomst, aldus Korsyn, moet een positie innemen tussen de bestaande structuren door marginale gebieden naar het centrum te halen. Het probleem met deze opvatting is dat ze gevangen blijft in een antinomisch discours (centrum-marge, structuur-flexibiliteit) en het zodoende onrechtstreeks bestendigt. De postmoderniteit laat het voorkomen alsof de enige manier om de dualiteit centrum-marge te denken onder de vorm van een antinomisch discours is. Dat is natuurlijk niet zo. De mogelijkheid van een complementariteitsdiscours blijft in het postmodernisme grotendeels ongedacht. Het bestaan van een centrum en een marge, zo komt het me voor, hoeft niet noodzakelijk onvruchtbaar te zijn voor de muziekwetenschap. Een voorbeeld van zo een sluipende monopoliserende waarheidsclaim is het discours van de interdisciplinariteit. Het stoort me mateloos hoe deze methodiek, juist door de overdreven aandacht die er in de postmoderne wetenschapstheorie wordt aan besteed, onterecht het statuut van een doel op zich (in plaats van een methode) heeft verworven. Hoe meer deze verabsolutering van interdisciplinariteit wordt gepredikt, hoe minder denkbeeldig het mij lijkt dat het begrip de facto leidt tot ‘infra-disciplinariteit’, tot het soort weten-

10 Met deze uitdrukking distantieer ik mij van Lawrence Kramer (Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, p. 1), die de nieuwe (postmoderne) epistemologie van de muziekwetenschap in minimale zin alsvolgt karakteriseert: “The new direction in musicology as I understand and support it, is simply a demand for human interest. (...) Talk about music, the demand might run, should bear the impress of what music means to human subjects as thinking, feeling, struggling parts of the world.” Hiermee lijkt mij eerder de absolute ondergrens dan het programma als zodanig van de muziekwetenschap aangegeven. 11 Zie hierover Marcel Cobussen, “Kevin Korsyn, Decentering Music. A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research”, in: Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 9/2 (2004), p. 157. 206



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schappelijke kennis dat methodes en inhouden van verschillende disciplines met elkaar in correlatie wil brengen, maar daarbij pijnlijk onder (‘infra’) de kwaliteitsstandaarden van die disciplines blijft. Niettemin ben ik ervan overtuigd dat interdisciplinariteit als methode nieuwe wegen kan openen voor de muziekwetenschap. Dit impliceert dat deze methodiek enkel aangewend wordt indien de probleemstelling die voorligt daar vanuit haar eigen aard toe noopt. Op die manier krijgt die methodiek haar juiste plaats in het onderzoeksproces: ze is secundair ten opzichte van de probleemstelling, ze is de instantie die de wetenschappelijke vraagstelling zo functioneel mogelijk op de beoogde doelstelling moet afstemmen.

Een van de disciplines die het zwaarst te lijden hebben gehad onder de postmoderne omwentelingen in de muziekwetenschap is de traditionele vormanalyse. Als pars pro toto vermeld ik hier de kritiek van Joseph Kerman op de positivistische muziekanalyse (hij bedoelt de pitch-class-set-analyse), die bij uitbreiding van toepassing is op een groot deel van de vormanalytische methodes:

Een tweede gevaar van veel postmodernistische kritieken op de muziekwetenschap lijkt mij daarnaast dat de elementaire wetenschappelijke methodologie dermate onder de verdachtmaking van centralisering, monopolisering en – bij Foucault-epigonen – zelfs van een verborgen machtsagenda komt te staan, dat ze het kind met het badwater weggooien en aldus een onmisbaar fundament voor de vernieuwing van de muziekwetenschap onderuit lijken te halen. Mijns inziens behoort het nu eenmaal tot het wetenschapsbedrijf om een studiegebied duidelijk af te bakenen, een welomschreven doelstelling van het onderzoek voor ogen te houden en de methodologie hierop af te stemmen.12 Zo een afbakening betekent geenszins een onderwaardering of marginalisering van wat buiten de afbakening valt (hoewel jarenlange praktijk van gelijksoortige afbakeningen door de musicologie daar de facto wel toe kan leiden), het hanteren van een welomschreven doelstelling impliceert niet noodzakelijk een blikvernauwing, en de keuze voor een bepaalde methodologie kan bezwaarlijk geïnterpreteerd worden in termen van een verborgen machtsagenda.

Kerman heeft ten dele gelijk: de semantische onbepaaldheid – lees: de wetenschappelijk moeilijk te hanteren en te rationaliseren aard – van de muziek heeft ertoe geleid dat men een houvast zocht in een eenzijdige en sterk positivistische vorm van muziekanalyse, die niet zelden als de enige geldige vorm van wetenschappelijke kennis over de muziek werd gezien. Jammer genoeg is het pleidooi van Kerman door sommige verdedigers van de New Musicology geëxtrapoleerd tot een nefaste relativering van het belang van de muziekanalyse tout court. Hoezeer het ook toe te juichen valt dat de muziekanalyse niet langer geldt als het enige paradigma van muziekwetenschappelijk onderzoek,14 evenzeer valt het te betreuren dat sommige aanhangers van de New Musicology haar legitimiteit openlijk in vraag durven te stellen, vanuit een overigens terechte onvrede met een monolithische, positivistische (doch ook voorbijgestreefde) vorm van muziekanalyse. Mijns inziens behoort het tot de kerntaken van de muziekwetenschapper, ook die van de toekomst, om te bestuderen hoe de muziek gemaakt is. Wie de muziek in al haar

“Why should analysts concentrate solely on the internal structure of the individual work of art as an autonomous entity, and take no account of such considerable matters as history, communication, affect, texts, programmes, the existence 13 of other works of art, and so much else?”

12 Het zal de opmerkzame lezer niet zijn ontgaan dat ik hier de drie methodologische ankerpunten uit de titel van Guido Adlers artikel (zie voetnoot 1) herneem. 13 Joseph Kerman, Musicology, p. 18. 14 Deze evolutie wordt historisch-esthetisch geduid in Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works. An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, Oxford 1992 (2002), p. 2, p. 156 e.v. Zie hierover ook Aaron Ridley, The Philosophy of Music. Theme and Variations, Edinburgh 2004, p. 8. 207



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dimensies, ook de gemarginaliseerde, wil bestuderen, kan er niet omheen dat naast de esthetische, sociologische, affectief-emotionele, informatietheoretische en dergelijke factoren de muziek in eerste instantie iets is wat door een componist is gemaakt tot een bepaalde structuur. Christian Martin Schmidt gaat in een artikel met de veelzeggende titel “Music Analysis: not Universal, not Almighty, but Indispensable” zelfs nog een stap verder door te zeggen dat inzicht in de structuur van een compositie een essentiële voorwaarde is voor het verkrijgen van inzicht in de andere hierboven vermelde factoren.15

Kansen voor België en Nederland Wat zijn dan de kansen voor België en Nederland? De quasi-centrale ligging van ons taalgebied tussen enerzijds de grondig gemoderniseerde Anglo-Amerikaanse musicologie en anderzijds de continentale, austro-germaanse muziekwetenschap opent alvast perspectieven. De Amerikaanse musicologie was tot de jaren ’80 in de ban van het positivisme: de analyse en de vormleer vierden er hoogtij. Ondertussen is er ook plaats gekomen voor de nieuwe musicologie, die, in de figuur van Joseph Kerman, reageerde tegen deze eenzijdige tendens, en pleitte voor een meer geëngageerde studie van de muziek. Aan de andere kant is er de Duits-Oostenrijkse muziekwetenschap, die nog steeds de erfenis van het verleden lijkt mee te dragen. De muziekwetenschap is er netjes gecompartimenteerd, en er is weinig communicatie en uitwisseling tussen de verschillende subdisciplines. Tussen die twee uitersten zitten wij. Ik stuur hier zeker niet aan op een opportunistische keuze voor ‘the best of

both worlds’. Dat zou trouwens van een weinig diepgaand engagement met beide tradities getuigen. Veeleer pleit ik voor het behoud van onze centrale positie, netjes tussen de twee in, in de breuk die de muziekwetenschap doortrekt. Het plaatsnemen in die centrale breuk houdt vele voordelen in: je hebt zo de vrijheid om de blik naar links of rechts te wenden; je hebt als buitenstaander meestal een klaardere kijk op de zaken dan wie er met beide voeten in staat, maar bovenal besef je vanuit die breuk beter hoe ernstig de situatie is. En dat besef alleen al (maar dan van heel veel musicologen samen) is, onrechtstreeks, een grote garantie voor een bloeiende toekomst van de muziekwetenschap. (Jan Christiaens is als postdoctoraal onderzoeker van het F.W.O.-Vlaanderen verbonden aan de afdeling musicologie van de Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.)

15 Christian Martin Schmidt, “Music Analysis: not Universal, not Almighty, but Indispensable”, in: Music Analysis 21 (2002), Special Issue, pp. 23-27, hier p. 26: “(...) the knowledge of how pieces are made is the essential prerequisite to achieving knowledge of what they are.” Ook Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (“Adorno und die musikalische Analytik”, in: Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf & R. Klein (hrsg.), Mit den Ohren denken. Adornos Philosophie der Musik, Frankfurt a.M. 1998, p. 241) legt er de nadruk op dat elke vorm van reflectie op de muziek in laatste instantie in de partituur gefundeerd dient te zijn: “Alle Reflexion von Musik, gleich, ob sie ästhetisch, historisch, wissenschaftlich, analytisch oder ‘poetisch’ ausfällt, bedarf der materialen Vermittlung durch die musikalische Werke selber.” 208


Empirical Musicology Review

Vol. 1, No. 1, 2006

Border Crossings: A Commentary on Henkjan Honing's "On the Growing Role of Observation, Formalization and Experimental Method in Musicology" NICHOLAS COOK Royal Holloway, University of London ABSTRACT: In the early twentieth century systematic musicology, which was based on the comparative method, played a prominent role in the discipline: however it was appropriated by the Nazis and fell out of favour after the war. It was replaced by ethnomusicology and structuralist music theory, both of which emphasized the individual context (cultural or structural) and eschewed comparison between contexts. Both also developed an epistemology based on the generation of meaning through the act of "experiencing and understanding music" (Titon 1997: 87): this epistemology, characteristic of cultural musicology and theory (CMT) in general, is quite distinct from that of the cognitive sciences of music (CSM). The otherwise confusing variety of musicological practices subsumed under the category "systematic musicology", as set out in Honing's article on which this is a commentary, can be usefully seen in terms of two distinct dimensions, those of method and of epistemology. It follows from this that empirical methods are as consistent with, and as potentially valuable to, CMT as they are to CSM, and that EMR has the potential to reach both constituencies. Submitted 2005 November 14; accepted 2005 November 30. KEYWORDS: systematic, musicology, method, epistemology

ONE of the good things about a new journal like Empirical Musicology Review is that it stimulates efforts to define, or redefine, the field. In his article "On the growing role of observation, formalization and experimental method in musicology" Henkjan Honing situates "empirical" musicology within the context of "computational" and "cognitive" musicology: these are the three main headings into which his article falls, and he links them to observational, formalized, and experimental approaches to the study of music. Moreover he sees these as collectively making up "systematic" musicology—a term that has a much better defined meaning in continental Europe than it does in English-speaking countries, where it is more likely to be thought of as a throwback to the days of Guido Adler or, at least, Charles Seeger. Like Adler, Honing understands "systematic" musicology in negative terms—it is what historical musicology leaves out—and, as he sees it, the twentieth century has witnessed the development of systematic musicology from a marginal position within the discipline to an increasingly central one, largely under the influence of ethnomusicology. This is the "growing role" to which his title refers. It's also one of the good things about attempts to define or redefine fields that people see them from different perspectives, depending on where they are coming from. The purpose of these comments, then, isn't to critique Honing's vision of the field but rather to offer some different perspectives and to compare notes. Having said that, however, I would be inclined to turn Honing's history of systematic musicology on its head, and I'll explain this at some length because it grounds my perception of the current situation. If in Adler's own work historical musicology played a more significant role than systematic musicology, each occupied an equally prominent place in his topography of the discipline, and the broad range of systematic approaches as Adler envisaged them—theory, psychology, aesthetics, pedagogy, ethnography—was certainly prominent in the discipline as it was understood and practised in the early years of the twentieth century. It was moreover through systematic musicology that the discipline was most closely related to developments in other fields, because of the prominence of the comparative method across the human sciences. The first item in Adler's sketch of systematic musicology was "tabulation of the chief laws applicable to the various branches of music", and its central project was the comparison of the widest possible range of musical artefacts and practices, with a view to extrapolating those universal

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aspects of music that directly reflected essential attributes of humanity, and distinguishing them from those aspects that were historically or culturally contingent. It is only in the last few years that such issues have come back onto the musicological agenda: one might say that there was a fifty-year hiatus in systematic musicology as a result of the manner in which the comparative project was hijacked by the totalitarian regimes of 1930s-40s Europe, with the idea of the "essential attributes of humanity" being glossed in racial terms. (The work of Pamela Potter and Ludwig Holtmeier has shown the extent to which musicology, theory, and music psychology were all pressed into the service of racial ideology under the Third Reich.) The result was the post-war reaction embodied in the establishment of the new discipline of "ethnomusicology", defined in opposition to the contaminated project of comparative musicology: the emphasis was now on the need to understand any given musical practice "vertically", that is to say in terms of the constructions of personal or social meaning obtaining within the particular culture of which it formed part. And if musical practices, and their traces in the form of artefacts, only acquired meaning through their relationship to that culture, then making comparisons between cultures was both intellectually and ideologically illegitimate. The kind of comparison with which empirical methods were primarily associated was in effect declared off limits. Empirical approaches did survive in ethnomusicology, of course: one way to trace this might be through the fortunes of Charles Seeger's melograph, another through the comparative studies of musical style undertaken by Alan Lomax, Mieczyslaw Kolinski, or Helmut Schaffrath. But such work was marginal: ethnomusicology defined itself in relation to the idea of fieldwork, with the idea of participant observation (where the researcher is a participant in cultural practices at the same time as an ethnographer of them) developing into the "new fieldwork", with its emphasis on reflexivity. "Fieldwork is no longer viewed principally as observing and collecting (although it surely involves that) but as experiencing and understanding music", Jeff Todd Titon (1997: 87) writes, and he continues: "The new fieldwork leads us to ask what it is like for a person (ourselves included) to make and to know music as lived experience". This emphasis on the generation of meaning through the very act of doing fieldwork lies at the furthest possible remove from the kind of detached observation and comparison which had given empirical approaches a role within prewar systematic musicology. There was a curiously similar development, and around the same time, in music theory—which in North America might be considered the main form taken by systematic musicology, though one skewed towards the study of musical scores. Attempts to characterize different musical styles through comparative analysis (again hijacked by the Third Reich) gave way not only to a focus on individual compositions, but also to an insistence that all aspects of them must be understood in terms of—and only in terms of—their particular structural context. Just as in the case of ethnomusicology, this is a "vertical" approach (hence the ubiquitous music-theoretical metaphor of "depth"), with comparisons between similar "surface" configurations in different compositions again being ruled off limits. Just as, for ethnomusicogists, no musical practice had meaning outside its specific cultural context, so for music theorists no compositional configuration had meaning outside its specific structural context. But there was a striking difference. Whereas the empirical and comparative approaches of Lomax, Kolinski, or Schaffrath became increasingly marginalized as ethnomusicology developed, the hard-edged, often formalized approaches of Ivy League theorists like Milton Babbitt and David Lewin lay at the very heart of music theory's sense of its own disciplinary identity. Given this, and Babbitt's (1972: 3) famous proclamation that "there is but one kind of language, one kind of method for the verbal formulation of 'concepts', whether in music theory or in anything else: 'scientific' language and 'scientific' method", nothing might appear more self-evident than the link which Honing makes between such theorists and scientific positivism when he places them in a lineage headed by Popper. Yet this is a case where appearances are deceptive. In a review of Felix Salzer's Structural Hearing first published in 1952, Babbitt (2003: 24) wrote that "the test of the validity of Schenker's conceptions is not whether 'one hears that way' but whether, after having become aware of these conceptions, the listener does not find that they may not only codify his previous hearing but extend and enrich his perceptive powers by making listening more efficient and meaningful, by 'explaining' the formerly 'inexplicable', and by granting additional significance to all degrees of musical phenomena". The point of analysis, Babbitt is saying, is not to describe or account for how you hear the music, but to lead you to hear the music in richer and more meaningful ways. Forty years later Lewin (1993: 62) developed this idea at length in a study of Stockhausen's Klavierstück III in which he argued that "if the world is not in some way sensibly different as a result of the artistic deed, then I do not see in what sense one can say a work of art has transpired", and argued that analysis should be a means by which this is achieved, by which perception is expanded in creatively unforeseen ways. Analysis,



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in short, becomes like the new fieldwork: a mode of "experiencing and understanding music" through which meaning is generated. The point I am driving at is that method needs to be distinguished from epistemology. Observation, formalization, and experimentation represent different ways of capturing and interpreting data, which can be located on a continuum from the deductive to the inductive. But this is something quite different from epistemology, that is to say the purpose for which the methods are deployed, the kind of knowledge to which they are intended to contribute—and my claim is that separating out these two different dimensions may help to clarify what can seem the very confusing relationships between the different musicological practices referenced by Honing's many descriptors (not only observational, formal, and experimental but also empirical, computational, cognitive, and systematic). An example is when, following David Huron, Honing introduces the "new empiricism" and then draws a contrast between it and the "new musicology": "the contrast", he says, "could not be bolder, a contrast reminiscent of the methodological differences between the humanities and the sciences". But then he goes on to say, in an apparent non-sequitur, that "in the last decade these two movements seem to have merged into a revitalized systematic musicology": how, one might ask, is this merger possible given such opposed methodologies? A possible answer may lie in denial of the premise: the more important distinction between empirical and new musicology—or more generally between what I shall call the cognitive sciences of music (CSM) and cultural musicology and theory (CMT)—perhaps lies not in the methodological but rather the epistemological differences between them. The term "empirical" may be more readily associated with the observational and experimental methods of CSM but is in reality equally applicable to the archival or textually-based research on which CMT is built: both CSM and CMT are evidence-based projects, even if they use their evidence in different ways. However there is a more or less clear epistemological difference between them. CSM is grounded on a conception, however tentative, of objectivity (experiments give consistent results because of the physical or psychological regularities once confidently termed "natural laws"). CMT, by contrast, is grounded on intersubjectivity, as illustrated for example by Marion Guck's (1994: 62) analytical "(thought) experiments": she puts forward an interpretation of the second movement from Mozart's G minor Symphony (K. 550) in which the irruptive C-flat at bar 55 is likened to an immigrant, assimilated by stages within the melting pot of the "common-practice" style as the movement progresses. Her aim is not of course to show that Mozart wrote a symphony about immigration, but to set out a way in which the music may be heard as meaningful, and her interpretation is not merely subjective but intersubjective in that other people may also choose to hear the music that way. (In that case the "(thought) experiment" is successfully replicated.) Just as in the case of Titon or Lewin, the knowledge that is gained takes the form of "experiencing and understanding music": understanding is not separable from experience. deductive

inductive

objective

A2:

A1:

cognitive sciences of music

speculative music theory

intersubjective

B2:

B1:

cultural musicology and theory

composers' theory

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of approaches to music I can represent what I am getting at schematically. In Figure 1, CSM and CMT are shown as opposed on the epistemological (vertical) axis, since the former is grounded on objectivity (A) and the



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latter on intersubjectivity (B). But they are aligned with one another on the methodological (horizontal) axis, since as I have explained each is substantially empirical, and in this way both are opposed to the two further approaches to music shown in the first column. By "speculative music theory" (A1) I mean the kind of thinking about music associated, for example, with Robert Fludd: music was seen as a vehicle for comprehending fundamental cosmological principles, but "music" in this sense was defined in terms of a numerological tradition traced back to Pythagoras, and not in terms of the actual practices of real musicians ("musica mundana", not seen as an appropriate field for speculative thought, rather in the same way that Hanslick did not see emotional responses to music as an appropriate field for aesthetic thought). In other words empirical reality was only admitted to a minimal degree: that is why such theory was speculative, and why it appears in column 1. At the same time, the theory aspired to a truth conceived as lying beyond the individual or society, and in that sense objective, which is why it appears in row A. It is however worth pointing out that, in its numerical expression, this kind of speculative music theory was highly formalized, and this shows that, just as we should avoid conflating method and epistemology, so we should avoid conflating the empirical and the formal. Properly speaking formal/informal might be incorporated within Figure 1 as a third dimension: the proof of this is that it is easy to imagine more or less formalized versions of all four regions of Figure 1. Indeed what I have called "composers' theory" (B1) is a particularly clear demonstration of this: the serial "theory" of the Viennese school before the Second World War and the Darmstadt school after it is highly formalized, yet substantially ungrounded in empirically demonstrable percepts. Regarded according to the criteria of CSM, this is simply bad theory (which is why it is in column 1). But those are not the right criteria, for the purpose of "composers' theory" is to give rise to unique and meaningful ways of hearing that are inseparable from the materials heard—and that can in consequence be incorporated within compositions designed to leave the world "in some way sensibly different", to repeat Lewin's words. Once again it is a matter of understanding music through the experiencing of it, and that is why "composer's theory" is in row B. I don't want to be misread. I don't mean to suggest that there are four and only four possible ways to think about music as shown in Figure 1 (or eight, if we add a dimension of formal/informal). On the horizontal axis there are certainly intermediate values (we might want to rate Schenker and Riemann somewhere around 1.5), and music theorists have a habit of slipping imperceptibly from A to B or vice versa, or even trying to ride both horses at once (Cook 2002). My point is simply that empirical musicology takes its place within an at least two-dimensional field, and that if we maintain epistemological distinctions rather than conflating them then it becomes possible to conceptualize productive interactions between them. I'll give two examples. The first is familiar: CMT, with its less exacting standards of evidence and verification, may provide a useful source of hypotheses to be tested and, if confirmed, subsumed with CSM. Or at least that is how the relationship is often portrayed, as if it were a transition from left to right in Figure 1: I would wish instead to see it as a movement on the epistemological axis, a translation from one conception of the nature and use of knowledge to another. Nor would I wish it to be thought that the direction of movement is always from B to A, so I will conclude with an example of movement in the opposite direction. The "Tonalities" software developed by Anthony Pople (2004) immediately before his untimely death is a modelling system which takes as its input a simplified score of the music to be studied and a preliminary segmentation of it. Built into the system is the ability to identify a very large number of pitch-organizational schemes, ranging from common-practice scales and harmonies to neo-Riemannian and set theory; it draws as much on the work of Krumhansl and Temperley as of Forte and Cohn. Through adjusting what are called the Language Settings, the analyst can "tune" the system to recognize certain schemes and ignore others, following which "Tonalities" works through the music, evaluating how far the analyst's original segmentation is consistent with the settings he or she has selected. The process is an iterative one, with the analyst repeatedly refining the settings and so arriving at a closer conception of exactly what pitch schemata are contributing to the sense of continuity or discontinuity expressed through the segmentation. (The guiding principle behind the software is that there is no such thing as "tonality", but that different combinations of schemata result in an indefinite number of distinct "tonalities"—hence the software's name.) It is, in short, a computer-aided version of how Lewin conceived theory: as a way of extending or expanding received modes of perception, a generation of new ways of "experiencing and understanding music". Empirically based knowledge is being drawn from CSM and translated across the epistemological borderline to CMT. Nor, finally, do I want to overstate the clarity of this borderline: most borders, other than the most intensively policed, are hard to make out on the ground (and no frontier built on the concept of objectivity can be considered secure.) Indeed I hope that one of the effects of EMR will be to encourage trafficking



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across this border, because—for the reasons I outlined in the first part of this commentary—CMT has a far more limited history of the use of empirical methods than CSM, and hence much to gain from being part of a free trade area. Under such circumstances it might be tempting to call for full political union and the abolition of borders. Yet that might be a mistake. As is well known, the current burgeoning of CSM had its origins in music psychology, where the application of empirical methods attracted the attention of many working over the border in CMT: overwhelmingly beneficial as this convergence of interests was, it resulted in what—in a much quoted phrase—Eric Clarke (1989: 2) described as a "rather unstructured 'leakage' between the disciplines". It wasn't, I'm sure, the trafficking of methods that gave rise to this unstructured quality: it was the epistemological assumptions that adhered to them but were not always recognized for what they were. In the federal musicological community that embraces CSM and CMT, we may work with the same methods, but on different assumptions and with different aims: rather than conflating these assumptions and aims, the route towards productive interaction is via an informed recognition that there are different but equally valid conceptions of the nature and use of knowledge about music. EMR will serve the widest constituency and have the most impact if it is on the one hand methodologically focussed, but on the other epistemologically inclusive.

REFERENCES Babbitt , M. (1972). Past and present concepts of the nature and limits of music. In: B. Boretz and E. T. Cone (Eds.), Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory. New York, Norton, 1972, pp. 3-9. Babbitt, M. (2003), ed. Stephen Peles. The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press Clarke, E. (1989). Mind the gap: formal structures and psychological proceses in music. Contemporary Music Review 4, pp. 9-22. Cook. N. (2002). Epistemologies of music theory. In: T. Christensen (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 78-105. Guck, M. (1994). Rehabilitating the incorrigible. In: A. Pople (Ed.), Theory, Analysis and Meaning in Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 57-73. Lewin, D. (1993). Musical Form and Transformation: 4 Analytic Essays. New Haven: Yale University Press. Pople, A. (2004). Using complex set theory for tonal analysis: an introduction to the Tonalities project. Music Analysis Vol. 23, pp. 153-94 [published 2005] Titon, J. T. (1997). Knowing Fieldwork. In: G. F. Barz and T. J. Cooley (Eds.), Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 87-100



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De toekomst van de muziekwetenschappen:1 Ontwikkeling van polyfonie rokus de groot Inleiding Mijn bijdrage aan het debat over ‘De toekomst van de muziekwetenschappen’ bestaat uit een verkenning van de mogelijkheden van het concept ‘polyfonie’, wetenschappelijk en maatschappelijk, muzikaal en als metafoor. De pluralis ‘muziekwetenschappen’ in de titel van het debat is daartoe al een uitdaging. Ik vat polyfonie op als een gelijktijdigheid van stemmen, elk met een eigen identiteit en tegelijk met een ‘verantwoordelijkheid’ voor elkaar en voor het geheel. ‘Verantwoordelijkheid’ (‘responsabilité’) is een uitdrukking van Boulez voor de wijze waarop de stemmen op elkaar betrokken zijn, elkaar mede vormen (bijvoorbeeld door harmonische en ritmische complementariteit), en een bijdrage leveren aan de articulatie van de totale textuur en van overkoepelende processen (vooral op het vlak van de harmonie).2 Fundamenteler kunnen wij in het woord ‘responsabilité’ de betekenis horen van ‘in staat

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respons te geven’. Boulez benadrukt sterk dat polyfonie zich door dit kenmerk onderscheidt van monodie, heterofonie en homofonie. Matthijs Vermeulen heeft voor de relatie tussen stemmen in polyfone muziek een vergelijkbare notie van ‘verantwoordelijkheid’ gehanteerd.3 Binnen polyfonie zijn als dimensies van ordening te onderscheiden het contrapunt en de harmonie. Het contrapuntische aspect heeft betrekking op de onderlinge verscheidenheid aan gelijktijdige melodische bewegingsrichtingen van stemmen, het harmonische op de gelijktijdige relaties tussen die stemmen in termen van normen voor samenklank (inclusief de overschrijding daarvan). Die normen verschillen per muziekpraktijk, historisch en synchroon. In renaissancepolyfonie, bijvoorbeeld, geschiedt de respons van de stemmen ten opzichte van het overkoepelende kader in termen van consonantie en dissonantie, waarbij consonantie als referentie dient. Rond 1930 heeft Charles Seeger juist een concept ontwikkeld van dissonant contrapunt, ten dienste van

Onder deze noemer wordt door de leerstoelgroep Muziekwetenschap van de Universiteit van Amsterdam een reeks colloquia georganiseerd. Deze tekst is een weerslag van mijn bijdrage aan deze reeks, en van een deel van de discussie die erop volgde (11 november 2004). Tijdens dezelfde bijeenkomst hield Wim van der Meer een lezing, waarvan een bewerking eveneens in deze aflevering van TvM is afgedrukt (“The Location of Music: Towards a Hybrid Musicology”). Eerdere bijdragen, van de hand van Sander van Maas (“Radicale Musicologie”) en Henkjan Honing, (“The Comeback of Systematic Musicology: New Empiricism and the Coginitive Revolution”), verschenen in Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 9/3 (2004).

2

Zie P. Boulez, Boulez on music today, vert. S. Bradshaw en R.R. Bennett, Londen 1971 (oorspr. 1963), p. 118: “(...) we must now study the concept of polyphony, which is distinguished [from monody, homophony and heterophony] (...) by the responsibility which it implies from one structure to another.”

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Vermeulen schrijft in een brief, gedateerd 29 augustus 1942, over de ontwikkeling in zijn symfonieën van wat hij ‘polymelodiek’ noemde, en meer in het bijzonder over de doelstelling op harmonisch vlak, dat “elke stem met behoud van alle autonomie zich voegt naar een louter harmonisch aspect der expressie en ook in dezen zin verantwoordelijk wordt voor het resultaat.” Zie T. Braas, De symfonieën en de kamermuziek van Matthijs Vermeulen: Poëtica en compositie, Amsterdam 1997, p. 54. tijdschrift voor muziektheorie, jaargang 10, nummer 1 (2005)


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discussie - de toekomst van de muziekwetenschappen: ontwikkeling van polyfonie

wat hij noemde ‘een zuiverende discipline’.4 Boulez geeft een aanzienlijke uitbreiding aan wat onder ‘stem’ en ‘harmonie’ kan worden verstaan. Stemmen (Boulez gebruikt de term ‘structuren’) kunnen op zichzelf weer samengestelde structuren zijn, d.w.z. toon-, duur- of timbrecomplexen en combinaties daarvan. (In wezen is een stem in renaissancecontrapunt ook al een complex, een geheel van grondtonen en boventonen, waardoor er vaak onvoorspelbare interferenties tussen stemmen ontstaan.) In Boulez’ opvatting hoeft het voorts bij ‘harmonie’ helemaal niet te gaan om een modaal of tonaal concept. Een uitbreiding bij hem is bijvoorbeeld de notie ‘verveelvoudigde harmonie’, die wordt uitgedrukt als een systeem van dichtheidsgraden.5 De ‘verantwoordelijkheid’ die kenmerkend is voor polyfonie heeft dus betrekking op haar beide ordeningsdimensies: zowel op de relatie van de ene individuele stem tot de andere (contrapuntisch) als op de relatie tussen een individuele stem en het collectief (harmonisch). Vanwege het ‘in staat zijn tot respons’ transformeren de stemmen elkaar voortdurend. Het gemeenschappelijk harmonisch kader brengen de stemmen tegelijkertijd tot stand, èn kunnen zij overschrijden.

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Het vóórkomen van polyfonie en contrapunt is niet beperkt tot westerse muziek, hoewel het er karakteristiek voor is (geweest). We vinden meerstemmigheid ook in tradities op zulke verschillende plaatsen als Centraal Afrika en Polynesië. We kunnen het concept ook uitbreiden, en daarbij de grenzen overschrijden van wat in het westen voor 1900 gewoonlijk is verstaan onder polyfonie, dat wil zeggen melodische polyfonie. In een verwijde opvatting kan het concept ook ritmische en zelfs timbrale polyfonie en contrapunt omvatten. Indiase en Arabische klassieke muziektradities kunnen dan ook worden betrokken in de studie van polyfonie, als we letten op de relaties tussen vocale of instrumentale solopartijen enerzijds en die van slagwerk anderzijds.6 De concepten ‘polyfonie’ en ‘contrapunt’ zijn ook veelvuldig in metaforische zin gebruikt.7 Zo vatte Matthijs Vermeulen zijn ‘polymelodiek’ of ‘authentiek horizontalisme’ utopisch op als een geheel van sociale verhoudingen van gelijkheid in een ideale samenleving.8 Recenter heeft Edward Said, de Palestijns-Amerikaanse oriëntalisme-criticus en beoefenaar van de literatuurwetenschap, contrapunt sterk in de aan-

Tijdens de discussie na het debat wees Michiel Schuijer hierop. Het gaat hier om een ontwerp van een didactiek waarbij de regels van het klassieke westerse contrapunt werden omgekeerd: eisen van consonantie op bepaalde syntactische plaatsen werden eisen van dissonantie. Dit betrof niet alleen toonhoogte, maar ook ritme, dat eveneens kon worden ‘gedissoneerd’. Zie Ch. Seeger, “On Dissonant Counterpoint”, in: Modern Music 7/4 (1930), pp. 25-26. Componisten die zich door deze notie lieten inspireren en op eigen wijze ontwikkelden waren Ruth Crawford-Seeger en Carl Ruggles. Ook Vermeulen ontwikkelde een dissonant contrapunt, en wel door de verandering van de normen van samenklank; hij verschoof de referentie binnen de boventoonreeks van de dicht bij de grondtoon gelegen harmonischen naar die welke er verder van verwijderd zijn.

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Boulez on Music Today, pp. 117-118.

6

Ook in melodisch-timbraal opzicht kan in Indiase klassieke muziek polyfonie worden opgemerkt. Ik wijs niet alleen op het voorkomen van verschuivende bourdons in uitvoeringen van meer dan een shenai (dubbelrietblaasinstrument), maar ook op de relatie tussen melodische solopartijen en de quasi-melodische patronen gespeeld op de twee instrumenten waaruit de tabla bestaat, vooral wat betreft de bayan.

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Voor een onderzoek naar een toepassing van het concept polyfonie in de literatuur(wetenschap), zie S. Lichtenstein, Literaire polyfonie: Een theoretisch ontwerp en zijn toepassing op een passage in Thomas Manns ‘Der Erwählte’, Academisch proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1999.

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Zie T. Braas, De symfonieën en de kamermuziek van Matthijs Vermeulen, o.a. hoofdstuk 2.4. Zie ook “Over Palestrina”, in: M. Vermeulen, De Stem van Levenden, Arnhem 1981, pp. 70-73.

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dacht gebracht, in muzikale en metaforische zin, met de implicatie van een humanistisch model van culturele, sociale en politieke interactie. Hieronder volgt een bewerking van Saids ideeën, die weliswaar niet in deze expliciete samenhang in zijn werk te vinden is, maar daarin wel wordt geïmpliceerd. Bij metaforisch gebruik van muzikale concepten plaats ik de bijbehorende termen tussen aanhalingstekens.

Contrapunt als metafoor bij Edward Said Muziek speelde een vooraanstaande rol in het leven van Edward Said. Hij had een uitgesproken voorkeur voor polyfonie, door hem meestal aangeduid als contrapunt. ‘Polyfonie’ was onder meer de achtergrond van de oprichting, in 1999, van de ‘West-Eastern Divan Workshop’, een orkest waarin jonge Arabische en Israëlische musici samenspeelden – verschillende ‘stemmen’ in hetzelfde ‘harmonische’ kader. Said had hiertoe samen met Daniel Barenboim het initiatief genomen. Het is in de geest van Goethe dat hij hier wilde handelen. De naam van het orkest verwijst uiteraard naar diens Der west-östliche Divan, waarover Said opmerkte: “art, for Goethe especially, was all about a voyage to the ‘other’, and not concentrating on oneself (...)”. Aan deze mentale instelling is volgens Said sterk behoefte, aangezien “[t]here is more of a concentration today on the affirmation of identity, on the need for roots, on the value of one’s culture and one’s sense of belonging.”9 We zouden die laatste situatie kunnen beschrijven als een veelheid aan ‘monodische stemmen’ die elkaar weliswaar nodig hebben voor identiteitsbepaling, maar die niet in een verband van ‘polyfonie’ treden. Ook met betrekking tot Saids persoonlijk leven is het interessant om contrapunt als concept toe te passen, in de zin van een zich ont-

9

wikkelende ‘polyfonie’ tussen verschillende culturele tradities, inclusief muziekpraktijken. Aanvankelijk ervoer hij een onverzoenlijke tegenstelling tussen zijn Arabische muzikale achtergrond – waarvan hij zich als kind afwendde – en zijn training in westerse klassieke muziek – die in zijn jeugd steeds aan belang toenam, juist vanwege het contrapunt. Eerst op latere leeftijd liet hij toe dat deze ‘stemmen’ met elkaar interageerden in een voortdurende ‘polyfonie’ van wederzijdse modificatie. Zo beschreef hij zijn ervaring met Brahms’ Variaties op. 18 als “‘threaded through’ with the singing of Umm Kalthoum and other non-Western musics – along with Western ones”.10 In de meest omvattende zin kan ‘polyfonie’ in de context van Saids denken worden opgevat als een emancipatoir model of representatie van radicaal humanisme. Over dat laatste schrijft Said: “It seems to me that the basic humanistic mission today, whether in music, literature, or any of the arts or the humanities, has to do with the preservation of difference, without, at the same time, sinking into the desire to dominate.”11 In de ogen van Said is een humanistische gemeenschap er een, waarin men scheidingen te boven komt zonder verschillen te vernietigen. Een ‘verschil’ wordt door hem gezien als een identiteit, bijvoorbeeld een specifieke traditie, maar wel in een speciale betekenis. Een identiteit heeft geen essentialistische connotatie bij hem, en is niet verbonden met een streven naar ‘zuiverheid’. Zij “is itself made up of different elements. But it has a coherent sound and personality or profile to it.”12 In Saids opvattingen over polyfonie in metaforische zin valt een aantal ‘contrapuntische’ en ‘harmonische’ aspecten op:

D. Barenboim en E.W. Said, Parallels and Paradoxes. Explorations in Music and Society, ed. en voorwoord A. Guzelimian, New York 2002, p. 11.

10 E.W. Said, Musical Elaborations, London 1992 (11991), p. 97. 11 Barenboim en Said, Parallels and Paradoxes, p. 154. 12 Ibidem. 51



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• Verscheidenheid aan gelijktijdige ‘stemmen’ met respect voor verschil zonder dominantie Het interessantste contrapunt vindt plaats wanneer ‘stemmen’ een duidelijke definitie hebben – een bepaalde, eventueel zelfs zeer uitgesproken identiteit ontplooien. Geen van de ‘stemmen’ domineert de andere. Polyfonie is het zich ontvouwen van een onderling zich verwevende actualiteit van ‘stemmen’, waarbij ook hun geschiedenis doorklinkt. Er is geen scheiding tussen ‘stemmen’, wel verschil. • Gedeeld ‘harmonisch’ kader De ‘stemmen’ zijn ‘verantwoordelijk’ voor, en ‘verantwoording schenkend’ aan een gedeeld ‘harmonisch’ kader. Dit laatste kan in metaforische zin op verschillende wijzen in Saids werk worden aangewezen. De wijze waarop hij de veelheid aan gelijktijdige ‘stemmen’ benadert, is die van een amateur-intellectueel. ‘Amateurisme’ is zijn eigen uitdrukking (en hij gebruikt deze in een uitgesproken positieve zin): “literally, an activity that is fueled by care and affection rather than by profit and selfish, narrow specialisation”,13 en uitgebreider: “the desire to be moved not by profit or reward but by love for and unquenchable interest in the larger picture, in making connections across lines and barriers, in refusing to be tied down to a specialty, in caring for ideas and values in spite of the restriction of a profession.”14 Amateurisme is voor Said een zaak van weloverwogen keuze; de publieke rol van de intellectueel zou er een moeten zijn van “outsider, ‘amateur’, and disturber of the status quo.”15 Meer in het algemeen bestaat bij Said het gedeelde ‘harmonische’ kader krachtens welk de ‘contrapuntische stemmen’ kunnen interageren, in het interculturele perspectief van een radicale seculiere humanistische emancipatie. Dat impliceert wederzijds respect en een vreugdevolle bereidheid tot ‘antwoorden’ in complementariteit. Opnieuw: er is geen tiran-

nie van de meerderheid (of machtige minderheid). Er zijn altijd dissidente ‘stemmen’, en alternatieve wijzen van luisteren naar de steeds wisselende manier waarop de ‘stemmen’ zich op elkaar betrekken. • Een ‘alternatief ’ tijdsconcept Het gaat hier om een concept waarvan Said zich bewust werd bij het ontdekken van ‘tegenstemmen’ (‘countertraditions’, ‘alternatives’) ten opzichte van bepaalde door hem als dominant ervaren vormen in westerse klassieke muziek, in het bijzonder de sonatevorm met zijn doelgerichte temporele lineariteit. Het alternatieve concept houdt in: een ruim de tijd nemen – ‘vrije tijd’ – voor reflectie en contemplatie, een zich open stellen voor de overdaad aan mogelijke klankrelaties, een zich de gelegenheid gunnen tot rijping. Daartegenover staat voor Said een tijdsconcept van zich verplicht-voelen, van een druk tot produceren (die gepaard gaat met een chronische tijdnood); dit laatste concept zou men kunnen kwalificeren als ‘monodisch’. Niet de dwang van unilineaire processen – zoals de sonatevorm volgens Said de luisteraar oplegt – maar nadruk op variatie en elaboratie, aandacht voor het ornamentele, zin voor het momentane en het niet-narratieve appelleren aan de ‘alternatieve’ mentale instelling. Polyfonie behoorde tot de texturen die Said hier als model voor oren stonden. • Ruimte voor dissidentie In polyfonie, speciaal bij Bach, voorzien individuele stemmen vaak in momenten van dissonantie, wanneer de logica van hun melodisch verloop zichzelf in conflict bevindt met de op dat ogenblik heersende harmonische structuur, zoals gesuggereerd door (enkele van) de andere stemmen. De rol van hetzij benadrukking of weerspreking van harmonische structuren wisselt steeds tussen de stemmen.

13 E.W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual, New York 1994, p. 82. 14 Ibidem, p. 76. 15 Ibidem, p. x. 52



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Dit geheel van muzikale ‘gedragingen’ lijkt als metafoor geschikt voor Saids ideaal van een humanistische samenleving: “But for intellectuals, artists, and free citizens, there must always be room for dissent, for alternative views, for ways and possibilities to challenge the tyranny of the majority and, at the same time and most importantly, to advance human enlightenment and liberty.”16 Contrapuntische texturen bieden ook als geheel een aspect van dissidentie aan de luisteraar. Terwijl zij deze uitdagen tot een voortdurend verschuiven van de aandacht, ontsnappen zij aan een complete cognitieve greep. Polyfone klankprocessen zijn cognitief onuitputtelijk. Één enkele gezaghebbende luisterwijze is niet mogelijk. De polyfone stemmen modificeren elkaar immers voortdurend op vaak onverwachte wijze. Hiervoor zijn onder meer (psycho-)akoestische en syntactische interferenties tussen de waargenomen gelijktijdige stemmen verantwoordelijk. • Alomtegenwoordig potentieel van transgressie In Saids werk speelt aandacht voor het transgressieve een grote rol, het overschrijden van aangenomen grenzen tussen concepten, identiteiten, praktijken, disciplines. Polyfone texturen bieden ook hier metaforische mogelijkheden. Hoewel polyfonie wordt gevormd door stemmen met een zeker verschil in identiteit, is er steeds de mogelijkheid dat de grenzen tussen die identiteiten worden overschreden, evenals de normen van het harmonisch kader. De gelijktijdige stemmen interfereren met elkaar en transformeren elkaar, vanwege de zojuist genoemde rijkdom aan syntactische en akoestische relaties, resulterend in veelvoudige effecten van wederzijdse ‘elaboratie’ (om Saids uitdrukking te gebruiken). Procedures zoals

Stimmtausch maken het soms moeilijk om de identiteit van de stemmen vast te stellen. Dat daagt de luisteraar uit om nomadische aandachtsvaardigheden te ontwikkelen. Contrapunt stimuleert perceptuele transgressie, die zich actualiseert in het mobiel maken van perspectieven op geluidstexturen. Polyfonie speelt bij Said steeds een rol in dialectische relatie tot het wat hij noemt het ‘totaliserende’, datgene dat ernaar streeft om zich als uniek en dominant te vestigen, en geen alternatieven toelaat. Niet aflatend heeft Said zich verzet tegen het totaliserende in muziek, in muziekfilosofie, en in culturele, sociale en politieke praktijken. Zo schreef hij: “No social system, no historical vision, no theoretical totalization, no matter how powerful, can exhaust all the alternatives or practices that exist within its domain. There is always the possibility to transgress.”17 Het is ‘polyfonie’ als houding die aan deze alternatieven – evenals aan het, vanwege de erkenning van die alternatieven, niet-meer-dominante – recht doet. Saids werk bergt de mogelijkheid van (her)emancipatie van muziek in zich. Zij kan een publieke rol krijgen als model voor een humanistische samenleving, een model dat dan wordt gezien als ‘polyfonie’ – d.w.z. een alternatief, niet-totaliserend tijdsconcept biedend –, en kan worden eigen gemaakt door middel van polyfonie.

Ontwikkeling van concepten en praktijken van polyfonie door muziekwetenschap Deze beschouwingen over polyfonie, in muziek en als metafoor, leiden mij tot een aantal voorstellen voor een oriëntatie van muziekwetenschap in heden en toekomst.

16 Barenboim en Said, Parallels and Paradoxes, p. 181. In Saids visie is overigens niet alle muziek emancipatoir. Er is veel muziek die, in de zin van Gramsci, ‘organisch’ is, dat wil zeggen: dienstig aan commerciële ondernemingen en hun streven meer macht te verkrijgen. Deze muziek, als een ‘gehuurde agent’, benadrukt slechts de ‘homofonie’ van grote corporaties. Zie Said, Representations of the Intellectual, p. 4. 17 Said, Musical Elaborations, p. 55. 53



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1. Onderzoek naar de mogelijkheden van een ‘polyfonie’ van muziekwetenschappen – in meervoud Ik heb het hier bijvoorbeeld over interferenties tussen muziekwetenschappen van de westerse muziek, van de Indiase muziek, van de Arabische muziek, maar ook tussen historische muziekwetenschappen en cognitieonderzoek van muziek.18 Deze verschillende muziekwetenschappen vormen elk een eigen ‘stem’ – ze hebben een eigen theorievorming, eigen begrippen en methodieken, en een eigen wetenschapsgeschiedenis –, en tegelijk kunnen zij onverwachte visies en onderzoeksperspectieven in elkaar ‘hoorbaar’ maken, vanwege hun ‘verantwoordelijkheid’ (‘mogelijkheid tot respons’) voor elkaar. 2. Ontwikkeling door muziekwetenschap van een eigen ‘contrapuntische stem’ binnen de geesteswetenschappen Generaties lang worden denkkaders vanuit andere geesteswetenschappen binnengevoerd in muziekwetenschap; het omgekeerde gebeurt veel minder. Wat zijn de eigen ‘stemmen’ van muziekwetenschap? Wat zijn, gezien de relatief weinig onderzochte modaliteit van het luisteren, de mogelijkheden tot dissidente musicologische ‘stemmen’ in de ‘polyfonie’ der geesteswetenschappen?19 Tot het verkennen van eigen ‘stemmen’ behoort bij uitstek dat wat het onderwerp is van deze beschouwing: het verder ontwikkelen van een wetenschappelijke houding en denkmodaliteiten die uitgaan van polyfonie in

muziek – inclusief ‘contrapunt’ en ‘harmonie’. Het gaat dan om concepten die te maken hebben met de voortdurende wederzijdse transformatie van ‘stemmen’. Dat impliceert een andere houding en denkmodaliteit dan een dialectische in termen van these en antithese. Onder dit punt valt ook onderzoek naar eerdere toepassingen van denkmodellen ontleend aan muziekpraktijken en aan muziekwetenschap. Een voorbeeld daarvan met betrekking tot Said is hierboven uitgewerkt; andere voorbeelden vinden we in het werk van Claude Lévi-Strauss.20 3. Het stimuleren en het ontwerpen van polyfonie en ‘polyfone’ praktijken in het onderwijs, het muziekleven, en uiteindelijk in de samenleving als geheel. Gezien de maatschappelijke spanningen van dit moment, mondiaal en ook steeds sterker in Nederland – waarbij verschillen tussen culturele en religieuze ‘identiteiten’ op antagonistische wijze worden benadrukt –, acht ik het van groot belang dat muziekwetenschap muziekprojecten ontwerpt, inclusief muziektheater en dans, waarin verschillende sociaal-culturele ‘stemmen’ met elkaar in contrapunt treden, tegelijk als metafoor en als muzikale praktijk. In deze ‘polyfonie’ dienen dan zowel de eigenheid van die ‘stemmen’ aan bod te komen (in het ‘contrapuntische’), alsook dat wat zij (al) gemeenschappelijk met elkaar hebben, of aan gemeenschappelijks ontdekken en maken (het ‘harmonische’).21

18 Binnen de leerstoelgroep Muziekwetenschap aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam is bijvoorbeeld Wim van der Meer met het eerste bezig, zowel in historisch onderzoek als in onderzoek van huidige praktijken, en Henkjan Honing met het laatste. 19 Ik noem hier een discussie die op 20 oktober 2004 plaatsvond tijdens een bijeenkomst van het Collegium Musicologicum aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, een maandelijks bijeenkomende groep onderzoekers (promovendi en stafleden) die literatuur en elkaars werk bespreken. Jaël Kraut behandelde daar de schijnbaar onontkoombare dialectische interpretatie door Adorno van de muziekgeschiedenis van de twintigste eeuw. Burcht Pranger (religiestudies) legde de musicologen toen voor: “Is er dan niets in de muziek en muziekwetenschap dat zich kan verzetten tegen de interpretatie van Adorno?” 20 Dit laatste is een suggestie van Saskia Kersenboom na het debat. 54



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Muziekwetenschap heeft wat dat laatste betreft ook een taak in het onderwijs, namelijk om polyfoon te leren luisteren en ‘polyfoon’ te leren denken. Ideaal gesproken zou dat niet tot speciale muzieklessen beperkt moeten blijven. Het hele onderwijs, van vroeg tot laat, zou de gevoeligheid voor het (‘)muzikale(’) en (‘)polyfone(’) moeten ontwikkelen. Ik zie hier een parallel met de ideeën van wetenschapsfilosoof Karl Popper. Deze zag wetenschap als een belangrijke stap in de menselijke evolutie. In de wetenschap wordt het strijdaspect van het fysieke naar het theoretische overgedragen, van het slagveld naar het forum van wetenschappelijke discussie. Op vergelijkbare wijze kan muziek een domein zijn waarin de meest flagrante tegenstellingen ‘polyfoon’ bij elkaar worden gebracht, zonder dat er bloed vloeit. Muziek, en in het bijzonder polyfonie, kan op die manier een emanciperende rol voor de mensheid – en menselijkheid – ontwikkelen. 4. Voortzetting van systematisch en muziekhistorisch onderzoek naar polyfonie Om deze wetenschappelijke en maatschappelijke taken te kunnen vervullen, is het nodig dat muziekwetenschap onverminderd doorgaat met historisch, theoretisch en muziekcognitief onderzoek naar het (maken, inclusief beluisteren van) muziekstructuren en -processen. Als een van de aandachtsvelden noem ik hier natuurlijk opnieuw: polyfonie. Zulk onderzoek zal de verfijning en differentiatie kunnen dienen van modellen – paradigma’s – voor de ‘meerstemmigheid’ van musicologieën, voor de ‘meerstemmigheid’ binnen de geesteswetenschappen, voor dissidente eigen ‘stemmen’ van de muziekwetenschap, en voor het ontwerp

van ‘meerstemmigheid’ bij dreigende maatschappelijke tegenstellingen in de vorm van muziek en muziektheaterprojecten, alsook in de ontwikkeling van het ‘polyfone’ luisteren. Muziekwetenschap kan door deze activiteiten van (‘)polyfonie(’) bijdragen aan het inzicht dat de zogenaamde botsing der beschavingen een absurd simplistisch idee is. 5. Voortdurende reflectie over het concept ‘harmonisch kader’ in ‘polyfonie’ De grote vraag is uiteraard wat in deze wetenschappelijke en maatschappelijke praktijken van ‘polyfonie’ zou kunnen gelden als het ‘harmonische kader’. Welke ‘overschrijding’ van ‘harmonische’ normen zou toelaatbaar zijn, en op welke gronden?22 Een aanzet tot een mogelijk antwoord hierop troffen we bijvoorbeeld aan bij Said in concepten als (verlicht) ‘amateurisme’ en radicaal seculair humanisme. Het ‘harmonisch’ kader – wat beslist iets anders is dan een harmoniemodel! – vraagt voortdurend overleg van de betrokkenen. Ook in muzikale polyfonie liggen de normen voor het harmonisch kader niet voor altijd vast; eerder wees ik al op de enorme verschillen in interpretatie van dit concept in de renaissance, bij Seeger en bij Boulez. Het ‘harmonische’ aspect van ‘polyfonie’ in de wetenschap en in de samenleving als geheel zal door de betreffende gemeenschappen steeds opnieuw worden vastgesteld en voortdurend worden bijgesteld. Uiteraard vormen deze gedachten een eerste verkenning. Nadere beschouwingen zullen aandacht vragen voor onder meer kwesties van ethiek. Een ‘polyfone’ houding impliceert het kunnen verdragen van onzekerheid ten aanzien

21 Een aanzet hiertoe was bijvoorbeeld het Turkse luitproject, dat zich afspeelde van najaar 2000 en voorjaar 2001, een samenwerking tussen het Conservatorium van Amsterdam, De IJsbreker, Stichting Kulsan (voor verspreiding van Turkse cultuur in Nederland), The Interval Chamber, Slagwerkgroep Amsterdam en de leerstoelgroep Muziekwetenschap van de Universiteit van Amsterdam. 22 Deze vragen werden gesteld tijdens het debat door Sander van Maas en Henk Borgdorff. 55



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van het ‘harmonische’ kader, het ontwikkelen van openheid voor de ‘contrapuntiek’ van de ‘stemmen’, en het aanvaarden van een fluïditeit in kennis vanwege de voortdurende wederzijdse transformatie van die ‘polyfone stemmen’.23 (Prof. Dr. Rokus de Groot is componist en musicoloog. Hij is hoofd van de Leerstoelgroep Muziekwetenschap van de Universiteit van Amsterdam.)

23 Mijn voorbereiding op dit debat speelde zich af tegen de achtergrond van een flagrante afwezigheid van een houding van ‘polyfonie’ – leidend tot de rituele moord op Theo van Gogh op 2 november 2004 door iemand die zich presenteerde als een radicale moslim – en tegelijk tegen de achtergrond van een gepassioneerd zoeken naar een eigen ‘stem’ binnen de ‘contrapuntische’ en ‘harmonische’ dimensies van een mondiale ‘polyfonie’ – de stemmen van de Syrische filosoof Sadik Jalal Al-Azm, de Marokkaanse sociologe Fatema Mernissi en de Iraanse filosoof Abdulkarim Soroush, aan wie de Erasmusprijs 2004 werd toegekend, en die zich lieten horen tijdens het ermee verbonden seminar ‘Religie en Moderniteit’ (resp. 4 en 3 november, Amsterdam); alsook de stemmen van componisten, musicologen en onderzoekers van beeldende kunst tijdens de internationale conferentie ‘Modernity and postmodernity in music and visual art practices of the Middle East and North Africa’, die werd gehouden van 6 tot 11 november te Amsterdam, georganiseerd door Music in Me, Gaudeamus en de leerstoelgroep Muziekwetenschap van de Universiteit van Amsterdam. 56



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De toekomst van de muziekwetenschap: Wat is een partituur? mark delaere In deze bijdrage gebruik ik de termen musicologie en muziekwetenschap als een afkorting voor ‘het onderdeel van de muziekwetenschap dat zich wijdt aan de bestudering van de westerse kunstmuziek’. Andere onderdelen zijn even legitiem, en er bestaat geen hiërarchische verhouding tussen de verschillende disciplines. Musicologie is een huis met vele kamers, en het is goed dat de Universiteit van Amsterdam met haar lezingenreeks en het Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie met het schriftelijk verslag daarvan een woonkamer gecreëerd hebben waar musicologen die actief zijn in verschillende subdisciplines elkaar kunnen ontmoeten en van gedachten kunnen wisselen. Zo wordt onder meer aan cognitief, cultuurtheoretisch, intercultureel, analytisch, historisch, muziekfilosofisch en/of muzieksociologisch onderzoek gedaan; het lijstje is veel langer. Om enkele minder voor de hand liggende voorbeelden te geven: er wordt ook bestudeerd welke impact muziek op de verkeersveiligheid heeft, welk type muziek het best gedraaid wordt in winkelcentra om het aankoopgedrag gunstig te beïnvloeden, of in de folterkamer om de gevangene sneller psychologisch te breken. Naast al deze domeinen is bestudering van de artistieke dimensie van muziek misschien toch ook wel een onderwerp van belang in de muziekwetenschap, zoals dat in de naamgeving van onze zusterdiscipline, de kunstwetenschap, nog beter tot uiting komt. Daarmee wordt geenszins beweerd dat de esthetische dimensie volledig autonoom is, maar wel dat er een verzameling muziekcomposities bestaat waarvan de uitgesproken artistieke component bestuderenswaardig is.

De partituur als symbolische representatie van tijd en klank Als titel voor deze bijdrage heb ik een eenvoudige vraag gekozen: wat is een partituur? In de context van een debat over de toekomst van de muziekwetenschap is deze vraag een trivialiteit voor de een en een provocatie voor de ander. Precies dit spanningsveld geeft de wenselijkheid aan ze te stellen. Zeer algemeen gesproken is een partituur een codesysteem, een symbolische representatie of notatie van basisbestanddelen van muziek zoals tijd en klank in hun vele dimensies. Dat geldt zowel voor de eerste neumennotatie in campo aperto als voor een software-protocol voor elektronische klanktransformatie. Op een bepaald ogenblik ontstond er in een bepaalde context dus blijkbaar een behoefte om ook muziek in schriftelijke vorm vast te leggen. Daar dienen onmiddellijk vier kanttekeningen bij geplaatst te worden. 1. De representatie is onvolledig. De geschiedenis van de muzieknotatie laat zich lezen als een proces van toenemende differentiëring. Klanksterkte bijvoorbeeld werd gedurende de eerste achthonderd jaar niet expliciet genoteerd (hoewel impliciete dynamische verschillen natuurlijk konden uitgecomponeerd worden in de bezetting, zoals bijvoorbeeld in de responsoriale gezangen in het gregoriaans). In de vroege barok ontstonden enkele basisgradaties als piano, mezzoforte en forte, die naast elkaar geplaatst werden (registerdynamiek), in de klassieke periode werden ook dynamische overgangen genoteerd (overgangsdynamiek: crescendo-decrescendo), in de negentiende eeuw werd het aantal gradaties exponentieel uitgebreid, en in de twintigste eeuw zelfs op het niveau van de afzonderlijke toon toegepast.

tijdschrift voor muziektheorie, jaargang 11, nummer 1 (2006)


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discussie - de toekomst van de muziekwetenschap: wat is een partituur?

Ook de andere parameters van klank werden in de loop van de muziekgeschiedenis steeds gedetailleerder genoteerd. Desondanks blijven essentiële aspecten van de uitvoeringspraktijk niet noteerbaar, zoals klankvorming en -kwaliteit, drukverschillen binnen een frasering, of ook nog ‘timing’. Niet toevallig wordt de muzikaliteit van een uitvoering vaak beoordeeld op basis van deze aspecten. Een exhaustieve representatie is niet enkel onmogelijk, maar ook onwenselijk. Een partituur is in tegenstelling tot een opname immers een dynamisch gegeven. Ze laat binnen de door de componist genoteerde marges verschillende interpretaties toe. Ik vind het een aantrekkelijke gedachte dat de componist met zijn symbolische representatie misschien zelfs eerder een negatieve omschrijving biedt: als hij of zij een bes noteert, bedoelt hij/zij in feite dat het geen g, b of Bes is. Wat niet (negatief) omschreven wordt, is vrij interpreteerbaar. Deze marges definiëren de compositie als een identificeerbaar werk: als men hen respecteert worden de verschillende vrije interpretaties herkend als uitvoeringen van eenzelfde compositie. In bijna alle gevallen moet de symbolische representatie omwille van ontwikkelingen in de muzieknotatie en de uitvoeringspraktijk aangevuld worden met contextuele historischstilistische informatie. Dat geldt niet enkel voor oude muziek, waarvoor essentiële informatie over bijvoorbeeld musica ficta of bezetting niet (of niet uitsluitend) rechtstreeks uit de partituur is af te leiden. Ook in hedendaagse muziek die de reputatie heeft exact gedefinieerd te zijn, is er een symbolisch deficit, zoals aan de hand van volgende twee voorbeelden kan geïllustreerd worden. Een realisatiepartituur voor een elektronisch te genereren tapecompositie is met haar opsomming van numerieke waarden voor frequenties, decibels, milliseconden of tonaal spectrum schijnbaar volledig gedetermineerd, maar welke rol spelen de akoestische hoedanigheden van de ruimte 1

waarin dit werk ten gehore gebracht wordt? Welke de opstelling van luidsprekers, en de geluidssterkte van de klankweergave in een specifieke ruimte? Welke instrumenten worden vandaag gebruikt voor de (re-)productie van analoge tapecomposities? Oorspronkelijk ontstaan om de contingentie van uitvoeringen door levende musici uit te sluiten, maakt de elektronische muziek vandaag integraal deel uit van de historische uitvoeringspraktijk. Voor het tweede voorbeeld maak ik gebruik van een citaat uit een interview: “These [compositions] are intentionally as difficult as I can make them, because I think we’re now surrounded by very serious problems in the society, and we tend to think that the situation is hopeless and that it’s just impossible to do something that will make everything turn out properly. So I think that this music, which is almost impossible, gives an instance of the prac1 ticality of the impossible”.

Onuitvoerbaarheid is hier een compositorische parameter, zodat ook deze en gelijkaardige, schijnbaar exact gedefinieerde partituren evenzeer ‘onvolledig’ zijn. 2. De representatie is principieel herhaalbaar. Een compositie, die – hoe onvolledig ook – symbolisch gerepresenteerd is in een partituur, kan verschillende keren uitgevoerd worden, in tegenstelling tot een improvisatie, die in principe éénmalig is. Deze herhaalbaarheid impliceert repertoirevorming en uiteindelijk de vestiging van een canon, een wisselende verzameling muziekwerken waaraan een bijzondere culturele betekenis gehecht wordt. Het werkbegrip in emfatische zin is natuurlijk pas in de achttiende eeuw ontstaan, maar is de facto al veel langer, minstens sinds de late middeleeuwen, latent aanwezig. Johannes Ockeghems Missa Prolationum is bijvoorbeeld liturgische muziek, maar getuigt door de ingenieuze con-

De lezer denkt hierbij wellicht onwillekeurig aan Brian Ferneyhough of een andere componist uit de zogenaamde ‘New Complexity’. Het citaat stamt evenwel uit een interview van John Cage over de Freeman Etudes, gepubliceerd in Sonus 3/2 (1983), en hier overgenomen uit James Pritchett, The music of John Cage, Cambridge 1993, p. 198.

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structie en de muzikale rijkdom duidelijk van een esthetische ambitie die deze liturgische functie overstijgt. De artistieke superioriteit van deze en gelijkaardige composities wordt niet enkel door opdrachtgevers, maar ook en vooral door componerende collega’s, muziektheoretici en luisteraars erkend, waardoor deze ‘werken’ voor herhaalde uitvoeringen en opname in het repertoire in aanmerking komen. Hun codering maakt dat ook zonder meer mogelijk. 3. De representatie bevordert innovatie. Een codesysteem biedt in tegenstelling tot oraal overgeleverde muziek de mogelijkheid om verregaand te experimenteren met de basisstructuren. Het schriftelijk vastgelegde geheugen is nu eenmaal veel omvangrijker, en de basispatronen kunnen in een schriftelijke cultuur veel sneller en veel ingrijpender aangepast worden. Dat geldt a fortiori voor het gebruik van geïnformatiseerde muziektalen, waarin de componist met een druk op de knop verschillende parameters en structuren experimenteel kan variëren, om de esthetisch meest bevredigende realisatie uiteindelijk te fixeren. 4. Ten slotte heeft het codesysteem een enorme impact gehad op de voorstellingswijze van muziek, en dit zowel voor componist, uitvoerder als luisteraar. In Europa, zo merkte John Cage op, wordt zelfs de muziek van een volledig dove componist gewaardeerd, omdat de voorgestelde verhoudingen tussen klanken er belangrijker geacht worden dan de onmiddellijke klankervaring. Esthetische criteria zijn dus grotendeels gebaseerd op door de componist symbolisch gerepresenteerde en door de musicus, analyticus en luisteraar geïnterpreteerde voorgestelde verhoudingen tussen klanken.

De partituur als werkinstrument in de muziekwetenschap In de muziekwetenschap werd en wordt op twee manieren omgegaan met de muzikale tekst of partituur als resultaat van die symbolische representatie: kritisch-filologisch en muziekanalytisch. In het eerste geval worden

partituren geïnventariseerd en uitgegeven, waarvoor modellen uit de literatuurwetenschap en de algemene geschiedenis gehanteerd worden (tekstkritiek, heuristiek, kritische uitgave). In tegenstelling tot een ander historisch document is een muzikale tekst ook een esthetisch object, dat vandaag nog als dusdanig functioneert. Die esthetische dimensie is in de historische muziekwetenschap en soms zelfs in de muziekgeschiedschrijving lang onderbelicht gebleven. De gedachte dat een samenspel van historisch, analytisch, esthetisch en sociologisch onderzoek tot spannende resultaten kan leiden, wint steeds meer veld. In wat volgt werk ik echter vooral de muziekanalytische benadering verder uit, in functie van de vraagstelling in deze bijdrage. De analytische omgang met een muzikale tekst spitst zich toe op een ontleding van structuur en van vorm, waarvoor soms modellen uit andere tekensystemen (linguïstiek, wiskunde, formele logica, retoriek) benut worden. Er is vandaag terechte kritiek op sterk formalistische analysetechnieken als Schenker-analyse en vooral pitch-class-set-analyse wegens hun te hoge abstractiegraad: wat baat interne consistentie als de analyseresultaten muzikaal weinig relevant zijn? De esthetische relatie tussen componist, uitvoerder en luisteraar was in de Amerikaanse analytische traditie uit de tweede helft van de vorige eeuw quasi volledig ondergeschikt aan de eigengereidheid van een muziektheoretisch systeem, dat voor het overige wel als een intellectuele prestatie van formaat mag beoordeeld worden. In tegenstelling daarmee ben ik van mening dat analyse in een spanningsveld zit tussen wat een muzikale tekst is voor de luisteraar en hoe een muzikale tekst gemaakt is door de componist. De ‘New Musicology’, die via haar kritiek op de Amerikaanse muziektheorie de muziekanalyse tout court viseerde, stelt het voor alsof componist en luisteraar volledig gescheiden werelden vormen. Wat is het belang van compositorische intenties en constructies, als uiteindelijk toch de misschien volledig anders gerichte waarneming van de luisteraar in muziek doorslaggevend is, zo luidt het daar. In feite maakt de 33



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‘New Musicology’ hiermee dezelfde fout als de ‘Old Music Theory’. De ene verabsoluteert de luisteraar, de ander de componist als een volledig autonome, immanente betekenisgever. De remedie is, met andere woorden, even schadelijk als de kwaal. In mijn ogen is er evenwel geen fundamentele tegenstelling tussen componist en luisteraar. De componist heeft tijdens het scheppingsproces nagenoeg altijd het klinkend resultaat voor ogen, dat door een luisteraar zal waargenomen worden. Hij creëert dus een esthetisch object in de letterlijke, etymologische betekenis van het woord. De impliciete luisteraar is sterk aanwezig in het productieproces, zelfs wanneer de componist dit uit koketterie ontkent.2 Omgekeerd staat de luisteraar evenmin los van de componist. Een beluistering die gericht is op een ervaring van de artistieke dimensie reconstrueert ten dele het muzikale denken van de componist. De luisteraar krijgt een verzameling geluiden aangeboden, waarvan hij/zij de samenhang en esthetische betekenis probeert te vatten. Misschien gebeurt deze verwerking voor een stuk ook onbewust of via andere strategieën, maar het valt nauwelijks voor te stellen dat die samenhang en die betekenis volledig los zouden staan van de door de componist geïntendeerde coherentie en esthetische betekenis. Keren we terug tot muziekanalyse als activiteit die zich in een spanningsveld beweegt tussen wat een muzikale tekst is voor de luisteraar en hoe een muzikale tekst gemaakt is door de componist. De epistemologische basis van die activiteit moet nog nader omschreven worden, zodat de verschillen met de Amerikaanse ‘Old 2

Music Theory’ nog duidelijker worden.3 In de Europese onderzoekstraditie binnen de humaniora is interpretatie van het bijzondere een legitieme kennisstrategie. Een inzicht hoeft niet extrapoleerbaar te zijn om wetenschappelijke status te krijgen. In het domein van de geschiedenis, en bij uitstek de geschiedenis van de kunst, is interpretatie van de specificiteit van een gebeurtenis of esthetisch object integendeel aangewezen. ‘Algemene kenmerken’ of de geldigheid van een universeel model zijn met andere woorden niet langer het doel, maar hoogstens het middel om de esthetische singulariteit van een partituur aan het licht te brengen. De historische bepaaldheid van een partituur bakent dan het speelveld af waarin die interpretatie tot stand komt, tenminste in zoverre men uitgaat van muziek als communicatievorm tussen componist en luisteraar, zoals hierboven beschreven. Een muziekwerk wordt in de analyse en in de beluistering ‘gelezen’ en geïnterpreteerd tegen de achtergrond van de genreconventies, esthetische opvattingen, muziektheoretische en -historische stand van zaken en sociologische condities in de periode van zijn ontstaan. De partituur is in dat opzicht een kruispunt van informatie over historiciteit, esthetiek, theorie en sociologie, informatie die in de ontleding van de individuele compositie aan de oppervlakte gebracht wordt. Net zoals musici en luisteraars muziekwerken binnen de hierboven beschreven marges verschillend kunnen interpreteren, zo zijn er ook verschillende muziekanalytische lezingen van eenzelfde partituur mogelijk. Deze verscheiden-

Dat is bijvoorbeeld het geval voor de muziek van Milton Babbitt, die in een poging om artistiek rechtop te blijven staan ondanks de hevige kritiek op zijn werk een artikel schreef met als titel “Who Cares if You Listen?” (voor het eerst gepubliceerd in High Fidelity 8 (1958), pp. 38-40, en in 1966 en 1967 opgenomen in wijd verspreide verzamelbundels met bijdragen van Amerikaanse componisten). Zoals bekend is Babbitt ook één van de belangrijkste founding fathers van de Amerikaanse muziektheorie in het algemeen en de pitch-class-set-theory in het bijzonder. Door zijn provocatie letterlijk te nemen, is de ‘New Musicology’ in de valkuil getrapt van de extreme dissociatie componist-luisteraar.

3

Het is geenszins mijn bedoeling met deze terminologie een musicologische ‘clash of cultures’ te initiëren. Zoals het begrip ‘Old Music Theory’ duidelijk aantoont, is in Amerika intussen een nieuwe opvatting over muziektheorie ontstaan, die de historische dimensie van de discipline meer op de voorgrond plaatst. Met deze ontwikkeling, die onder meer in het werk van Thomas Christensen en William Caplin tot uiting komt, kan ik me grotendeels identificeren.

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heid is vanuit muziekwetenschappelijk oogpunt niet problematisch, maar juist verrijkend.4 In de historiografie is al langer het besef doorgedrongen dat de historicus een selectie maakt uit, en een ordening aanbrengt in een onoverzichtelijke hoeveelheid historische feiten. Selectie, ordening en uiteraard ook duiding impliceren interpretatie. De historicus ‘construeert’ of ‘organiseert’ het verleden,5 en daar is niets mis mee, zolang hij/zij kan argumenteren waarom zijn of haar interpretatie waardevol is. Het wordt tijd dat ook muziekanalyse beschouwd wordt als constructie van muzikale betekenis op basis van het historische artefact ‘partituur’.

Conclusie Samenvattend zou men de vraag die boven deze bijdrage prijkt als volgt kunnen beantwoorden: een partituur is een uit onvermogen én uit vrije keuze onvolledige representatie van muzikale verhoudingen. Een partituur vormt op grond van de gebruikte symbolen en van contextuele informatie een identificeerbaar werk. Een analyse construeert de muzikale betekenis van een partituur met behulp van historisch bepaalde categorieën.

Naschrift Liever dan met een gortdroge samenvatting, sluit ik deze bijdrage af met een heilwens voor de toekomst van de muziekwetenschap. In extremis smokkel ik in dit envoi nog een gedachte, die hierboven tussen de mazen van het net gevallen is. In zijn artikel over muzieksociologie voor de nieuwe editie van The New Grove wijst John Shepherd er op dat deze discipline op het einde van de twintigste eeuw in een diepe crisis terechtgekomen is, omdat het 4

haar aan een epistemologische en methodologische kern ontbreekt.6 Daardoor is ze volledig afhankelijk van soms zeer uiteenlopende ontwikkelingen in andere wetenschappen, zoals daar zijn het structuralisme en de semiotiek, culturele studies, feminisme en gender studies, poststructuralisme en postmodernisme. Shepherd zegt in feite dat een wetenschap diepe wortels (‘radices’) moet hebben, om niet de speelbal te worden van rukwinden uit steeds weer andere windrichtingen. Het is zeker wenselijk dat musicologie het debat aangaat met de door Shepherd genoemde en andere disciplines, maar dan wel vertrekkend van een sterke epistemologische en methodologische kern. Slechts in die omstandigheden is een reële uitwisseling van ideeën in plaats van éénrichtingsverkeer mogelijk. De partituur als historisch artefact met al haar esthetische, analytische, psychologische, muziektheoretische, muzieksociologische, akoestische, muziekhistorische en compositietechnische dimensies, is misschien wel een goed vertrekpunt voor zo’n interactie met andere disciplines. Tenslotte is de mate waarin de musicoloog een partituur kan lezen, zich daarbij de muziek kan voorstellen en haar muzikaal-esthetische betekenis kan doorgronden, vrijwel het enige wat hem of haar onderscheidt van de filosoof, cultuurtheoreticus, historicus of socioloog. (Mark Delaere is hoogleraar musicologie aan de K.U. Leuven)

Zoals Jan Christiaens opmerkte in zijn bijdrage tot de discussie over de toekomst van de muziekwetenschap, staan “meerduidigheid, interpretatie en zelfs onbeslistheid” de aanspraak op wetenschappelijkheid niet in de weg, tenminste in zoverre een “intellectuele gestrengheid, waarmee niet-sluitende, niet restloos conceptualiseerbare – en in die zin ‘muzikale’ – onderzoeksgegevens worden geargumenteerd en onderbouwd”, voorhanden is (“De muziekwetenschap speelt leentjebuur”, in: Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 10/2 (2005), p. 206.

5

Zie bijvoorbeeld de titel van een belangwekkende studie over historiografie: H.W. von der Dunk, De organisatie van het verleden. Over grenzen en mogelijkheden van historische kennis, Bussum 1982.

6

John Shepherd, art. “Sociology of music”, in: Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove dictionary of Music and Musicians, deel 23, Londen 2001, pp. 603-614. 35


Response: Decline and Fall of the Mozart Empire It is undeniable that modern institutional exigencies are effecting notable changes in the practice of musicology as a professional skill, as universities find their membership and social functions swinging ever further from the state they maintained when Musikwissenschaft was gaining its academic formality. But no branch of musicology will be joining the endangered species list anytime soon, and the diminishing dominance of canonical classical western music (and its teleological prehistories) as the focus and raison d’être of our music departments must not serve as a rallying point for protecting the classical heritage against invading (foreign) hordes. The methods of executing and presenting research are indeed ripe for radical turns away from the strongly authoritarian mode of 20th-century academic publication; the conceptual shifts commonly linked to communal, network-based electronic tools promise to offer musicological research new paths towards its own critical theories. Theodor Dumitrescu received a double education, taking a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Princeton University and a doctorate in Musicology at the University of Oxford (2004). He has taught music history at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, and Clark University (Worcester, MA), and most recently held a STUDIUM research fellowship at the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Tours). Currently he directs the CMME project at Utrecht University for the publication of electronic editions of early music scores, while continuing research on historical, conceptual, and practical issues in the study of pre-baroque music.



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The Comeback of systematic Musicology: new Empiricism and the Cognitive Revolution henkjan honing Introduction The term ‘musicology’ has been defined in many different ways. In 1955, the American Musicological Society described it as ‘a field of knowledge having as its object the investigation of the art of music as a physical, psychological, aesthetic, and cultural phenomenon.’ The attributes used here give the definition of musicology considerable breadth, although ‘music as an “art” remains the focus of attention’.1 However, in the last two decades an important shift has occurred, that is, from music as an art (or art object) to music as a process in which the performer, the listener, and music as sound play a central role. This transformation is most notable in the field of systematic musicology (a term introduced by Adler2), which developed from ‘a mere extension of musicology’3 into a ‘complete reorientation of the discipline to fundamental questions which are nonhistorical in nature, [encompassing] research

into the nature and properties of music as an acoustical, psychological and cognitive phenomenon’.4 This reorientation did not take place exclusively in systematic musicology. For example, much of the pioneering work in the field of ethnomusicology stressed the importance of systematic methods and the need to study music in its wider social, anthropological, and cultural context.5 But systematic methods also gained more ground in, for example, the semiotic approach to music (e.g., Nattiez6). In addition, there are several ongoing developments in musicology that promote interdisciplinary research within the humanities.7 In this text three recent strands of musicological research will be briefly discussed as an illustration of the apparent international reorientation of the music sciences. They will be referred to as empirical, computational, and cognitive musicology.

1

V. Duckles & J. Pasler, ‘Historical and Systematic Musicology’, in: S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (eds.), The New

2

G. Adler, ‘Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft’ in: Vierteljahresschrift für Musikwissenschaft 1

3

But note that, while systematic musicology may have seemed to be an extension to musicology in the late

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London 2001, pp. 490-491. (1885), pp. 5-20. 19th century (according to Adler), one could argue that it is the original musicology. The musical questions that occupied European thinkers until the 19th century corresponded almost entirely to the category of systematic musicology (R. Parncutt, personal communication). 4 5

V. Duckles & J. Pasler, ‘Historical and Systematic Musicology’, p. 491. E.g. J. Kunst, Musicologica: a Study of the Nature of Ethno-Musicology, its Problems, Methods and Representative Personalities. Indisch Instituut, Amsterdam 1950; A. Seeger, ‘Styles of Music Ethnography’, in: B. Nettl and P.V. Bohlman (eds.) Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music, Chicago 1991, pp. 342–355.

6

J.J. Nattiez, Musicologie générale et sémiologie, Paris 1987; Eng. trans. by C. Abbate as Music and Discourse, Princeton 1990.

7

E.g. J. Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology, Cambridge 1985; S. McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, Minneapolis 1991. tijdschrift voor muziektheorie, jaargang 9, nummer 3 (2004)


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The role of observation: empirical musicology Empirical musicology grew out of a desire to ground theories on empirical observation and to construct theories on the basis of the analysis and interpretation of such observations.8 The arrival of new technologies, most notably that of MIDI9 and of the personal computer, were instrumental to the considerable increase in the number of empirically oriented investigations into music.10 Huron refers to this reorientation as ‘new empiricism’ and considers it, along with ‘new musicology,’11 the most influential movement in recent music scholarship. Huron stresses that this transformation arose within music scholarship, and he promotes the adaptation of scientific methods, such as ‘the pursuit of evidence and rigor’12 – in spite of the criticism of scientific methods in

8

the postmodern literature.13 In fact, the contrast between new musicology and new empiricism could not be bolder (a contrast reminiscent of the methodological differences between the sciences and the humanities). However, in the last decade these two movements seem to have merged into a revitalized systematic musicology that is based on empirical observation and rigorous method, but at the same time is also aware of, and accounts for, the social and cultural context in which music functions.14

The role of formalization: computational musicology A second development in music scholarship is the growing role of formalization and the notions of testability and falsification.15 A consistent trend in formalization, most notably in

J. Rink, (ed.) The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, Cambridge 1995; E.F. Clarke & N. Cook (eds.) Empirical musicology: Aims, methods and prospects, Oxford 2004.

9

Commercial standard for the exchange of information between electronic instruments and computers.

10 E.F. Clarke, ‘Rhythm and timing in music’, in: D. Deutsch (ed.), Psychology of Music (2nd edition), New York 1999, pp. 473-500; A. Gabrielsson, ‘The performance of music’, ibidem, pp. 501-602. 11 New Musicology: a branch of music scholarship that is guided by ‘a recognition of the limits of human understanding, an awareness of the social milieu in which scholarship is pursued, and the realization of the political area in which the fruits of scholarship are used and abused’. D. Huron, ‘The New Empiricism: Systematic Musicology in a Postmodern Age’, Berkeley, University of California 1999, http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music220/Bloch.lectures/3.Methodology.html, p. 2. In addition, subjectivity and gender are important notions in new musicology (cf. S. McClary, Feminine Endings). 12 In addition, a (renewed) interest in empirical research can also be observed in other areas of the humanities, including, for example, argumentation theory (F.H. van Eemeren, K. de Glopper, R. Grootendorst & R. Oostdam, ‘Identification of unexpressed premises and argumentation schemes by students in secondary school’, Argumentation and Avocacy (1995) 31, pp. 151-162) and theology (J.A. van der Ven & M. Scherer-Rath (eds.), Normativity and Empirical Research in Theology, Leiden 2004). 13 Cf. J. Natoli, A Primer on Postmodernity, Oxford 1997. While social contexts and contents are ‘the ultimate quarry of new musicology, they are typically pursued through the analysis of texts, rather than through more ecological, empirically oriented investigations of the production, distribution, and consumption of music’ (T. DeNora, ‘Musical Practice and Social Structure: a Toolkit’, in: E.F. Clarke & N. Cook (eds.), Empirical musicology: Aims, methods and prospects, Oxford 2004, p. 37). 14 See for an overview Clarke & Cook, Empirical musicology, and a review H. Honing, ‘Muziek de maat genomen. Over de groeiende rol van theorie en observatie in de muziekwetenschappen’, in: De Academische Boekengids 4/7 (2004). 15 K. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London 1959; originally published as Logik der Forschung, Wien 1935. 242



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music theory, has been evident since the 1960s. Early examples are, for instance, the works by Milton Babbitt, Allen Forte, and David Lewin, but this line of research is still continuing.16 Theories in computational form17 are a logical consequence of such formalization. These theories aim for a clear and determined scope, can be checked for consistency, and might be applied to and tested on different branches of music. Interestingly, this has led to a greater visibility of musicology, especially outside the humanities. The fact that a theory is presented in a formal and replicable way allows for an easier formulation of hypotheses, the making of precise predictions, and, consequently, the testing and evaluation of these. As such, it makes this type of theory compelling to both computer scientists and experimental psychologists. This development could serve as an important example of how a changing methodology considered within the humanities to be of minor relevance, has a major impact outside the humanities, in that a methodology shared with the sciences served as a vehicle – a format for the transmission of ideas – that turned out to be very influential. A striking example is the theory of Lerdahl & Jackendoff18 – a highly formalized theory that, consequently, has been tested and elaborated upon in a variety of disciplines, ranging from music theory and systematic musicology to music technology and music psychology. However, it has to be noted that there are also examples that were less successful. For

instance, theories on music that were developed in the sciences, such as Longuet-Higgins’ work in the 1970s,19 did not reach the music community in the way one would have expected, even though they were well-formulated, compelling, and in formalized form. Thus, the transmission of ideas in formalized form could well be primarily unidirectional. This could well be caused by the different types of ‘skepticism’ apparent in the humanities and the sciences. David Huron, interestingly, argues that this might well be an important similarity between the two scientific approaches, postmodernism and scientific empiricism actually being two sides of the same coin (called skepticism).20 He advocates a broadening of methodological education in both the arts and sciences.

The impact of the cognitive revolution: cognitive musicology These two developments – empirical and computational musicology – and the methods they use (i.e. empirical observation and formalization) could also be interpreted as part of a general trend in the sciences, namely the ‘cognitive revolution’ and the central role therein of ‘computational modeling’ as a methodology.21 In recent decades, computational modeling has become a well-established research method in many fields, including systematic and cognitive musicology,22 in what has to be acknowledged as a fruitful collaboration between the humanities and the sciences.

16 E.g. M. Baroni & R. Jacobini, Proposal for a Grammar of Melody. Les Presses de l’Université de Montreal (Canada) 1978; F. Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space, Oxford 2001; G. Assayag, H. G. Feichtinger, & J.F. Rodrigues, Mathematics and Music, Berlin 2002. 17 E.g. D. Temperley, The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures, Cambridge 2001. 18 F. Lerdahl & R. Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, Cambridge, MA 1983. 19 H.C. Longuet-Higgins, Mental Processes. Studies in Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA 1987. 20 D. Huron, ‘The New Empiricism’. 21 J. Fodor, The Mind Doesn’t Work that Way. The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology, Cambridge, MA 2000. 22 E.g. M. Leman, Music and Schema Theory: Cognitive Foundations of Systematic Musicology, Berlin 1995; P. Desain, H. Honing, H. van Thienen & L.W. Windsor, ‘Computational Modeling of Music Cognition: Problem or Solution?’ in: Music Perception 16 (1998), pp. 151-166. 243



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discussie - the comeback of systematic musicology:new empiricism and the cognitive revolution

In an attempt to characterize the current state of affairs, one can distinguish between several approaches to computational modeling. One, for example, aims at modeling musical knowledge. These are models originating from music theory in which a thorough formalization contributes to an understanding of the theory itself, its predictions, and its scope.23 Another approach aims at constructing theories of music cognition. Here, the objective is to understand music perception and music performance by formalizing the mental processes involved in listening to and performing music.24 The two approaches have different aims and can be seen as being complementary.

The impact of music scholarship on the cognitive sciences: music cognition In the 1970s, music was studied in the sciences mainly for its acoustical and perceptual properties, in what were then relatively novel disciplines such as psychophysics and music psychology. Music scholars criticized much of this research for focusing too much on lowlevel issues of sensation and perception, often using impoverished stimuli (e.g., small rhythmic fragments) or music restricted to the Western classical repertoire, as well as a general unawareness of the role of music in its wider social and cultural context.25 However, the cognitive revolution made scientists more aware of the role and importance of these

aspects. While twenty years ago, music was hardly mentioned in any handbook of psychology (or appeared only in a subsection on pitch or rhythm perception), it is now recognized, along with vision and language, as an important and informative domain in which to study a variety of aspects of cognition, including expectation, emotion, perception, and memory.26 The role of musicologists and music theorists in this research seems to be greater than ever. It could well be that cognitive musicology (or music cognition) will evolve into a prominent discipline, building on the results and insights from empirical and computational musicology.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) – specifically, those at the Department of Musicology and at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) – for their comments on earlier drafts of this text, and to Richard Parncutt for his advice. Special thanks to Rokus de Groot for providing the environment in which these ideas, and those of my colleagues, can flourish. (Henkjan Honing is affiliated with the Department of Musicology and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam, http://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/hh.)

23 E.g. Lerdahl & Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music; E. Narmour, The Analysis and Cognition of Basic Melodic Complexity: the Implication-Realization Model, Chicago 1992. 24 E.F. Clarke, ‘Rhythm and timing in music’; Gabrielsson, A. Gabrielsson, ‘The performance of music’. 25 D. Huron, ‘Foundations of Cognitive Musicology’, http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music220/Bloch.lectures/1.Preamble.html, 1999. 26 P. Juslin, & J. Sloboda (eds.), Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, Oxford 2001; D. Levitin (ed.), Foundations of Cognitive Psychology: Core Readings 244


Leman, M. (2008), Systematic musicology at the crossroads of modern music research. In Schneider, A. (Ed.), Systematic and Comparative Musicology: Concepts, Methods, Findings. Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 24. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 89-115.

Marc Leman

Systematic musicology at the crossroads of modern music research

Abstract The creative and cultural sector, of which music forms an important part, calls for a research basis that is grounded in a range of scientific disciplines with specialization in music-related technology and music-driven psychosocial interaction. In that music research space, there is a natural and emergent demand for an approach in which boundaries of object-centred and subject-centred research methodologies can be crossed. By putting music and embodied music experiences at the very centre of this research focus, systematic musicology can play an important role as moderator of a trans-disciplinary approach to music research. Evidence for the new position of systematic musicology in the modern European music research space is found in networks that foster systematic musicology, in a recent strategic roadmap for sound and music computing, commissioned by the European Commission, and in two recent National project initiatives, one in Finland and one in Belgium, that support long term research in the domain of systematic musicology. Introduction In a lecture entitled “Who stole systematic musicology?” (2003, Universität zu Köln), I once expressed my concern about “systematic musicology”1. The main reason for expressing 1

The use of the term “systematic musicology” reflects the common distinction between “historical” and “systematic” musicology in academia. Apparently, the term “systematic musicology” is common in Continental Europe, but less common in the UK and the US. The term is often used in countries that were influenced by German music research. However, related approaches are sometimes called “cognitive musicology”, “empirical musicology”, “computational musicology”, “systemic musicology”, “interdisciplinary musicology” or simply: “musicology”. It is assumed that systematic musicology is not restricted to any musical period, geographic area, musical genre or type of musical expression. Systematic musicology differs from the so-called historical musicology in that it is less involved with biographies of composers or the development of musical practices in a particular area or style period, but more with what these practices mean to people and more particularly how these practices can be understood, explained as a system (both from a psychoneuronal and social point of view), and possibly further explored and exploited (for example in connection with technology). The methodology of systematic musicology is particular in that it is often based


this concern was that at the turn of the new millennium, the number of music researchers had suddenly exploded and this formed a threat to the ongoing research practices of systematic musicology. After a decennium in which systematic musicology had positioned itself as an empirical and computational discipline2, the amount of researchers working in music engineering and in neuroscience of music quickly outnumbered the small amount of researchers working in musicology departments. This was most noticeable at conferences on music information retrieval3, where engineers convincingly showed that their tools outperformed almost everything that systematic musicology had explored so far in computational analysis and content-based representation. In a similar way, neuroscience4 showed that the new brain scanning technologies could offer a fresh look at musical perception and performance, having an effect on our understanding of what music is about. I challenged my audience by saying that the sudden interest in music from engineering was probably driven by a rush for the chicken with the golden eggs, or more concretely, the rush for the over-all content-based search and retrieval system for music on the Internet (the “Music Google”). Equally threatening was the agenda of neuroscience, and the rush for brain localizations, the claim that all musical activities could be explained by just looking at the brain. The conclusion was clear: If music could be better studied by specialized disciplines, then systematic musicology had no longer a value. If everything could be accounted for by engineering and brain science, then systematic musicology would be no longer necessary. Systematic musicology could be classified “vertically”, as we use to say for documents that on a mixture of methods from other sciences, including human sciences and natural sciences. The adjective “systematic” somehow points to the systemic character of the methodology and in fact, much of the discussion about the relevance of systematic musicology is related to the nature of this systemic aspect. The term “systemic musicology” was introduced by Fricke (1993), who defines it as “eine Sichtweise […] die das komplexe Bedingungsgefüge […] von naturgegebenen, genetischen, erlernten und kultur-abhängigen Faktoren in den Vordergrund stellt”. The basic idea was that all sciences aim at being systematic in the sense of being planned, thorough and efficient, and that “systematic musicology” in fact means “systemic musicology”, that is, affecting processes and connections between different levels of things that are constrained and linked together in a system (see also Schneider, 1993). 2 See e.g. “Journal of New Music Research”, the journal “Systematische Musikwissenschaft/Systematic Musicology/Musicologie Systématique”, as well as the journals “Music Perception”, “Computer Music Journal”, “Musicae Scientiae”. 3 Since 2000, a number of initiatives have shown the dynamism of the engineering approaches in music research. The conferences on Music Information Retrieval started in 2000 (see http://www.ismir.net/), the conferences on Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval started in 2003 (see http://www.lma.cnrs-mrs.fr/~cmmr2007/). Related conferences are the conferences on Digital Audio Effects, which started in 1998 (see http://www.dafx.de/), the international conferences on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, which started in 2001 (see http://www.nime.org/pastnimes.html), and the Sound and Music Computing conferences, which started in 2004 (see http://smc07.uoa.gr/SMC07%20Previous.htm). 4 Reference can be made to the international conferences dedicated to the neurosciences and music in New York, 2000, Venice, 2002, and Leipzig, 2005 (with more than 400 people attending) (See Zatorre and Peretz, 2001; Avanzini et al., 2003; Avanzini et al., 2005).


are no longer needed, or it could be taken over by other disciplines, or it could just shrink its ambitions to music analysis, a smaller and less ambitious segment of music research. In fact, my concern culminated in a discontentment about the fact that systematic musicology did not have a proper answer to this development. Other disciplines had discovered the music topic and they applied good empirical and computational methods. They got the money, they did the research, and they obtained the results. So what? What else could a systematic musicologist, living at the beginning of a new millennium, do than acknowledging the power of the new methods? What else could I do than becoming an engineer, psychologist, brain scientist, or perhaps, biologist ... and look to music from that perspective?5 During the years before and after the lecture, I had the opportunity to get in close contact with many colleagues and many music research institutes in Europe. Invitations for short study periods at different institutes, among which the Music Technology Group of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (June 2003), and later on that same year, the Kulturwissenschaftliches Forschungskolleg Media und Kulturelle Kommunikation (December 2003) of the University of Cologne, and the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience in Leipzig (May 2005) somehow stimulated my thinking about this problem. There, I saw groups of researchers at work that often had no background in musicology. Could they progress our knowledge about music? Around that period too, I was involved in a number of international meetings on music information retrieval (such as ISMIR, 2004 and CMMR, 2004), and I had my own projects both in a national and international context (e.g. MAMI, COST 287, S2S2) in which I collaborated with psychologists, engineers and brain scientists. In short, I travelled a lot all over Europe, and I could observe from very close how our colleagues actually dealt with “our stolen discipline” so to speak. And in fact, I must admit, those observations confirmed what I already had observed as editor-in-chief of Journal of New Music Research (from 1987 to 2004), namely, that non-musicologists could advance music research quite a lot. In fact, I had (and I still have) a great time with researchers from other disciplines. They enrich the field and they often contribute with excellent methods and approaches. But what about my own discipline? How could a systematic musicologist survive in such a context? Was there still a tiny little place for a researcher like me, or for the good old systematic musicology as a whole?

5

This feeling was quite different from the feelings that I experienced in 1993, when systematic musicologists from East and West Europe met, in an euphoric mix from old and young generations. Thanks to A. Schneider for inviting me to this particular setting at Moravany where I had the opportunity to meet the old generation of systematic musicologists from Central Europe. The discussions at Moravany were about the future program of systematic musicology. Young researchers, like U. Seifert and myself at that time, pleaded for systematic musicology to play a role in cognitive science. For a state-of-the art of systematic musicology at the turn of the 1990ies, see the first volume of the journal Systematische Musikwissenschaft (1993), and the contributions from O. Elschek, H-P. Reinecke, J. Jiránek, F. Födermayr, W. Deutsch, L. Burlas, A. Schneider, J. Fricke, U. Seifert, M. Leman, H-W. Heister, B. Schabbing, M. Kartomi, V. Karbusicky and others. (See also Elschek, 1992).


By the turn of the millennium, I had already realized that a proper answer to this question was needed. And in fact, raising the question “who stole systematic musicology?” was a strong incentive for reflecting on my own approach in relation to what I considered then to be the new upcoming music research space. Up to then, the entire paradigm of systematic musicology was still largely driven by the research paradigm of the cognitive sciences, to which I had contributed myself through empirical and computational modelling studies (e.g. Leman, 1995; Leman, 1997; Godøy and Jørgensen, 2001). Ultimately, thanks to some time for reflection in Köln (end of 2003), I decided to work on the research paradigm of systematic musicology in a more profound, say “systematic”, way, and this finally resulted in my book on embodied music cognition, of which the first versions already circulated among collaborators and friends in 2005 (Leman, 2007). In retrospect, my answer to the question about the need of systematic musicology in the modern music research space was much inspired by observations and discussions with colleagues from outside musicology. Somehow, I got strongly convinced that the modern music research space was much in the need of an approach, and a vision, that could go beyond the confines of the proper disciplines. Today, I am still convinced that the formulation of this vision, as well its implementation and validation is a major task of systematic musicology. Indeed, many researchers working in non-musicological disciplines of music-related research realise that music is more than just an application domain onto which their methodologies can be applied „out of the blue“. Music is far too complex, far too multifaceted, and far too much integrated in our social and cultural environment to reduce it to a single approach or to conceive it merely as a domain of application. The study of how people move in accordance with music is a good example of this. A purely physical approach about how people move in response to music is likely to ignore the important role of cultural learning and goal-directed behaviour (intentionality) through posture and expressiveness. In a similar way, asking subjects to fill in a questionnaire about their social and cultural background and their intentions will hardly be sufficient for understanding their engagement in non-verbal forms of musical expression. It is even more likely that neither method may be sufficient, and that a proper method, involving the interaction of several disciplines and methodologies is needed. Similar observations can be made in the field of music information retrieval where user-oriented studies are needed that complement the engineering applications (Lesaffre et al., in press). While it appeared to me that many researchers agreed that dealing with music necessitates a proper approach that is driven by the musical task, I observed at the same time that it was very rare that researchers went beyond the boundaries of their own disciplines. Apparently, academic careers depend more on the mastering of advanced measurement methods and analysis methodologies, than the ability to transcend the boundaries of the proper discipline, especially for a topic that is often considered to be fancy and pleasant. Hence the fact that music is more often seen as a domain for the application of proper methodologies than as a domain that can generate a proper methodological approach from inside. But I agree, one should be very careful in making such statements, because even when music is conceived as a domain for applying the “Eigen-methods” of the discipline, then the outcome may still be


highly relevant for the cultural and creative music sector. There is a subtle balance between the goals, the means and the results of music research. Anyhow, I got the feeling that all disciplines of modern music research were in the need for an approach and a vision that could link the different disciplines and their methodologies. Was this something of interest? Was this an opportunity for systematic musicology? I thought it was, although I realized that it would not be an easy bargain. Somehow, music researchers from outside musicology had to become convinced that the discipline of systematic musicology could offer something that is of value to them, a kind of glue that “cannot be stolen”, so to speak. And therefore, the question was: What is this glue? What is of such a value in systematic musicology that it can appeal to a broad range of researchers working in other disciplines? What follows is a state-of-the-art of this quest, showing how, in a world with a growing interest in music research, a new role for systematic musicology is gradually emerging. I will argue that the ability to transcend the proper discipline in response to the driving forces of the musical topic is one of the major characteristics of systematic musicology and that it is precisely this feature, combined with the attitude of putting music and people at the centre of the focus, regardless of whatever scientific method, approach, or discipline, is used, makes systematic musicology rather unique (and therefore quite necessary) in modern music research. However, the realization of this ambition is highly depending on a vision, a perspective, or a glue, that may appeal to all partners involved. In what follows, I will try to clarify what this vision and glue could be (or at least, how I see it at this moment) and how, by taking concrete actions to realize that vision, systematic musicology is gradually acquiring a new place in the modern music research space. Transdisciplinary music research Music research that goes beyond the boundaries of the involved disciplines can be called „transdisciplinary“. The term “transdisciplinary”, perhaps even more than the term “interdisciplinary”6, suggests that music cannot be fully understood by a single discipline, or by different disciplines that are just put next to each other without much interaction. Would transdisciplinarity be something of value and convincing for systematic musicology? For sure, transdisciplinarity has always been a core idea of systematic musicology. Since the late 19th Century, systematic musicology has been promoted as an integrated multidisciplinary approach involving disciplines such as psychology, sociology, acoustics, physiology, neurosciences, cognition sciences and computer and technology (Elschek, 1992, Schneider, 1993). Systematic musicologists aimed at understanding how people engage with music, how music perception and performance work, and how music appears as an aesthetic 6

Recent work on a roadmap for music research in the UK (http://music.york.ac.uk/dmrn/roadmap/) uses the term “transdisciplinary” extensively, whereas the (Continental) S2S2-roadmap uses the term “multidisciplinary” (S2S2, 2007). The difference between terms such as „multidisciplinary“ and „trans-disciplinary“ and perhaps also „interdisciplinary“ is subtle and I would propose to use the terms here as synonym, rather than considering “multidisciplinary” as the union of disciplines and “interdisciplinary” as the intersection of disciplines, whatever that may mean.


and social phenomenon. The approach was first related with Gestalt theory and, later on, with information psychology and cybernetics. In the 1970ies, with the advent of computers, this culminated in an approach that was closely related with the cognitive sciences. Up until today, the cognitive sciences still offer a main scientific research paradigm to systematic musicology. A key aspect of this paradigm is that it relies on scientific measurement for gathering empirical data, and on data-analysis and computer modelling for hypothesis testing (Leman and Schneider, 1997). Since a few years, the terms “transdisciplinarity” and “multidisciplinary” have appeared in several contributions that aim at identifying the role of systematic musicology in relation to modern music research. Honing (2004) refers to a revitalization of systematic musicology that is based on empirical observation and rigorous method, the growing role of formalization and the notion of testability and falsification, and music cognition research. Parncutt (2007) claims that the diversity of systematic musicology is compensated by interdisciplinary interactions with the system of subdisciplines that makes up systematic musicology. He argues that the future development, and perhaps survival, of musicology will depend on the degree to which musicological institutions can achieve a balance between subdisciplines that are rooted in both natural sciences and humanities. In short, transdisciplinarity has strong historical roots and it pops up as a key term in the actual discussion. The reason for using this term is that music is considered to be a highly multifaceted phenomenon, involving all human faculties and very different social and cultural contexts. Single disciplines often focus on particular aspects of these faculties and therefore fail to address important aspects that go beyond the confines of the discipline. A transdisciplinary approach would thus address the subjective and context-dependent way in which humans deal with music, without neglecting the physical environment in which music is perceived either. However, the real question is: how does transdisciplinarity work in practice, and how could it work as an effective instrument leading to practical results that otherwise cannot be obtained? Music’s key role in society The transdisciplinary nature of music research may be a strong asset to the development of activities that foster music’s key role in personal development and social bonding. Let me first go a bit deeper into this aspect, because it provides a strong humanistic argument in favour of the necessity of a research discipline that supports this role. Afterwards, I come back to the way in which the umbrella term “trans-disciplinarity” can be deployed in music research and how systematic musicology is related to this. It is known that the attractiveness of music is often rooted in the local cultures of people where it forms an important aspect of their active life. Music has appeal to active music makers, and it is used a lot for the accompaniment or support of social activities, such in religious activities, gaming or entertainment (dancing). Music is also known to strongly contribute to personal development, self-respect and pride, and it is considered to be a key factor of personal development. Music consoles, makes people happy, and it communicates cultural values and stimulates self reflection. Moreover, music is an excellent tool to promote respect for the diversity of social/cultural identity, the care of cultural heritage (preservation


and archiving), openness to cultural change and new forms of expression, democratic access to culture and knowledge, and a culture of participation and participation in culture. All this is of great value, and the intrinsic character of these values is a reason to put music in the centre of the picture. I claim that music is of such value that it requires our full attention as a topic, in such a way that other disciplines should support its study and contribute with methodological solutions that fully obey the requirements and the consequences of putting music at the centre. In other words, by putting music at the centre, we call upon musicology as a central research discipline. However, music is rooted in values that go beyond the study of its objective patterns. Music is experience, innovation, creation, expression, community, feeling of togetherness and knowledge, and much more. Therefore, these intrinsic values of music necessitate an approach that accounts for these values and that go beyond the confines of a single approach. Hence, driven by the values of the topic, the research approach should already be transdisciplinary. But there is more! Music: a vibrant economical sector According to a recent European study (KEA, 2006), music has a strong economic value as well. As an important part of a vibrant cultural and creative sector, the European music sector represents about 40% of the world-wide activity in this area, and employs about 650,000 workers in this sector. The study claims that the whole cultural/creative sector to which music belongs is in total twice as large as the auto-mobile sector, and as large as the ICT sector, with remarkable growth figures of about 20% over five years. The sector represents 2,6 % of the GNP (compared with chemistry and rubber/plastics industry: 2,3%). Total annual return is € 654 Billion.7 Interestingly, of all "content industries" (such as film, TV, art, heritage), music is the one which has been most affected by the digital revolution. Since the year 2000, the creationproduction-distribution-consumption chain for music went almost entirely digital. Music is pushing broadband development (e.g. Napster and P2P) and mobile networks (GSM/GPRS, UMTS) and it has stimulated the uptake of broadband subscription and ICT by mass consumers (e.g. PCs, mobiles). Music stimulates e-business (e.g. iTunes), new management tools (e.g. Digital Rights Management, Audio-fingerprinting, Watermarking) and retrieval methods (Music information retrieval). Moreover, music industry is currently transforming itself into a so-called experience-based economy. Musical audio is now distributed via large networks of ICT channels (broadband, mobile) and services start to provide an added economical and experiential value (Kusek and Leonhard, 2005). The impact of music on media consumption has been huge in recent years. Also in education, music has been a driver for young people to develop interest in science and ICT. In short, music is a core economical factor whose innovative role in society (e.g. both with respect to technology development and new business models) requires its own line of research and support. It is justified to say that music is more than just a domain of application, and it is justified to say that music research requires a proper approach, given its 7

Compare with car industry = € 271 Billion in 2003, ICT factories = € 541 Billion in 2003.


wide scope and close relationship to a booming creative and cultural sector. Clearly, this is something that systematic musicology cannot handle on its own. Methods and approaches from different fields are needed, and in this perspective, the interest in music from other disciplines is a real opportunity, rather than a threat. Yet what is needed is a re-positioning of the discipline of systematic musicology in this new landscape for music research.

Music at the core of innovation Apart from the social/cultural value and the economic value, I want to add a third value that is very specific for music, namely its value as incubator for innovation. This aspect too requires a very proper consideration because there are at least two reasons why music and art in general, may be expected to play an increasingly important role in modern society (Leman, 2005): –

–

First of all, music is so deeply connected with the technology of our society that it starts driving the development (of parts) of this technology. This is a quite natural thing to happen because if tools are used to be expressive, then one is always inclined to go beyond what is actually possible, and therefore, being expressive pushes innovation and drives new developments. Examples can be given from the development of electronic music in the 1950ies-1960ies, where analogue audio-equipment was used to create new musical sounds and where the first steps were taken to develop a content-based approach to musical information processing. The recent quest for a „Music Google“ can indeed be seen as an outcome of this development. In more recent times, there are signs that real-time interactive music systems push the frontiers of sensing, multi-modal multimedia processing and gesturebased control of technologies in a similar way as did the former research on synthesis and content-based processing. More researchers become aware of the fact that gesture technologies developed for interactive music and multimedia may also be useful in other areas. Secondly, music is so deeply connected with our social life that it starts driving new approaches to social communication, as art is always intended to be communicated and to involve social interaction. Recent developments in music research have pushed back the frontiers of networking into technologies that deal with semantics as well as new forms of human-human and human-machine interaction. Music is an excellent domain to develop technologies that focus on non-verbal communication patterns (related to gesture, corporeal articulation, kinetics and bioparametric sensing and related information processing) and therefore it is an excellent domain to develop patterns of communication that relate to corporeal social interaction.

In short, there is much to say in favour of the idea that music drives innovation in technology and in social interaction, because the context of music creation is constantly pushing for being more expressive, more human-friendly and more and different flavours. The interplay between music, technology and social interaction creates a huge market for innovation and


creative development that links up with the ICT sector and the upcoming creative and cultural sector. The intrinsic human value of music (e.g. for personal development and social bonding), the role of music in culture and economy (e.g., the development of new and massive internetbased business models), and its driving force for innovation and technology development (e.g. content-driven and socially embedded technologies), has forced systematic musicology to catch up with these activities. Could systematic musicology function as a moderator in this modern music research space? Could it become an agora for music research, a place where science meets art, a location where innovation and creation meets methodology and systematicity? The modern music research space Unfortunately, despite the enormous social-cultural, economical and innovative value of music, music research is still a rather small-scale enterprise in terms of number of people and institutes that work on innovation and supporting services for the cultural and creative sector. Even after the booming period of the millennium turn, the number of researchers working in music research is still rather limited. A survey 8 done within the context of the S2S2-project (S2S2, 2007) reveals a trend that apart from a few exceptions (e.g. IRCAM in Paris), institutes working on music (in musicology, engineering, psychology, brain research) tend to be rather small (mean: about 2-3 professors, 10 PhD students), although the number of doctoral dissertations and internationally peer reviewed papers has been growing over the past decennium. In general, the European music research space is characterized by a relative large number of small institutes and a small number of larger institutions which, together, form research networks through changing coalitions. The small-scale character of the institutes is compensated by the collaborative international networks that emerged during the past 10 to 15 years. This allows the centres to specialize in niche areas, such as sound synthesis (physical modelling), sound archiving, and interactive music systems and so on. The ill-defined goals at long term and the bottom-up short-term emergent output structure (in contrast with a well-defined long term goal and a top-down long-term planned output structure) resembles the way research in microbiology is organized (although, admitted, institutes in biology tend to be much larger than those of music research). According to Nowotny et al. (2001), the uncertainty in large parts of modern science is an inherent feature of the research activity. Uncertainty does not mean that the field has no vision, or that a vision is impossible. Rather, it means that there is no concrete planned goal at long term, except some vague idea of what all these research activities are up to. Many things happen at the same time and it is rather unpredictable which output will survive, or what the effect of a small contribution will be on the whole field. In music research, the field is characterized by a multitude of objectives that focus on different music processing topics and a multitude of facets of how humans interact with music. The vision is not about a concrete scientific research goal, a concrete device or machine, but rather about what music may mean to 8

The website http://smcnetwork.org/ has recently been created to develop a better and more up to date statistics of music research.


people. In other words, the vision is about the relationship between music research and society. The vision is about goal-directed research in function of societal benefits. Clearly, in this context of discovery there is no single controlling instance, although the output is largely driven by society. The control of the broad range of research activities is not something that systematic musicology should claim, or that any other discipline should claim. The music research field is simply too broad and the number of people working in systematic musicology is simply too small and not fully educated to cover all aspects involved. Therefore, collaboration with other disciplines is the only possibility, something that is highly needed in order to create a fruitful context of discovery that supports the creative and cultural sector. The role of systematic musicology in this universe or research can be that of a moderator, to help steering the development of a vision, to keep track of research outputs, to guarantee their relevance to music, that is, to make sure that psychosocial musical practices can profit from the developments, in other words, to keep focus on the music and what it does to people. Surveys like KEA and S2S2 show that Europe has a flourishing music research space that plays an important role in the development of a cultural and creative sector. This research space is based on multiple scientific disciplines, in which systematic musicology is one next to others. For example, in the S2S2 survey, with its focus on sound and music computing, a distinction is made between broad-focus content areas, in-focus content areas, and narrowfocus content areas. The broad focus areas include: • • • • • •

Systematic musicology, covering music semiotics, score analysis, social-aesthetic aspects of music, computational models for music analysis and other aspects Auditory and music perception-action, covering psychoacoustics, music perception, computational approaches and models Auditory and music cognition, covering sound-based cognition, music cognition, artificial intelligence Music acoustics, covering acoustics of musical instruments, room acoustics Audio signal processing covering systems, sampling and quantization, spectral and time spectral representations, digital filters Hardware and software, covering sensors and actuators, real-time systems, output devices, software platforms, software engineering aspects.

In-focus content areas are: • •

•

Sound modelling, covering models for sound synthesis, physically-based modelling, digital audio effects, artificial reverberation, binauralization, 3D sound and virtual acoustics Sound analysis and coding, covering auditory-based audio signal processing, perceptual coding, content-based audio processing and audio descriptors, content description and transmission languages, content-based transformations and synthesis Music information processing, covering feature extraction and classification, automatic transcription, music information retrieval, computer assisted composition


•

Music performance, covering performance analysis, emotion and expression in music performance, computational models and control of music performance

Narrow-focus content areas are: •

• •

Multimodal interfaces, covering multimodal perception, gesture and multimodal analysis, Representations of multimodal data, control mappings and interaction strategies, multimodal synthesis and rendering, assessment, evaluation, validation of models Sound design and auditory display, covering auditory warnings, sound in human computing interfaces, sonification, sound design Applications areas, covering digital and virtual musical instruments, interactive performing arts, museum interactive installations, edutainment, entertainment, multimedia and new media, therapy and rehabilitation

Obviously, in this list, systematic musicology has been assigned a specific role quite close to traditional approaches in musicology. This is certainly an area that is “difficult to steal” because it requires particular skills in music that are rather typical. However, the systemic basis of systematic musicology is in fact much broader, as it was influenced by the experimental research in psychology and computational modelling in engineering. The broad approach to systematic musicology covers other broad/in/narrow content areas that are situated in the psychosocial domain and it is likely to involve a number of other content areas as well that are not covered in this list, such as anthropology, ethnology, and perhaps even medialogy. Anyhow, both the KEA study and the S2S2 study show that Europe’s potential power in music research, compared to US and Japan, is large. This can be attributed to Europe’s deep involvement with music over the past centuries, and its success in having produced strong musical paradigms rooted in very appealing music systems (such as modality, tonality and different historical styles from early medieval times up to the present), together with its long tradition in humanistic (read musicological) and scientific approaches to music. However, the US seems to be more versatile in terms of bringing a good idea into the market. The lack of continuity in research funding is often one of the major difficulties of the European small scale institutes, even more so when those institutes are operating in humanistic disciplines. The problem of discontinuous funding is more dramatic for small institutes than for large institutes. Core know-how in the hands of a small number of people makes these small institutes vulnerable to a sudden loss or a failure in getting a new project that could guarantee the position of a post-doc. The European research space for music is organized as a network of small institutes, and temporary consortia are formed by changing coalitions among the members of the pool that defines music research. Transdisciplinarity in this context implies that small institutes have to cross the boarders of their own institute and establish collaborations with other institutes. This can be done at home (own university) or abroad, possibly at an international level. Often the dynamics of the research field also implies that young researchers have to be flexible and change institutes throughout Europe according to the available opportunities. Young


systematic musicologists in Europe have to be active in this core music research business and they need to develop a healthy ambition to play a prominent role in this broader European music research space. Identifying the challenge for music research Given the above background, it is possible to go deeper into the major challenges for music research and to reconsider the claim that transdisciplinary will make systematic musicology attractive and necessary in the music research space. In other words, how can an umbrella term like “transdisciplinarity” or “interdisciplinarity” be deployed, and what can systematic musicology contribute to this? When looking at the state-of-the-art of the disciplines that took music as their research topic it is of interest to ask to what extent these disciplines have encountered the boundaries of their own methodologies. It is my personal experience that young engineers, or brain scientists, sooner or later admit that research on music is a bit harder than expected. And the likely reason for this is often that the discipline handles music from a third-person viewpoint, that is, the viewpoint of music as an encoded physical energy, as a simple body movement, or as brain activation, whereas the human way of dealing with music is based on a first-person viewpoint, that is, based on actions, beliefs, intentions, interpretations, experiences, evaluations, and significations. Indeed, one could claim that in contexts where music is embedded in technology, music needs to be handled from the viewpoint of a physical signal and subsequent feature extraction and therefore, the engineering methods are appropriate. This reasoning is completely valid, but there is another side to it as well, namely that real users involve technologies in view of their intentions, values, beliefs and significations. Real users have a background. They are educated, belong to a particular culture, have a particular expectation, intention and so on. Hence, technology development needs much more than just signal processing and feature extraction. It also needs to take into account how people think, feel, experience, and interact with each other. At this point, it is clear that the engineering approach should be broadened with approaches from other disciplines. And it is also clear that this aspect is still insufficiently taken into account. Similar remarks hold for brain science in that brain activations may not reveal the semantic experience of the subject involved with music. Or can we reduce music to a disembodied brain? Can we deprive subjects from their environment, put them in a scanner and ask them not to move, while we know that 97% of the people do move when they listen to music? Clearly, more is needed to develop current music research practices in the direction of a more comprehensive approach. The semantic gap that exists between music as third-person observation and as first-person experience is a serious problem and it forms a threat to music research as a whole. Indeed, access to music remains a problem when the retrieval technologies are insufficiently taking into account the user’s search intentions, personal attitudes and social/cultural contexts. Interactive music making is problematic when the interaction is not sufficiently based on the subject’s action-intended control of musical objects. Brain research is problematic when the technologies for brain measurement reduce musical experience to limited conditions where it can be measured.


More effort is needed to adapt these technologies to the study of realistic musical conditions. As my target is more related to the upcoming cultural and creative sector (and less to brain research at this moment) I will focus here mainly on engineering, arguing that the pure engineering approach to music is necessary but not sufficient for contributing to the cultural and creative sector. In similar terms it could be argued that brain research is necessary but not sufficient in that it needs more than just a series of photographs of how an individual human passively responds to music. In both approaches, it can be argued that there is a subjective, corporeal, and social component to be taken into account which is currently not taken into account at this moment, but which is necessary in view of the supporting services for the creative and cultural sector. I will argue that it is exactly at this point that systematic musicology can make the difference and regain its role as an attractive core discipline for music research. Object-based approaches to the semantic gap problem Consider the engineering approach in more detail. The classical approach to the semantic gap problem is object-based in the following sense: Starting from the sound, the approach uses feature extraction and classification methods to transform the sound (as object) into concepts which humans can mentally access. As such, it becomes possible to align musical audio with symbolic music scores, to use high-level semantic terms (such as “happy”, “sad”, “loud”, “soft”, “harmonious”, “dissonant”, “static”, “dynamic”) to search for music in a database, or to use musical gestures in an interactive system. However, many of the engineering solutions, not only those that make the connection with natural language, appear to be far from sufficiently robust for use in practical applications. In some cases, like in score transcription9, it looks as if the use of more powerful stochastic and probabilistic bottom-up modelling techniques such as Hidden Markov Chains, Support Vector Machines, Neural Networks do not close this gap much further. In other words, it looks as if the bottom-up methods have reached their platform. Yet the semantic gap is not closed. To the contrary, there is evidence that the semantic gap problem cannot be solved with the current bottom-up engineering paradigm10.

9

In audio-to-score alignment, the target for audio analysis is known, namely as the musical score. Instead, in musical audio transcription the target is not known and each note must be recognized. In a polyphonic context, the latter poses a much more fundamental problem for feature extraction and classification. 10 Paiva (2006) demonstrated that the classical bottom-up approach has reached its performance platform. In his study on melody extraction from polyphonic audio he showed that even the most advanced methods nowadays available show only a small increase in performance of the model. He used state-of-the-art techniques in auditory modelling, pitch detection and frame-concatenation into music notes and compared different methods. Yet, the results are still far from being sufficiently robust for use in practical applications. Similar observations have been made in rhythm recognition, timbre recognition, genre recognition and other applications that focus on the perception of musical structural features.


Among experts (see e.g. S2S2, 2007), there is a growing understanding that the engineering techniques are excellent and necessary, but that the approach may be too narrow, and therefore insufficient. Briefly listed, the current approach can be characterized as follows: –

–

– – –

Unimodality: The focus has been on musical audio exclusively, whereas humans process music in a multi-modal way. Humans rely on multiple senses (modalities) such as visual information and movement. Structuralism: The focus has been on the extraction of structure from musical audio files (such as pitch, melody, harmony, tonality, rhythm) whereas humans tend to access music using subjective experiences (movement, imitation, expression, mood, affect, and emotion). Bottom-up: The focus has been on bottom-up (deterministic and learning) techniques whereas humans use a lot of top-down knowledge in signification practices. Perception oriented: The focus has been on the modelling of perception and cognition whereas human perception is based on action-relevant values. Object/Product-centred: Research has focused on the features of the musical object, whereas the subjective factors and the social/cultural functional context in musical activities (e.g. gender, age, education, preferences, professional, amateur) have been largely ignored.

In short, the approach starts from the object but does not take into account the proper context and the subjective factors that define how users would like to access music, such as knowledge of the domain or the context in which the technology is used. Why human sciences are needed to solve the semantic gap problem More input should come from a better analysis of the subjective human being and its social/cultural context. Such a subject-centred approach would involve: –

–

–

–

Multi-modality: The power of integrating and combining several senses should be considered. Moreover, it is likely that the integration of auditory, visual, haptic, kinaesthetic sensing offers a reduction of the ambiguity of the perceived stimulus. Context-based approach: The study of the broader social, cultural and professional context and its effect on information processing is needed. Indeed, the context is of great value for the disambiguation of our perception. Similarly, the context largely determines the goals and intended musical actions. Top-down: Knowledge of the music idiom is needed in order to better extract higher-level descriptors from music so that users can have easier access to these descriptors. Traditionally, top-down knowledge has been conceived as a language model. However, language models may be extended with gesture models as a way to handle stimulus disambiguation. Action: Research may focus more on the action-oriented component of human behaviour. This implies a new approach to the perception of structural form (or Gestalt) as well because perception of structure is then conceived from the viewpoint of affordances. In other words, one could say that people do not move just in response to the music they perceive, rather they move to disambiguate their perception of music, and by doing this, they signify music. This


–

aspect needs much more attention as it plays an important role in music mediation technologies. User-oriented: Research should involve the user in every phase of the research. It is very important to better understand the subjective factors that determine the behaviour of the user.

It is my understanding that the subject-centred approach which is prevalent in this viewpoint should be based on an empirical and evidence-based methodology, so that it connects with object-centred approach. Clearly, this subject-centred approach is not something that is readily available in engineering, nor is it readily available in experimental and/or cognitive psychology, and perhaps not even in systematic musicology as we know it today. Yet, I see it as a main task of systematic musicology to come up with a proper proposal of how to put music at the centre of human activities. In that sense, my proposal does not entail a rejection of the disembodied approaches in music research. Rather, what I propose is an extension of this approach with an embodied approach that puts the interaction between music and the subject in the centre. This can be done by a better linking of the currently prevailing objectcentred account, which is characterized by a focus on audio, structural features, bottom-up data processing, perception oriented modelling and object/product-centred development, with a new type of subject-centred approach, which would be characterized by a focus on multimodality, context-based processing, top-down data processing, action-based modelling, and user-oriented development. Systematic musicology “transcends” natural and human sciences In view of the above analysis it becomes clearer what the role of systematic musicology might be, namely, to foster the development of a transdisciplinary approach that uses objectcentred and subject-centred methodologies for researching the relationship between music, mind, embodiment, social interaction and physical environment. Systematic musicology has a certain tradition in dealing with transdisciplinarity and it offers an education that is much in the spirit of combining natural and human sciences. So yes, there is a value in having a transdisciplinary approach, and systematic musicology is well placed to contribute to problems in engineering and in brain science. Closing the semantic gap with embodiment The combination of object-centred and subject-centred approaches is an important point on the agenda of my conception of systematic musicology. Deep inside this approach is the viewpoint that music is related to the interaction between body, mind, and physical environment; in a way that does justice to how humans perceive and act in the world, how they use their senses, their feelings, their emotions, their cognitive apparatus and social interactions. I have tried to develop this core systemic topic in my book on embodied music cognition and mediation technology (Leman, 2007). In that book, I see the tight coupling between action and perception as a key to link all disciplines that deal with music research and I propose a solution for the semantic gap in terms of an embodied approach. In particular,


I argue that music signification has a strong corporeal aspect and that this corporeal aspect is largely unexplored until today. The proposed (minimal) model is shown in Figure 1. Figure1. Music communication: the body as link between mind and physical environment

The central idea of this model is that the human body supports action causation and perception from a musical goal to bio-mechanical, haptic, sonic, and visual energy. This proceeds back and forth via corporeal articulations and corporeal imitations, so that goaldirected action at the higher level of intentionality can be established. This intentional level is embedded within subjective experience, while the physical channels through which communication proceeds can be approached from an objective viewpoint.11 Clearly, in this approach, mental musical activity is not reduced to physics, nor is gesture and meaning reduced to the biomechanics of the human body, or to a mere disembodied approach of mental representation and cognition. Instead, the human body is considered to be a core component of a mediation system that relates the mental with the physical environment. In this context, transdisciplinarity means that disciplines which address the mental world, the physical environment and the human body are involved and used to focus on the musical aspect. Clearly, progress in this domain can only be made when the disciplines transcend their boundaries and take the relationship between music and humans as a goal to develop new methods and approaches. In my opinion, it is the task of systematic musicology to educate, promote and research into scientific methodologies that transcend the boundaries of limiting approaches. From that point of view, whatever can support music understanding should be used, including engineering, brain research, biology, cultural studies and so on, but in genuine music research, music and the tight connection between mind and body, and between the exchange of physical energy and the generation of interaction patterns at the

11

The approach is related with the perception theoretical notions of emulation and simulated perception (e.g. Berthoz, 1997). Historical roots can be found in the work of Piaget, Apostel, Maturana and Varela (e.g. Maturana and Varela, 1980). Reference can also be made to European projects (e.g. ENACTIVE, ConGAS, EMCAP).


level of intentionality (Figure 1), will always remain a central issue to which the methodologies have to be fine-tuned. A role as moderator at the crossroads of modern music research means that systematic musicology is in charge of a discussion that makes sure that music research is conducted towards the realisation of a vision that fosters the development of our understanding and use of music as a cultural and societal value, as an economic value, and as a value for innovation and creation within an framework that subscribes the tight connection between musical mind, body, physical environment and social interaction. While this (I repeat) cannot be done by one single discipline, but instead by many disciplines that work together and transcend their boundaries, systematic musicology can clarify the vision and well as the transdisciplinary research paradigm that implements the realisation of this vision through empirical approaches and methodologies. Understanding the role of musical mind and body in relation to the physical and technological environment is a huge task but one that is absolutely necessary for all disciplines involved in music research.

Embodiment and social interaction Thus, in the above model, a systemic approach to embodiment is proposed as the key feature that will help systematic musicology to develop solutions for core problems in music-related psychosocial interaction. By implementing this idea in research and in education12, I believe that systematic musicology will be able to re-establish its position in the modern music research space. Given the above model, there is a good reason for expanding embodiment with a component of social interaction. In fact, both embodiment and social interaction are strongly related with each other as they fit with the above-mentioned cultural and psychosocial value of music. Indeed, the articulations of the human body in music making and other musical activities such as listening and dancing are functioning in a natural context of social interaction. In this context, humans communicate expressive gestures along corporeal-based communication channels that are rooted in social cognition. It is likely that these expressive gestures form part of a social language that appeals to an essential component of human being. Therefore, concepts such as “behavioural resonance”, “corporeal interaction”, “expressive gesture”, “synchroni-zation” and “entrainment” are key concepts in our understanding what music is about. In my view, these concepts form the core concept of a new approach to systematic musicology (Leman and Camurri, 2006). This new systematic musicology is different from the past in that it differs radically from the disembodied approaches of the cognitive sciences that were still dominant in musicology

12

See the summer schools on systematic musicology (ISSSM), organized in Jyväskylä (1999, 2001) and Ghent (2006, 2007, 2008).


at the turn of the 21st Century13. However, it should be admitted that the focus on the perception of musical structures (such as pitch, rhythm, tempo, harmonic progression, articulation and so on) has been historically important and this will remain important in the future. Yet, a focus on musical structures is not sufficient to understand the complex phenomenon of music. What is needed is more attention for the values and goals of what music is all about, and what these values and goals mean to people14. In that sense, the role of systematic musicology is to push approaches towards elaborating the focus on structural aspects towards more comprehensive embodied approaches of music understanding. In retrospect one could say that what was „stolen“ from systematic musicology was in fact the disembodied component, namely, the (wrong) idea that music is merely about structures, and that human involvement with music is merely about perception. As the communication model of Figure 1 suggests, non-verbal communication patterns, for example, the responsive and expressive movements of body parts are key indicators of the musical communication. It can be assumed that they are also key indicators of the social embodied musical communication and the role of expressiveness in gesture. Up to now, the understanding of these corporeal types of non-verbal communication in their social interactive context is very poorly understood. I do believe, however, that certain states of social entrainment (based on the mutual adaptation of non-verbal expressive corporeal communication patterns) can be somehow perceived by the human mind as a state of optimal experience or “flow”. This form of direct experience with music can be contemplated and the awareness of social entrainment that can be accessed in terms of semantic descriptions (i.e. descriptions of signification) as well. It is not excluded that these descriptions can be partly related to the (objective) measurements of the human body so that these descriptions can be used in connection with content-based technologies (e.g. the “Music Google”). We may assume that the process of signification, from corporeal signification to cerebral signification is a central factor that contributes to personal development and social well-being. This type of model, which connects mental, physical and social aspects, offers an attractive perspective 13

The classical approach to systematic musicology is based on a theory that is rooted in the analysis of musical structures, their representation and inherent regularities. This approach has its roots in the Cartesian divide between moving bodies and the experienced self, and it is still dominating much of the music research today. In that respect, the modern and up to date music compendium by G. Loy (Loy, 2006) is still reminiscent to Descartes’ Musicae Compendium of 1619. However, let it be clear that there is no reason to discard this good old mathematical “disembodied” approach to music at all. Instead, my plea is to extend this powerful approach with a new chapter that does justice to the embodied involvement with music. In that sense, I plea for an extension of tradition music cognition towards an embodied approach. Apparently, even Descartes, in his compendium, already suggested the need for doing this. 14 As it will be clear by the previous paragraphs, I conceive the subject-centred approach in the sense of an empirical and computational approach, rather than in terms of a postmodern narration. However, the latter is a reality in (historical) musicology and therefore, this reality should be evaluated in terms of its possible contribution to a music research space that supports the cultural and creative sector. Unfortunately, and as far as I know, this has never been done, though I believe that embodiment may offer a possible point of connection.


which is much needed in music research. In my opinion, systematic musicology has the tradition and the competence to play a leading role in developing a transdisciplinary music research that focuses on these aspects. Transdisciplinarity thus emerges from two sides, first, from a call for innovative services that support a broad range of activities in the creative and cultural sector, second, from a call for solving the semantic gap as the major obstacle for a breakthrough in content-based music technologies (the “Music Google”). In both cases, it is unlikely that solutions will come from one single discipline, say engineering or brain science. Instead, an approach that puts music at the centre and that further transcends the boundaries of objective and subjective descriptions, of mind and embodiment, of physics and intentionality, and of individual and social interactions is going to be transdisciplinary in that it combines methods and techniques from many different sciences, both natural sciences and human sciences. At the crossroads of music research, systematic musicology functions as a moderator of transdisciplinary viewpoints, approaches and methodologies. Without such a moderator, there would be more dispersion of the approaches as well as a risk that the research narrows down to risky commercial applications. An example of the latter is again related to our “Music Google”. According to the current state of the art in content-based music retrieval, certain techniques work quite well for simple commercial music but not for classical music or other types of non-western music. Should these techniques be commercialized, then? Clearly, their usage would favour the retrieval of simple commercial music and disfavour the retrieval of more complicated, non-western, and non-commercial musical approaches. More people would get access to commercial music but the limitations of the technology would narrow down the broad spectrum of music that is actually available (even via internet). Therefore, there is clearly a task for systematic musicology to point to these dangers and to contribute to the development of technologies that can handle any type of music. Up to now, the state-of-theart in music retrieval technology is too much focused on Western concepts and it is the task of systematic musicology to enlarge this viewpoint (see Moelants et al., 2007, Tzanetakis et al., 2007). The S2S2-project: a roadmap for transdisciplinary music research Having revealed what makes systematic musicology in my view a necessary partner in music research, I now turn to the discussion of the research strategy that would guarantee impact on music research at long term. Having a good concept (although still open for discussion and refinement), the strategy is to implement that concept in the structures that support the creative and cultural sector. These structures involve the actual research, the educational system, and innovative industrial and social-cultural creative applications. Much of what follows is based on work of the S2S2-consortium on a roadmap for sound and music computing research. S2S2 stands for Sound to Sense, Sense to Sound which, in fact, is exactly about this relationship between physical encoding of music and music as experience. The S2S2-project was based on an interdisciplinary consortium of music research laboratories in Europe, with the major task of writing a roadmap for sound and music computing. The consortium included the Media Innovation Unit, Firenze Tecnologia, Firenze, Italy (N. Bernardini), the


Music Acoustics Group of the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan in Stockholm, Sweden (R. Bresin), the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain (X. Serra), CSC - Dept. of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy (G. De Poli), the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence of the Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies in Vienna, Austria (G. Widmer), the Département d'Etudes Cognitives of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France (A. de Cheveigné), the Laboratoire d'Etude de l'Apprentissage et du Développement of the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France (E. Bigand), the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music of the Universiteit Gent in Ghent, Belgium (M. Leman), the Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal processing of the Helsinki University of Technology in Espoo, Finland (V. Välimäki), the Vision, Image Processing and Sound Laboratory of the University of Verona, Italy (D. Rocchesso), and the Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale of the University of Genova, Italy (A. Camurri). On the 16th of April 2007, this consortium launched a roadmap on Sound and Music Computing in the headquarters of the European Research Council in Brussels. The roadmap is in fact an ambitious document, of less than 100 pages, that aims at defining the major challenges for future music research. As a guide, it will have impact on the future strategic planning for sound and music research of the European Commission. In what follows, I will briefly introduce the rationale behind this roadmap and I show how transdisciplinary systematic musicology is inscribed as a core aspect of the European music research as it is envisioned for the future. Content of the S2S2-project The S2S2-project has produced three major outcomes, namely a book containing the state-ofthe-art in sound and music computing15 a series of summer schools that addressed the education of young music researchers16 and of course, the roadmap itself, which is a text of about 100 pages. The first text was edited by X. Serra, M. Leman and G. Widmer and is available as pdf on the internet17. The S2S2-roadmap contains three parts, namely, (i) a description of the context and main trends in which music research operates, (ii) a state-of-the-art and identification of the research points and open issues, and (iii) a description of the research challenges. i.

Context: This consists of the research context, the educational context, the industrial context, and the social/cultural context. These contexts tell us about the societal framework in which

15

This book is currently edited by D. Rocchesso, to be published by LOGOS-Verlag in 2008. Reference can be made to the summer schools on sound and Music computing held in Barcelona 2004, Genova 2005, Barcelona 2006, Stockholm 2007. 17 See http://smcnetwork.org/roadmap. Recently, this text has been reworked and polished to be published as a first frozen version in a special issue of the Journal of New Music Research, Vol. 36, Issue 3, 2008 (edited by N. Bernardini and G. De Poli). This issue contains the three main parts of the roadmap as separate articles, together with a roadmap from IRCAM (by H. Vinet) and a viewpoint from the US (by R. Dannenberg) and Japan (S. Hashimoto). See http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ spissue/nnmr-si.asp 16


music research is currently operative. It is mentioned that transdisciplinarity is necessary in research, for industrial development and cultural applications, but that it is rather difficult to implement the educational part. The state-of-the-art then focuses on the main open issues. A distinction is made between research that focuses on sound and research that focuses on music. In between, there is the interaction between sound and music. For each research field (sound, interaction, music), there is an analytic and a synthetic component. The analytic component goes from encoded physical (sound) energy to meaning (sense), whereas the synthetic component goes in the opposite direction, from meaning (sense) to encoded physical (sound) energy. Accordingly, analytic approaches to sound and music pertain to analysis and understanding, whereas synthetic approaches pertain to generation and processing. In between sound and music, there are multifaceted research fields that focus on interactive aspects. These are performance modelling and control, music interfaces, and sound interaction design. The nature of these distinctions reveals the inherent transdisciplinary character of the research field, as both the analytical (from sound to sense) and the synthetic (from sense to sound) approaches. The challenges part looks ahead and identifies the key challenges for music research together with the strategies with which to face them. These challenges fit with the open problems that were identified in part (ii), and they are constrained by the contexts which were identified in part (i). It may be of interest to give a brief summary of the challenges that have been identified.

ii.

iii.

Challenge 1: to design better sound objects and environments – – – – – –

Strategy 1: Seek directions in which to extend the notion of musical instrument Strategy 2: Improve technologies for pervasively producing, transforming and delivering sounds Strategy 3: Intensify research in sound modelling that goes beyond imitation towards capturing the communicative potential of sound Strategy 4: Promote research in fields involved in the shaping of natural, artificial and cultural acoustic ecosystems Strategy 5: Promote research on the effect of environmental constraints on artificially diffused sound and music Strategy 6: Promote studies aimed at reducing sound and music pollution in public and private ecosystems

Challenge 2: to understand, model, and improve human interaction with sound and music – – – –

Strategy 1: Promote computational modelling approaches in human auditory perception and cognition research Strategy 2: Provide extensive augmented perception paradigms Strategy 3: Intensify research on expressivity and communication in sound and music Strategy 4: Develop an embodied, integrated approach to perception and action


– –

Strategy 5: Intensify multimodal and multidisciplinary research on computational methods for bridging the semantic gap in music Strategy 6: Intensify interaction with the arts

Challenge 3: to train multidisciplinary researchers in a multicultural society – – – – – –

Strategy 1: Design appropriate multidisciplinary curricula for SMC Strategy 2: Promote broader integration of Arts and Sciences Strategy 3: Promote cross-cultural integration Strategy 4: Promote better coordination in Higher Education Strategy 5: Enhance education resources for Higher Education. Strategy 6: Promote the dissemination of available Higher Education in SMC.

Challenge 4: to improve knowledge transfer – – – – – –

Strategy 1: Promote dissemination of SMC research and objectives among the general public Strategy 2: Promote projects containing artistic components Strategy 3: Promote the awareness of the various models of IP protection of research results Strategy 4: Promote venues for meeting industry experts Strategy 5: Promote direct industrial exploitation of research results Strategy 6: Promote academic quality standards.

Challenge 5: to address social concerns – – –

– –

Strategy 1: Identify social needs relevant to SMC development; develop methods for the evaluation and assessment of SMC technologies in social contexts Strategy 2: Expand existing SMC methodologies (currently targeted at individuals) to understand music in its social dimension Strategy 3: Promote development of technologies and tools for broader collaboration, information and communication engagement; emphasise user-centred and group experiencecentred research and development Strategy 4: Exploit cross-fertilisation between human sciences, natural sciences, technology, and the arts Strategy 5: Expand the horizon of SMC research through a multi-cultural approach.

Above, I have described how this roadmap relates systematic musicology to other disciplines. In this description of the main challenges, it is evident that the transdisciplinary approach is a central feature. For example, in Challenge 2, Strategies 4-6 mention integration, multimodality, multidisciplinarity and interaction with arts. The notion of multidisciplinarity is taken up explicitly in Challenge 3, where the need for multidisciplinary curricula is addressed. In Challenge 4, the mentioning of cross-fertilisation between human sciences, natural sciences, technology, and the arts contains an explicit reference to multidisciplinarity. Reference to augmented perception, expressivity, embodiment and multimodality support the


core challenges for music research. In Challenge 5, there is an explicit call to develop music technology in its social dimension. The latter aspect is not unimportant. After all, as mentioned, music is a very important aspect of all human cultures. Music gives meaning to life. It is a basic ingredient of cultural, group and personal identification and social bonding. Music affects the mental and bodily health of people. Towards centres of excellence in Systematic Musicology In the context of a flourishing European music research space, there have been a number of initiatives that contributed to the development of systematic musicology. Starting in 1993, the International Society for Comparative and Systematic Musicology (with seat in Hamburg) has organised a number of international conferences at Moravaný, 1993, Hamburg, 1994, Schloss Zeillern, 1995, Brugge, 1996, Berlin, 1997, Oslo, 1999, Jyväskylä, 2001, with several publications18. In recent years the Society has supported the educational activities of an international consortium of systematic musicology centres, consisting of the University of Hamburg, Köln, Jyväskylä, Oslo and Ghent. As a practical outcome, this consortium has organised several International Summers Schools on Systematic Musicology (ISSSM)19. The Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM) is an initiative to create a forum for constructive interaction among all musically and musicologically relevant disciplines. CIM especially promotes “collaborations between sciences and humanities, between theory and practice, as well as interdisciplinary combinations that are new, unusual, creative, or otherwise especially promising”. The first Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM04) was held in Graz, 2004, then in Montreal, 2005, Tallin, 2007, and Thessaloniki, 2008.20 Recently, two centres for systematic musicology have received a substantial funding for long term (6 to 7 years) research in areas that affect the creative and cultural sector. Though these are national initiatives, they express a clear sign that countries are willing to invest more into systematic musicology research, provided that it supports the creative and cultural sector. The first centre is located in Jyväskylä and is supported by the Academy of Finland. The overall theme of the research in this so-called “Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research” is “the human as a listener, experiencer, and performer of music. Within this theme, research will investigate areas including perception and learning of music, musical emotions, and the connection between music and motion. The research is empirical and makes use of modern technology, such as brain imaging and motion capture devices as well as computer modelling”. The centre combines the expertise of two research teams, namely, the Music Cognition Team (University of Jyväskylä, Department of Music, lead by Petri Toiviainen) and the Brain and Music Team (Helsinki University, Department of Psychology, lead by Mari Tervaniemi). The second centre is located at IPEM, Department of musicology, Ghent University, where a long-term (“Methusalem”)-project has been started up on a topic related to embodied music 18

See http://www.uni-hamburg.de/Wiss/FB/09/Musik/systematicmusicology.html See e.g. www.ipem.ugent.be/ISSSM2007 20 See http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/cim.htm 19


cognition and mediation technologies for cultural/creative applications (“EmcoMetecca”). The project will focus on the development of empirical and computational approaches that foster embodiment and social interaction in music contexts. While the Finish project is build around collaboration between a music department and a department of brain science, the Belgian project is built around core research in systematic musicology with a substantial collaborative component in the area of electronic engineering. Both are example initiatives at the National and University level. As both research groups start their activities in 2008 they will need some time to fully deploy themselves as a critical mass in the modern European music research space. As a matter of fact, these two projects are not the only projects in the field of systematic musicology but I mention these two projects because their amount of support is large and perhaps more endurable than the typical projects that could be obtained in the past by competition in university programs, national research programs and European research programs (lasting 2 to 4 years with typically 1 or 2 full time personnel). Hopefully, this is the start of a new trend in the building of a European space for music research. There are several larger institutes already operative in Paris (IRCAM, which is interdisciplinary and broad) and Barcelona (UPF-MTG, which is more focused on signal processing). The new groups in Finland and Belgium are not that large, and they are likely to focus more on niche areas within music research and systematic musicology. Yet the trend may be that Europe is reshaping its music research space by building slightly larger research groups that have a more stable funding and that are more specialized in different niches of the music research space. The fact that systematic musicology is a player in this development should not come as a surprise. As I have tried to explain, its history and its empirical and computational orientation give this discipline a natural position in the centre of modern music research activities. However, it is necessary that more such centres become available so that a stable critical mass for research can be created and maintained. This is, I believe, the best guarantee for delivering outputs that can have an endurable value for society. The above initiatives are by no means exhaustive. Rather, they are examples of activities that show the viability of systematic musicology in a rapidly changing European research space. It is very likely that systematic musicology has a bright future, provided that it can position itself at the crossroads of music research that supports the creative and cultural sector. In that sense, I believe that systematic musicology certainly has a value that appeals to a broad range of researchers with backgrounds in engineering, physics, psychology and neuroscience. Its necessity can be justified by pointing to its central role in transcending the boundaries of disciplines and its possible role in solving the semantic gap problem. Towards centres for creation and public interaction Supporting research for the creative and cultural sector implies research in areas that foster production, distribution and access to music. In the past, IRCAM21 has been the main centre in Europe where this strategic alliance between artistic production and scientific research was actually implemented. From the very beginning, IRCAM’s objective was to bring science and 21

http://www.ircam.fr


art together in order to widen the instrumentarium and to rejuvenate musical language. However, in Europe there is now a clear trend towards the creation of more such strategic alliances between art centres and research groups. Casa Paganini22 is an international centre in Genova for scientific and technological research in music and performing arts, artistic production of new music projects related to new technologies didactics, international schools and conferences. Casa Paganini is conceived as an incubator for new contemporary musical trends, for research in interactive multimedia systems and digital music technologies. The mission of Casa Paganini also includes research and developments with direct impact on therapy and rehabilitation, sport, edutainment and entertainment, in collaboration with industry (e.g., contributes to new multimedia interfaces and applications) and for cultural applications (museums, science centres). Casa Paganini is led by the University of Genova and in particular by the InfoMus Lab of DIST (A. Camurri) in collaboration with Regione Liguria, Provincia di Genova, and Comune di Genova. The Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC)23 at Queen’s University Belfast is a newly established (2004) centre dedicated to the research of music and sound. This interdisciplinary project has united internationally recognised experts in the areas of musical performance and composition, electrical engineering and signal processing, psychology, and computer science. The Centre is established in a purpose-built facility located alongside the engineering departments of Queen's University. The centrepiece of SARC, the Sonic Laboratory, provides a unique space for cutting-edge initiatives in the creation and delivery of music and audio. The Sonic Laboratory's uniqueness is vested in the degree of flexibility it can provide for experiments in sound diffusion, performance, and sound interaction, within a purpose-built, 3 story tall, variable acoustic space. The Sonic Laboratory contains a unique cluster of audience seats that are outfitted with sensors to measure audience and performer interaction. A final example is the Bijloke Music Centre in Ghent. After many years of concert organisation, this centre opened its brand new infrastructure in 2007, including one large concert hall (located in a large and unique building dating from the 13th century), and a number of different smaller halls, of which two rooms are dedicated to multimedia performances (a former library and a former anatomy arena). The activities of Bijloke are no longer merely focused on concert organisation but they include many other activities related to music, like exhibits and multimedia workshops. Like Casa Paganini and SARC, Bijloke Music Centre wants to be operative as an incubator for new contemporary musical trends, for research in interactive multimedia systems and digital music technologies. Bijloke Music Centre has set up an agreement with Ghent University to start up joint activities in multimedia performances and related experiments in the context of the “EmcoMetecca” project. These are just three examples of recent initiatives that show how music research laboratories at universities (both in engineering, musicolog, and music performance) expand their activities in a domain that was up to recent rather separate from academic research. 22 23

http://www.casapaganini.org/ www.sarc.qub.ac.uk


These examples are not meant to given an exhaustive overview of these developments. They just illustrate how music research is currently positioning itself inside one of the core activities of the creative and cultural sector, namely public performance and concerts. As new technologies allow new forms of artistic expression, and as artistic expressions constantly challenge the development of new technologies, it is likely that more institutes for music research will engage themselves in this type of alliances. It shows that the European music research in academia is ready to play a role in this creative and cultural sector and that systematic musicology can be a creative partner in this. Conclusion In this paper, I have argued that systematic musicology should take up its role as moderator at the crossroads of music research. The societal and economic value of the creative and cultural sector calls for a broad research basis grounded in different disciplines that specialize in technology, brain and social research. In that context, research on music is no longer the privilege of systematic musicology. On the one hand, it may appear that music research has been “stolen” from systematic musicology. On the other hand, these non-musicological disciplines bring in new and advanced methodologies that push music research into the frontiers of modern science. I argued that music research in engineering and brain sciences often does not address signification practice and social interaction that makes music important for people. The main problem is the so-called semantic gap problem, that is, the difference between music as encoded musical energy and music as experienced meaning. The methodologies of nonmusicological disciplines often do not allow a straightforward bridge from the physical/physiological domain to the relevant musical domain. This is perhaps due to the fact that these disciplines cannot afford investing too much in the musical domain which, by its nature, necessitates a transdisciplinary approach. A bridge between objective and subjective approaches in music is absolutely needed in a context of creative and cultural applications, such as in music information retrieval and interactive music systems. After all, music covers a broad range of phenomena. Music appeals to all human senses and it involves all faculties of human perception and action. It cannot simply be reduced to approaches that just consider either objective or subjective aspects. Systematic musicology, by tradition, is naturally positioned to transcend the different nonmusicological disciplines and motivate them to keep the focus on music. In the past, it is possible that systematic musicology has not been able to position itself in a sufficient way at the crossroads of music research. The reasons for this are manifold yet they may be have been related to the nature of the paradigm of the cognitive sciences which was, until recent, focused much on disembodied approaches (often influenced by linguistic paradigms) that distracted the focus from what music is really about. I consider the specific task of systematic musicology to develop the theory, the research paradigm and the methodology that is needed to transcend the contributions from different disciplines to music research. When music is put at the centre of music research, then there will always be the need for a discipline that somehow keeps the overview and the perspective. In contrast with previous approaches that were disembodied, I argue in favour of an embodied music research


paradigm (Leman, 2007). In this paradigm, the human body is considered as the natural mediator between the mind and the physical environment. New mediation technologies can then be developed that extend the human body (the natural mediator) into domains where our mind has otherwise no access. These domains involve music and have a strong social component. In short, embodied music cognition and social interaction put music at the core of the research focus and they necessitate a new methodology that can only be developed by adopting a transdisciplinary perspective that integrates an object-centred account with a subject-centred account. While the former is characterized by the focus on audio, structural features, bottom-up data processing, perception oriented modelling and object/productcentred development, the latter is characterized by multi-modality, context-based processing, top-down data processing, action-based modelling, and user-oriented development. The present paper is a plea for making systematic musicology the discipline at the crossroad of the new music research space. The recent initiatives for long term research in small countries as Finland and Belgium show that after all, systematic musicology is a vital research area. The core of systematic musicology has not been stolen. How could it be stolen? What happened was just an expansion of the music research space, something that was needed to establish a broad interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research basis for a sector that has both a high human, a high economic, and a high creative and innovative value. References Avanzini, G., Faienza, C., Minciacchi, C., Lopez, L., Majno, M. (2003). The Neurosciences and Music. New York, N.Y.: New York Academy of Sciences. Avanzini, G. , Lopez, L., Koelsch, S., Majno, M. (2005). The Neurosciences and Music II: From Perception to Performance. New York, N.Y.: New York Academy of Sciences. Berthoz, A. (1997). Le Sens du Mouvement. Paris: Editions O. Jacob. Clayton, M., Sager, R., & Will, U. (2004). In time with the music: The concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology. ESEM CounterPoint, Vol.1, 82 pp. Elschek, O. (1992). Die Musikforschung der Gegenwart, ihre Systematik, Theorie und Entwicklung. WienFöhrenau: Dr. E. Stiglmayr. Fricke, J., (1993), Systematische oder Systemische Musikwissenschaft. Systematische Musikwissen-schaft 1/2, 181-194. Godøy, R. I., & Jørgensen, H. (Eds.)(2001). Musical Imagery. Exton, PA: Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers. Honing, H. (2004). The comeback of systematic musicology: new empiricism and the cognitive revolution, Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 9/3, p. 242. KEA. (2006). The Economy of Culture in Europe. http://ec.europa.eu/culture/eac/ sources_info/studies/ economy_en.html Kusek, D., & Leonhard, G. (2005). The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. Boston: Berklee Press.


Leman, M., & Camurri, A. (2006). Understanding musical expressiveness using interactive multimedia platforms. Musicae Scientiae, 209-233. Leman, M., & Schneider, A. (1997). Origin and nature of cognitive and systematic musicology: An introduction. In M. Leman (Ed.), Music, Gestalt, and Computing: Studies in Cognitive and Systematic Musicology (pp. 13-29). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. Leman, M. (1995). Music and Schema Theory: Cognitive Foundations of Systematic Musicology. Berlin, New York: Springer. Leman, M. (Ed.) (1997). Music, Gestalt, and Computing: Studies in Cognitive and Systematic Musicology. Berlin, New York: Springer. Leman, M. (2005). Musical creativity research. In J. C. Kaufman & J. Baer (Eds.), Creativity Across Domains: Faces of the Muse. (pp. 103-122). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Leman, M. (2007). Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lesaffre, M., De Voogdt, L., Leman, M., Demeyer, H., Martens, J.-P., De Baets, B. (2008). How potential users of music search and retrieval systems describe the semantic quality of music, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59 (5), 1-13. Loy, D. G. (2006). Musimathics: The Mathematical Foundations of Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1987). The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Boston: New Science Library. Moelants, D., Cornelis, O., Leman, M., Gansemans, J., De Caluwe, R., De Tré, G., Matthé, T., Hallez, A. (2007) Problems and opportunities of content-based analysis and description of ethnic music. International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 2, 57-68. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Paiva, R. (2007). Melody Detection in Polyphonic Audio. PhD-thesis, University of Coimbra, Coimbra. Parncutt, R. (2007). Systematic musicology and the history and future of Western musical scholarship. Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, 1(1), pp. 1-32. S2S2 (2007). A Roadmap for Sound and Music Computing (edited by X. Serra, M. Leman, and G. Widmer). Brussels: The S2S2 Consortium. (http://smcnetwork.org/). See also the special issue of Journal of New Music Research, Vol. 36, Issue 3, 2008 Schneider, A. (1993). Systematische Musikwissenschaft: Traditionen, Ansätze, Aufgaben. Systematische Musikwissenschaft 1, 145-180. Tzanetakis, G., Kapur, A., Schloss, W.A., Wright, M. (2007). Computational ethnomusicology. Journal of interdisciplinary music studies. 1 (2). Online Journal http://www.musicstudies.org/ fall2007.html. Zatorre, R. J., & Peretz, I. (2001). The Biological Foundations of Music. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.


Radicale musicologie Sander van Maas Vragen naar de toekomst van de muziekwetenschap is vragen naar de toekomst van een conflict, een breuk, wellicht zelfs een onmogelijkheid. Het is vragen naar de toekomst van de samenkomst van twee grootheden die elkaar niet bij voorbaat aantrekken: muziek en wetenschap. De situatie lijkt niet erg gunstig: de samenkomst speelt zich af in het grensvlak van verschillende media (klank en taal), op de grens van verschillende werkelijkheden (artistieke schijn en empirische realiteit), in het krachtenveld van verschillende regelsystemen (artistieke en wetenschappelijke), in de dynamiek van divergente objectieven (performatieve creatie en constatieve descriptie), etc. De breuk tussen taal en muziek is hierbij wellicht het diepste conflict, of althans het conflict dat de geschiedenis van de muziekwetenschap het meest heeft getekend. Nog steeds oefent deze breuk een destabiliserende kracht uit op de constitutie van de muziekwetenschap. Een teken hiervan is naar mijn ervaring de geheel eigensoortige verlegenheid die de figuur van de musicoloog met zich meedraagt. Ik doel hier niet op de oppervlakkige verlegenheid die ontstaat wanneer het bestaan of de legitimiteit van de discipline in het publieke arena in twijfel wordt getrokken. Dit kan tegenwoordig met een beter pr-beleid worden opgelost. Er is daarnaast evenwel nog een ander soort verlegenheid, die zich in twee richtingen uitstrekt. Ten eerste is er de verlegenheid van de muziekwetenschap ten aanzien van de andere academische disciplines; ten twee is er die ten aanzien van de muziekpraktijk. Deze verlegenheden komen voort uit de dubbele verleiding waaraan de musicologie blootstaat. Deze dubbele verleiding is structureel niet oplosbaar, maar – zo wil ik hier betogen met oog op de toekomst van het vak – kan wel op een andere manier worden beheerst dan nu het geval is. Het gaat naar mijn ervaring om het volgende. Allereerst de verlegenheid ten aanzien van de andere academische disciplines. Ik bedoel hiermee de andere geesteswetenschappen, waar de musicologie – althans in de Amsterdamse situatie, die ik als vooruitstrevend en in die zin als maatgevend beschouw – deel van uit maakt.1 Binnen die interdisciplinaire context toont de musicologie zich als een ‘trage’ discipline. Een recent verschenen bundel over een deel van de vooroorlogse – en politiek gevoelige – geschiedenis van deze traagheid spreekt over een 1 Enige jaren geleden is aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam een nieuwe Faculteit Geesteswetenschappen opgericht, die de oude faculteiten Letteren, Wijsbegeerte en Theologie in zich op nam. Met deze institutionele verandering ging een wending gepaard naar interdisciplinaire vormen van onderwijs en onderzoek. De Faculteit is daarnaast in toenemende mate actief in het tot stand brengen van samenwerkingsverbanden met het hoger onderwijs in de kunsten.


‘verspätete Disziplin’.2 Dat betreft niet alleen het ontstaan van de discipline in de negentiende en het begin van de twintigste eeuw, maar ook de wijze waarop zij zich in het recente verleden heeft ontwikkeld. Het heeft jaren geduurd voordat de theoretische en methodologische vernieuwingen die elders in de geesteswetenschappen plaatsvonden, en die mede vorm kregen door middel van een reflectie op muziek (denk bijvoorbeeld aan het werk van Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Derrida, Deleuze), doordrongen tot de musicologie. Dat doordringen is inmiddels gebeurd – we zijn allen vertrouwd met het bestaan van een new musicology – maar de invloed van deze vernieuwingen, die elders zelfs tot het ontstaan van complete nieuwe discoursen en disciplines heeft geleid, is zeer beperkt gebleven. Met name in de historische muziekwetenschap lijkt het wel alsof men een en ander voor kennisgeving heeft aangenomen, om weer over te kunnen gaan tot de orde van de dag. Dat wil zeggen, muziekwetenschap te bedrijven binnen de contouren van de vertrouwde Humboldtiaanse opvatting van wat het domein en de taak is van de wetenschap, en van de dynamiek (lees: afgeschermde rust) van de beoefening daarvan.3 Maar ook buiten de historische muziekwetenschap is de genoemde wending naar een nieuw denken over geesteswetenschappelijk onderzoek, ondanks goede wil van de kant van musicologen, maar ten dele begrepen. De new musicology – die onlangs nog een upgrade ontving uit handen van Kevin Korsyn – komt niet veel verder dan het toepassen van ideeën van elders op een muzikale analysepraktijk die volstrekt conventioneel blijft.4 Dit probleem van het niet-doordringen van reflectie in de categorieën en praktijken van de analyse is al zichtbaar bij Adorno, en sindsdien niet of nauwelijks opgelost. De legitimerende referentie aan ‘muziek’ of ‘de muziek zelf’ blijft in het werk van al dezen gevangen in een referentiële en objectiverende logica die door de metafysicakritiek reeds lang geleden is gedeconstrueerd.5 Deze merkwaardige wijze van verwerking van belangrijke geesteswetenschappelijke inzichten wijst naar mijn idee op de complexe onderlaag waar de musicologie op rust. Tot een omvattende 2 Anselm Gerhard (ed.), Musikwissenschaft – eine verspätete Disziplin? Die akademische Musikforschung zwischen Fortschrittsglauben und Modernitätsverweigerung, Metzger Verlag, Stuttgart-Weimar 2000, pp. 1-30, p. 14 e.v. 3 Het is wat dit laatste betreft veelzeggend dat het huidige debat over de toekomst van muziekwetenschap wordt gepubliceerd niet in het enige musicologische vakblad dat Nederland rijk is, maar in het Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie, dat tien jaar geleden voortkwam uit kringen rond het muziekvakonderwijs. 4 Kevin Korsyn, Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Music Research. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003. 5 Zie wat betreft het hardnekkige probleem van de analyse in de huidige tijd Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, ‘Adorno und die musikalische Analyse’, in: Richard Klein en Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (eds.), Mit den Ohren denken: Adornos Philosophie der Musik, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1998, pp. 240-47, en de daarin genoemde teksten van Adorno zelf.


analyse van deze onderlaag acht ik mijzelf niet in staat, dus laat ik volstaan met twee opmerkingen. Ten eerste: in tegenstelling tot veel andere disciplines in de geesteswetenschappen, is de musicologie in hoge mate praktisch gericht. Muziek maken – en vooral ook zelf muziek maken – staat er welhaast in hoger aanzien dan denken en spreken over muziek. Het betreft hier een vooroordeel dat ook buiten de musicologie kan worden gevonden, bijvoorbeeld wanneer steevast op de mededeling dat je musicoloog bent, de vraag volgt of je ‘zelf ook iets speelt’. Een dergelijke vraag zou je een kunsthistoricus niet gauw stellen. De hierin besloten liggende aarzeling met betrekking tot het statuut van de musicologie, is iets dat leken en musicologen heimelijk delen. Het is welhaast karakteristiek voor de musicologie; een charmante afwijking, maar ook een die verdere methodologische en theoretische ontwikkeling belemmert. De veel voorkomende praktische gerichtheid van musicologen impliceert onwillekeurig een uitspraak over de haalbaarheid en het belang van theoretische reflectie op muziek. Natuurlijk, het gaat hier niet om wetmatigheden, maar om tendensen. Echter wel om tendensen die het vermogen van de musicologie om haar rol temidden van de overige geesteswetenschappelijke disciplines te vervullen – een rol die zij naar mijn mening verplicht is te vervullen – ernstig vermindert. Het tonen, of zelf praktiseren, van de zaak is tenslotte iets anders dan het denken en schrijven erover – een verschil dat vaak wordt bestreden door te wijzen op ‘ervaringskennis’. Echter, ook die zal zich theoretisch moeten legitimeren. Dit sluit aan bij mijn de tweede opmerking. De ‘resistance to theory’ die kenmerkend is voor de musicologie lijkt soms samen te hangen met een merkwaardige hoogmoed. Zoals filosoof Albert van der Schoot al eens opperde, kan de traagheid van de musicologie begrepen worden als een voordeel. Hij verwees daarbij naar de Uil van Minerva uit Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, die pas uitvliegt in de schemering.6 Maar in tegenstelling tot de filosofie waar deze uil op doelt, is de musicologie er niet in geslaagd om haar systematische vertraging om te zetten in een strategisch voordeel. De recente hausse in onderzoek naar geluid en muziek in de geesteswetenschappen bewijst andermaal dat de musicologie juist door haar zelfgenoegzaamheid belangrijke taken laat liggen. Het is op dit moment niet de musicologie die waar het muziek en auditieve cultuur betreft de agenda bepaalt; die taak wordt waargenomen door onderzoekers met geheel andere achtergronden. Een actueel voorbeeld hiervan is de organisatie van een grote internationale conferentie door promovendi van de onderzoeksschool ASCA, die onderzoekers bijeen zal brengen om over auditieve cultuur te spreken – een onderzoeksgebied dat sinds enige jaren sterk groeit. Dit initiatief ging niet uit van de

6 Cf. G.W.F. Hegel, “Vorrede”, in Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1986.


musicologie, hoewel muziek een belangrijk onderdeel vormt van deze conferentie.7 Maar deze conferentie zal wel zeker theoretische instrumenten opleveren die de musicologie zich vervolgens weer op haar eigen, trage wijze, en naar verwachting slechts gedeeltelijk, eigen zal maken. Te weinig, te laat – het is de prijs die je betaalt voor de meestal impliciet gelaten opvatting dat je een actueel en kritisch debat in gezamenlijkheid met de andere geesteswetenschappen op de een of andere manier niet echt nodig hebt. Je speelt toch fluit (ja, je bespeelt hem zelf)? En die theorieën en concepten, ach, die ‘gaan toch niet echt over muziek’? Ziedaar de wijze waarop de musicologie als geesteswetenschappelijk discipline haar plichten verzuimt. Hier valt echter veel aan te doen. De musicologie lijdt aan een theoretisch handelstekort: het importeert meer concepten, methoden en theoretische perspectieven dan dat het deze zelf ontwikkelt. En wat het ontwikkelt, is van zodanige aard dat het niet bruikbaar is buiten het gebied van muziekonderzoek sensu stricto. Er is daardoor nauwelijks sprake van export, hetgeen de dialoog – die een zekere symmetrie tussen de partijen vooronderstelt – binnen de geesteswetenschappen belemmert. Bij de oplossing van dit tekort speelt de genoemde problematiek van de muziekanalyse een belangrijke rol. Alleen via een reflectief geïnformeerde analyse kan de musicologie een originele bijdrage leveren aan het geesteswetenschappelijk debat. De vorm van een dergelijke nieuwe analyse dient de zorg te zijn van een toekomstige – zoals Adorno het uitdrukt – “bessere Musikwissenschaft”.8 Daarbij hoort onder meer het onderzoek dat op dit moment op verschillende plaatsen wordt verricht met het oog op de ontwikkeling van digitale instrumenten voor ‘symbolische’ muziekanalyse. Deze zullen het mogelijk maken ook repertoires – en met name uitvoeringen – die niet worden genoteerd, te ontsluiten, en zo bij te laten dragen aan de ontwikkeling van ‘exporteerbare’ muziekgerelateerde concepten.9 Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf noemt nog een aantal andere punten die van belang zijn voor een ‘betere’ musicologie: de verbinding van historische problemen met systematischtheoretische vragen; de bemoeienis van de musicologie met artistieke vraagstukken en stellingnamen; het engagement met de actuele muzikale (compositie-) praktijk; de

7 Ik steek hier de hand in eigen boezem; we adviseren inmiddels de organisatoren inzake het muzikale aspect van de conferentie. 8 Adorno doet een schetsmatig voorstel voor een nieuwe vorm van analyse aan het slot van zijn late essay “Zum Problem der musikalischen Analyse”, in Frankfurter Adorno Blätter 7 (2001), pp. 73-89. 9 In die zin ondersteun ik van harte het betoog van Henkjan Honing zoals dit zal worden gepubliceerd in het Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie (november 2004). Het genoemde onderzoek wordt onder meer uitgevoerd bij Ircam onder leiding van Gérard Assayag.


geschiedtheoretische reflectie op de stand van zaken in de muziek.10 Deze punten zijn elk niet zonder haken of ogen, maar geven niettemin een schot in de richting waarin het met de musicologie zou moeten gaan. Kom ik nu – in kort bestek, vanwege de nauwe verwevenheid van beide – toe aan de tweede verlegenheid waarmee de musicologie kampt. Deze verlegenheid betreft de muziekpraktijk, vaak aangeduid als ‘de muziekwereld’. Laten we wel zijn: de musicologie speelt in de hedendaagse muziekwereld hoegenaamd geen rol. Het beeld dat in de muziekwereld bestaat van de musicoloog is die van een zeer beperkte figuur: iemand die mogelijk met een opmerkelijke archiefvondst de solist een goede beurt kan bezorgen; iemand wellicht die ingehuurd kan worden voor het schrijven van een programmatoelichting; iemand die beslist wat ‘research’ kan doen voor een muzikaal programma; ja, iemand die een aardig stukje kan schrijven voor op de radio of in de krant. De doorsneerol van de musicologie sluit ironisch genoeg in het geheel niet aan bij het heimelijke verlangen van menig musicoloog om vooral om zijn praktische en empirische kennis onder musici te worden gewaardeerd. Schematisch gesteld: de middeleeuwse musicus valt tegenwoordig op zijn knieën voor de cantor, en die laatste kent maar al te goed zijn manieren om deze situatie in zijn voordeel uit te spelen. We hebben in toenemende mate te maken met de musicologie als dienstverlenende instantie. Dat het anders kan, dat de musicologie ook een richtinggevende rol kan vervullen, is hierboven reeds ter sprake gekomen. Het gaat steeds om het soort vragen dat de musicologie zichzelf en de muziek stelt. De musicologie kan zich niet alleen ‘nuttig maken’ door zich aan te sluiten bij het discours, de muzikale waarden en representatievormen die in de muziekpraktijk maatgevend zijn. Zij kan zich veel beter inzetten om lateraal of diagonaal te denken, en concepten te ontwikkelen die voor de praktijk schijnbaar niet van belang zijn. Juist in het zoeken van de confrontatie kan de musicologie tot resultaten komen die zowel de agenda zetten voor het geesteswetenschappelijk onderzoek als tegelijkertijd voedsel te geven aan de muzikale verbeelding. Mahnkopf wees in zijn vijf punten al op het belang van de reflectie op de actualiteit in de muziek. Daarbij aansluitend stelt hij terecht de vraag, “[w]elcher Philosoph, welcher Wissenschaftler besucht, wie einst Adorno, etwa die Darmstädter Ferienkurse und reagiert darauf unmittelbar publizistisch?”11 Een dergelijk onbeschroomd intellecteel engagement met de actuele praktijk (wat iets anders is dan de hierboven genoemde praktische gerichtheid) is van grote betekenis, en niet alleen voor het zelfbewustzijn van de musicologie.12 Al met al bestaat de 10 Mahnkopf, “Adorno und die musikalische Analyse”. 11 Ibidem, p. 243 n. 7. 12 Dit convergeert in zekere mate – evenwel zonder de nadruk te verlichten op de eigen, intellectueelrichtinggevende taak van de musicologie – met ARTI, de onderzoeksgroep van het lectoraat “Kunsttheorie &


uitdaging van deze discipline in het vinden van een omgang met de dubbele verleiding waaraan zij blootstaat: enerzijds de verleiding van de theoretische reflectie met de daarmee gepaard gaande intellectuele en creatieve vrijheid; anderzijds de verleiding van de onmiddellijke, passionerende omgang met muziek. Wat de toekomst betreft verbeeld ik mij een musicologie die deze dubbele verleiding in zijn systematiek en strategie radicaliseert, en de figuur zelf van deze double bind tot zijn embleem maakt. De aanwijzingen hiervoor reeds in het recente verleden te vinden; de taak is om dit - allereerst door aanpassing van de opleidingen - daadwerkelijk te realiseren. Het idee voelt wellicht nog wat onwennig, maar voorwaar ik zeg u: de toekomst is aan de musicoloog als intellectueel.

onderzoek” aan de Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, en soortgelijke projecten elders, zoals het VlaamsNederlandse docARTES.



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The Location of Music: Towards a Hybrid Musicology1 wim van der meer Introduction With the title of his book The Location of Culture (1994), Homi Bhabha implicitly asks the question ‘where is culture?’ It would be naive to expect a straightforward answer, but perhaps the most salient issue that Bhabha brings up in his final chapter is the very spatialization of culture. It is in the construction ‘taking place’2 that the spatial way we think about culture is revealed. Culture is performed, it exists in time, but we localize it in space. For a musicologist the matter is perhaps simpler, or at least more restricted, but the premises are the same. Where do we find music? Is it (in) the printed score? Is it (in) the recorded LP or CD? Obviously, these are reifications with very limited scope. Yet, both western classical musicologists and ethnomusicologists have largely drawn on these reifications. And when they do not, they often revert to essentialism. The notion that ‘historical musicology is the study of dead composers’ seems more and more untenable. Where is Bach’s music located? Certainly not in scores or CDs. That is not surprising in a culture where a Research Guide to Methodology states that ‘music itself, that is the musical score [sic], is the most important primary source material for the musicologist’.3 Bach’s music is (and has been) located in the musicians that play his music, in 1

the audiences that listen to his music, in the composers that have been influenced by his music. We are fortunate to possess extensive documentation that helps us to form an idea about the construction of Bach’s musical identity – what went into it, what came out. But at the same time we must be very careful in dealing with the details of this documentation. It is very easy to fall into the traps of reification, construction, and essentialism. Cook sums it up very succinctly when he talks about producing authoritative editions of composers’ music: ‘There are two difficulties with this project: first, that it is hard, and second that it is impossible.’4

The Translatability of Music The study of written scores has certain similarities to the study of literature, or perhaps more of poetry or drama, because literature is written to be read, while music, poetry and drama are written to be performed. However, this mainly concerns historical and critical approaches, while the ‘linguistics’ of music is found in systematic musicology or music theory. Comparative musicology has more in common methodologically with comparative linguistics, as it has been mostly directed to the systematic aspects of music. A branch of comparative musicology that would investigate

This paper was presented at the monthly colloquium on musicology at the University of Amsterdam, on November 11, 2004, with the title ‘The Time, Place and Culture of Music’ – a title indirectly alluding to the eminent study (1973) of the former director of the department, Frank Harrison. At the same meeting, Rokus de Groot delivered a paper entitled ‘De toekomst van de muziekwetenschappen: ontwikkeling van polyfonie’, which is also published in this issue. Earlier contributions to the colloquium series, by Sander van Maas (‘Radicale Musicologie’) and Henkjan Honing (‘The Comeback of Systematic Musicology: New Empiricism and the Cognitive Revolution’), appeared in Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 9/3 (2004).

2

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York 1994.

3

James Pruett and Thomas P. Slavens, Research Guide to Musicology. Chicago 1985.

4

Nicholas Cook, Music, A Very Short Introduction, Oxford 1998, p. 83 tijdschrift voor muziektheorie, jaargang 10, nummer 1 (2005)


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discussie - the location of music: towards a hybrid musicology

musical content across cultures, as does comparative literary science, is very difficult to imagine. This leads to the very important question whether music can at all be translated. Of course, this question does also hold true for language; and when we talk about translation we must think of translation as a form of negotiating understanding. As Bhabha puts it: ‘(...) the theoretical recognition of the splitspace of enunciation may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exotism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is the ‘inter’ – the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space – that carries the burden of the meaning of culture. (...) And by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge 5 as the others of our selves.’

At all times ‘culture as a strategy of survival is both transnational and translational’.6 Transnational as a direct consequence of migrations, translational because of the necessity of coming to terms with the complex issue of cultural signification as a result of transnationality. Again, citing Walter Benjamin (‘Translation passes through continua of transformation, not abstract ideas of identity and similarity’), Bhabha stresses the ‘performative nature of cultural communication’.7 Apparently, translating music makes less sense than translating language. The many modalities that musical ‘translation’ takes on may be the best illustration of its questionable effectiveness. In the nineteenth century Indian ragas were transformed into western pieces for harpsichord: ‘In Hindustani Airs various styles of North Indian vocal music current in the eighteenth cen5

Bhabha, The Location of Culture, pp. 38-39.

6

Ibidem, p. 172.

7

Ibidem, pp. 212, 228.

8

tury (...) are represented and re-arranged in staff notation. Through this process it can be seen how the logic and structure of one musical system is transformed and submerged by the demands of another. Here tala becomes time signature, and modality is replaced by harmony. Although it is easy to dismiss Hindustani Airs as mere distortions of authentic Indian musical forms, they are nevertheless of great value in charting the history of Western attitudes to Indian music, as they reveal the nature of the musical and cultural intercourse that took place between Indians and Europeans; the kind of musical filter through which Indian music 8 passed on its way to the West.’

Any ‘transcription’ of ‘other’ music can be considered a form of translation, as the transcriber is adapting the other music through the black box of his auditive system, that has been conditioned by the musical system of his own culture. We may go a step further, for all those ‘travellers’ that have listened to ‘other’ music were busy translating music. Most of them came to the conclusion that what they heard should be classified as a regular ruckus, which testifies to the idea that musical translation is not self-evident. It also underlines the performative nature of listening, for if listening would be entirely passive it could not elicit such reactions. Other aspects of processing ‘other’ music in the mind as a form of translation include the highly elaborate systems of western classical composers in the twentieth century, the inclusion of Indian sounds in western film and pop music, the ‘world beat’ and ‘India/Jazz’ ensembles like Shakti, the huge body of Indian film music etc., etc. However, hybridization through translation is a process that can be found on many other levels, sometimes crossing the border of the species (as in Mozart’s ‘starling’ or in certain forms of Tuva music), sometimes crossing the border of class

Gerry Farrell, ‘Indian Music and the West, A Historical Overview’, in: J. Bor (ed.) Anthology of Indian Music History, Delhi, forthcoming.

58



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(how much of art music is translated folk music?) and always crossing the border of time (Gould playing Bach), for all music depends on a tradition in which alterity manifests itself as an ongoing process. As Lyotard says: ‘Tradition is that which concerns time, not content. Whereas what the West wants from autonomy, invention, novelty, self-determination, is the opposite – to forget time and to preserve, and accumulate contents. To turn them into what we call history and to think that it progresses because it accumulates. On the contrary, in the case of popular traditions (...) nothing gets accumulated, that is the narratives must be repeated all the time because they are forgotten all the 9 time.’

It is the role of critical musicology to explore the dialectic of tradition versus change. The musician or composer has other things on his mind, as he is basically an opportunist who relies on tradition and innovation at the same time to establish his identity and in the process proclaim his superiority. ‘My’ innovations are necessary within the tradition; ‘other’ innovations violate the very fundaments of the tradition. Twentieth-century western attitudes to the opposites of tradition and change are less evident, as there is, both in popular and classical music, a tendency to fully synthesize these opposites, or, in other words, to take the legacy of tradition for granted while giving full primacy to innovation (of which the ‘New!’ syndrome is also an outcome). This may partly be ascribed to a capitalist concern with copyrights, which not only prohibits imitation and borrowing, but also cripples the power of tradition to act as a selective filter. It may be, however, that the only real change this entails is that musicians have to worry more about lawyers than about critics. The musicologist, as Seeger had pointed out so clearly, is himself a translator of music. Musicology in his view is largely about rendering music through language.10 The Dutch word ‘vertalen’ (‘rendering in language’) cap9

tures this idea better than the English equivalent ‘to translate’.

Reification and Essentialization The history of Indian culture, and with it the history of Indian music, is extremely rich. At least four major waves of peoples from distinct language groups are recognized, the AustroAsiatic, the Dravidian, the Sino-Tibetan and the Indo-Aryan. Interaction between these peoples has led to the emerging of a complex society and culture. To some extent, remnants of this (pre-)history survive in the many musical traditions of India – especially the tribal and folk musics. The mingling of these peoples has also led to the rise of urban cultures with a highly developed art music. In the past millennia this art music has been further influenced by incursions of the Greeks, the Turks, the Mongolians, and the English, amongst others. The history of Brazilian culture, and with it the history of Brazilian music, is quite different. Until the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500 it was inhabited by small bands of tribal Amerindians. The impact of these tribals in the making of Brazilian culture since ‘the discovery’ has been limited. On the contrary, the Portuguese brought in massive numbers of slaves from Africa, whose contribution to Brazilian culture – and in particular to Brazilian music – has been substantial. The differences between India and Brazil are obvious, and too numerous to even start discussing. It would be acceptable to say that any similarity is pure coincidence. Or would it? The great merit of the postcolonial methodology proposed by Homi Bhabha is that it challenges the reification and essentialization of identities. In the traditional model of hybridization you have a horse and an ass, and when you hybridize them you get a mule. Horses and asses each have their qualities, but mules are inferior because they cannot reproduce. This image of the evils of miscegenation, so eloquently extolled by De Gobineau, has

Cited in Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 58.

10 Charles Seeger, Studies in Musicology 1935-1975, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1977, pp. 102ff. 59



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been emotionally rejected by many currents of twentieth -century thought.

Cavalli-Sforza’s Method as a Model of Hybridity However, it is only since the revolutionary work of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza that we have a scientific basis for the understanding of human genetics and the nature of race, more than a century after De Gobineau.11 For the purpose of this essay I will summarize Cavalli-Sforza’s most important points. 1) The entire current human population descends from a single ancestor who lived in Eastern Africa some 100,000 years back, often referred to as ‘mitochondrial Eve’.12 2) There is no such thing as race. Of course, at any particular level we can (arbitrarily) define races, so as to distinguish several, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of races. It is merely a matter of enumerating certain genetic characteristics. It must however be stressed that any such categorizing of the human population into separate racial groups is arbitrary. In other words, from the single origin of mankind there has been a differentiation of genetic constitutions, but there has always been an infinite chain of rehybridization that maintained the genetic pool in a constant state of flux. Evidently, strategies of exogamy played an important role in this rehybridization.13 I have dwelled on Cavalli-Sforza’s work for two reasons. First, because it is the perfect answer to reification of (racial) identities. Second, because it provides us with a model for the study of change. I suggest that there is a very strong similarity between Bhabha’s theory of culture and Cavalli-Sforza’s theory of genetics.

In passing it should be pointed out that the ‘post-colonial’ localization of Bhabha’s thinking might appear to limit its applicability. It could be suggested that its relevance is limited to the countries that became decolonized in the twentieth century. However, the question of postcolonial methodology is moot, because the universal applicability of Bhabha’s theory of hybridization can easily be demonstrated. We can indeed link the histories of India and Brazil – or, for that matter, the histories of all cultures –, because we can apply the methodology of studying them from the angle of processes of hybridization.

Adler and Seeger Adler (1885) is often mentioned as the first scholar to distinguish certain ‘orientations’ in musicology, thereby establishing himself as the father of the academic field in the broad sense.14 This remains curious, because there is so much musicology before him. In fact, beginnings of musicological writing can probably be dated to about 2600 B.C.15 Oral traditions of musicology may go back considerably further. Kerman, writing a hundred years later than Adler, starts out his discussion about musicology with a common-sense and intelligent definition of the field: ‘thinking about, research into, and knowledge of all possible aspects of music’.16 Such a definition will only leave us with the minor issue of what we call music. For Kerman himself, this is not a problem – to him, music is ‘the art music of the Western tradition’17 and musicology means the study of that music. As we now enter the third millennium, and have witnessed almost five millennia of musicologi-

11 Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages, Berkeley and Los Angeles 2000. Luigi Luca CavalliSforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes, Princeton 1994. 12 The markers that enabled Cavalli-Sforza to establish this theory are located in the mitochondrial DNA. 13 Robin Fox, Encounter with Anthropology, Harmondsworth 1973. 14 Guido Adler, ‘Unfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft,’ Vierteljahrschrift für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1885), pp. 5-20. 15 Babylonian tablets describing different types of instruments, strings and (later) musical scales. 16 Joseph Kerman, Contemplating Music, Challenges to Musicology, Cambridge, Mass., 1985, p. 11. 17 Ibidem, p. 19. 60



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cal endeavour, such a reductionist attitude seems reactionary and ethnocentric. While reappropriating the term musicology to the western art tradition Kerman relegates the study of music in the broader sense to the discipline of ethnomusicology. However, he would have to take two hurdles here. The first is Charles Seeger; the second the question of finding a theoretical basis for isolating western art music. Neither of these hurdles is really taken by Kerman. He simply dismisses Seeger as a ‘systematic musicologist who also was the father of modern ethnomusicology’ and goes on to equate ethnomusicology to an ideology of middle-class antagonism against middleclass culture.18 Kerman is very ambiguous about ethnomusicology. On the one hand, he is eager to shift any musicological endeavour that does not deal with western art music on to the ethnomusicologists’ turf, on the other, he strongly resents the ethnomusicologists’ attempt to claim the study of all music as their domain.19 The logical and traditional way of organizing an academic discipline is to use the basic term as the encompassing denomination, and to designate subdisciplines by adding adjectives, prefixes or suffixes. Musicology, as defined by Kerman, seems to be the only field in academia that still uses a reverse classification: the term ‘musicology’ refers to the study of a highly specific aspect of music, whereas that of music in the broadest sense is called ‘ethnomusicology’. After the work of Adler and Seeger such a view is regressive. Rather, we should attempt to understand the many different types of musicologies and the way in which they interact. The third domain Kerman defines (even more casually than ethnomusicology) is music theory. On p. 14 he writes: ‘Music theorists are the hardest to generalize about. Some of them lean in the direction of philosophy, and some write (...) in a self-generated language as highly spe-

cialized as that of symbolic logic’. On the next page, however, he out of the blue defines the area as the study of western art music after 1900!

A Typology of Musicologies It is not my intention to redefine the field and subdisciplines of musicology – the discussions of Adler and Seeger seem quite sufficient. However, very few efforts have been made to understand the way in which different specific musicologies relate to each other and to the larger field to which they belong. I shall try to approach this field in the broadest way: thinking about music, or even through music. In the following typology of musicological behaviours, I attempt to use logical categories rather than customary ‘departments’.

Realms • Endomusicology (historical / critical / theory of) I propose the distinction between ‘endo-’ and ‘exo-’ to refer to a musicology that is historically grown as a pendant to a specific music in a specific culture. Most musicologies are in origin endomusicologies. When musicians start thinking, theorizing, and writing about their own music, they become endomusicologists. We must assume this is how early musicology started, and it still is an important aspect of most musicologies. What Kerman likes to call ‘musicology’ I would call the endomusicology of western art music. Similarly, the Indian Sangit shastra (science of music), is the endomusicology of Indian art music. Many endomusicologies are oral traditions, which sometimes can be extremely complex, as was demonstrated by Menezes Bastos for the Kamayurá Indians of the upper Xingu in Brazil.20

18 Ibidem, pp. 13, 159. 19 Ibidem, p. 13. 20 Rafael José de Menezes Bastos, A musicológica Kamayurá, Para uma antropologia da comunicação no Alto Xingu, 2a ed., Florianópolis 1999. 61



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• Exomusicology (comparative / ethno / cultural) When a person from one culture looks at the music from another culture using the musicological categories and views from his own culture, we may call this ‘exomusicology’. This avoids the confusion about ethnomusicologists using ‘-emic’ and ‘-etic’ perspectives. It would be a mistake to think that looking at ‘other’ music is a new thing, or that comparative musicologists and ethnomusicologists are the only representatives of this endeavour. When the Vedic people were writing about the music of the (then autochthonous) inhabitants of India they were already doing some exomusicology.21 In the thirteenth century an anonymous Persian author wrote a treatise about Indian music, the Gunyat ul Munya. Many travellers commented about music they encountered, and quite a few of them had at least some musical knowledge.22 It is most common for exomusicologists to look down on the music of the ‘other’. Even in recent times such great musical thinkers as Boulez and Berlioz have pronounced themselves in quite denigrating terms about the music of India. In fact many ethnomusicologists (being originally trained in western art music and its endomusicology) have condescending attitudes towards ‘other’ music, as has been pointed out so eloquently by Alain Daniélou.23 • Metamusicology (systematic / empirical / theory of) Perhaps a musicology that attempts to find universals in different musical traditions, or that negotiates a common ground for translating musical concepts and events between cultures can be referred to as ‘metamusicology’. The creation of the cents system for referring to pitches falls in this category. Comparative musicology in general could have a metamusicological character, but unfortunately it

remained very much an exomusicological endeavour, using concepts and tools from western musicology and adapting them (slightly) to enable the ‘objective’ study of ‘other’ music. The cultural relativism that gave ethnomusicology such a boost has dealt a deathblow to comparative musicology, and perhaps this was necessary to make a fresh start. If comparative musicology wants to be a metamusicology (or perhaps a hybrid musicology) it will have to negotiate the concepts of different musical cultures on an equal footing. • Paramusicology (musico-logics / musicosophy) Thinking about music, thinking in music, thinking through music: are they still part of musicology? When I am singing, I am thinking music. But even when I am not singing, I may still be thinking music. We may think in terms of notes (note names) or we may have graphical images (scores) in our minds, and we may imagine the sound with it. These are all musical ways of thinking about music. In fact, music can be seen as a discourse about itself. Music has also been a way of thinking about the world. Pythagoras’ music of the spheres and the Indian concept of Nadabrahman (the ultimate sound) or Vac (the original speech-sound) are examples of musical cosmologies. Wertheim used the idea of counterpoint to describe certain social processes.24 The Kamayurá mentioned earlier also use their complex theory of music to ‘understand’ the world and to regulate their social and cultural life.25

Approaches • Orthomusicology (autonomy of music) Many musicologists consider music an autonomous and objective phenomenon that one can study in much the same way as a geologist studies mountains. This has been a very

21 Debiprasad Chattopadyaya, Lokayata, New Delhi 1959; G.U. Thite, Music in the Vedas, Delhi 1997. 22 Frank Harrison, Time, Place and Music, Amsterdam 1973. 23 Alain Daniélou, The Situation of Music and Musicians in Countries of the Orient, Florence 1971. 24 W.F. Wertheim, Evolution and revolution: The rising waves of emancipation, Harmondsworth 1974, pp. 113-116. 25 Menezes Bastos, A musicológica Kamayurá. 62



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successful way of working, whether it concerns historical musicology (the study of historical documents, including scores) or systematic musicology (the study of sound, acoustically or cognitively). One reason why this has worked so well is that music and language are totally different systems of communication within the same realm of sound – which at the same time is the problem of musicology.26 • Ecomusicology The prefix ‘eco-’ can refer to the ecology of music – its embedding in culture and society – but also more specifically to the economics of music. Ecomusicology includes the ‘second’ meaning of ethnomusicology, i.e. ‘music in context’. When Nicholas Cook said ‘we are all ethnomusicologists now’, he perhaps referred to the idea that music simply is not autonomous.27 This may be considered a contribution of ethnomusicology, which has become commonly accepted throughout the academic community. Although we may now be more aware of the contextuality of music than ever, this does not mean that the study of scores and recordings has come to a grinding halt. In fact, it is a common error to think that ‘ortho-’ and ‘eco-’views are mutually exclusive. This has possibly resulted from the antagonism between western musicologists and ethnomusicologists. Ideally, they should work together, otherwise neither one will make much sense! • Biomusicology ‘Biomusicology’ constitutes a rather new approach to music. It was initiated by Nils L. Wallin – although Charles Darwin had already discussed the possible role of music in evolution extensively.28 Biomusicology, which

includes the neurological aspects of music, may help to understand certain aspects of music that have eluded us so far, and that cross over into psychology of music. Snyder’s Music and Memory is perhaps a good example of a new approach to analyzing music that could be linked to biomedical questions.29 The other direction of biomusicology – the early evolution of music – includes paleomusicology, a field that has generated few, but extremely interesting data.

Against Ethnomusicology Although I am still called an ethnomusicologist by many students and colleagues, it seems to me that an independent discipline of ethnomusicology has no place in the third millennium. Seeger has always maintained that ethnomusicology simply is musicology.30 The very idea of ethnomusicology is a remnant of colonialism. If we take Kerman’s definition, it is the study of non-western music. Dividing the world of music into a western and a non-western sphere seems to be a distinctly colonial legacy. Should an Indian musicologist who specializes in the study of western music call himself an ethnomusicologist? Still, some western musicologists try to defend the ‘status aparte’ of western art music. Of course, if the argument is that this is their music we can accept that. And of course a scholar of French literature will study French literature, but will he suggest that literary studies only bear relevance to French literature? Kerman also puts western folk and popular music in the domain of ethnomusicology. And many ethnomusicologists apparently devour this other leftover of Kerman’s musicology. A common mistake (which Kerman also makes)

26 Seeger, Studies in Musicology, pp. 16ff. 27 Nicholas Cook, ‘We Are All Ethnomusicologists Now’, paper delivered at the one-day conference ‘The New (Ethno)Musicologies’, British Forum for Ethnomusicology and Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London, 17 November 2001. 28 Nils L. Wallin, Biomusicology: Neurophysiological, Neuropsychological, and Evolutionary Perspectives on the Origins and Purposes of Music, New York 1991. 29 Bob Snyder, Music and Memory, An Introduction, Cambridge, Mass., 2000. 30 Seeger, Studies in Musicology, pp. 115-116. 63



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is to think that ethnomusicologists have taken much interest in the art musics of Asia. This is rarely the case. Most western specialists of those musics come from the Orientalist tradition: Van Gulik, Bake, Te Nijenhuis, Bor, Van der Meer, Schimmelpenninck, De Bruine, to mention just a few in the Netherlands. Only Kunst and his disciples are exceptions to this rule. In fact, as Daniélou points out very clearly, ethnomusicologists have been so concerned with music in culture that they have tended to forget about music as art.31 Certainly, the understanding that music is not isolated, that it is an integral part of culture – that it is culture indeed – is a contribution of ethnomusicologists like Merriam and Blacking. However, I would prefer to paraphrase Cook by saying ‘we are all musicologists now’. Finally, I would like to point out the limiting and misleading character of the prefix ‘ethno’. As it refers to ethnicity, it is too limiting, because many musics are not linked to ethnicities. And at the same time it is misleading, because ethnicities may have several, or even many musics. Moreover, the very idea of ‘ethnic music’ seems colonialist to me.

The Question of Identity: Process and Construction In La Revue Musicale of November 1929 Mario Pedrosa writes about Villa-Lobos: ‘C’est-à-dire que si on ne tient pas compte du Brésil, on ne peut pas comprendre Villa-Lobos’.32 VillaLobos was, according to Pedrosa, fully aware of the nature of his country: wild, sensuous, and confused. Pedrosa knows how to address the taste for exoticism of the Parisian audiences and suggests that Villa-Lobos music represents: ‘Les danses et rondes populaires sous les palmiers et les étoiles des plages du Nord-Est, le batouque du “catêrêtê” à l’orée des forêts, les

“macumbas” et sorcelleries de nègres à la limite des villes, les “serestas” et “chôros” dans les villes, les traditions et les trouvailles du carnaval 33 dans les capitales, etc. (...)’

Pedrosa sees the predominance of rhythm in the oeuvre of Villa-Lobos as the typical element, the concrete reflection of the Brazilian race. The Brazilian is close to nature; spoken language and music are closely related. Popular musicians cannot read and recite their music, ‘comme les Grecs’, according to the laws of language. Pedrosa predicts a differentiation in the development of language and music. Especially the written language will lose its power and its role will be taken over by music. According to Pedrosa everyone is aware of the ‘rôle capital de la musique dans la formation de notre culture nationale et dans l’épanouissement spirituel de l’âme collective’.34 This example of constructing and reifying the identity of a composer is based on an unpublished MA-paper by Jochem Valkenburg. In his conclusion Valkenburg states: ‘Villa-Lobos’ identity as a composer (...) is based on three issues, Brazil, guitaricity and Bach (...) In his use of Bachian as well as folkloristic elements Villa-Lobos had to use certain abstractions to achieve the inextricable “coffeewith-milk” effect and infuse this with his own vision (...) This however, did not result in a particular identity, rather it was part of the process of Villa-Lobos’s life as a composer in which identity 35 was a becoming rather than a being.’

In the above we can see how Pedrosa transforms the composer Villa-Lobos into a constructed identity that we may call a ‘Brazilianism’, or perhaps even a ‘Tropicalism’. This is part of an ideological literature that does not say much about the music of Villa-Lobos,

31 Daniélou, The Situation of Music and Musicians, p. 25. 32 M. Pedrosa ‘Villa-Lobos et son peuple: Le point de vue Brésilien’, La Revue Musicale 10 (1929), p. 23. 33 Ibidem, p. 24. 34 Ibidem, pp. 25, 28. 35 Jochem Valkenburg, Hybriditeit en Identiteit in Brazilië: De Gitaarmuziek van Heitor Villa-Lobos, University of Amsterdam 2002. 64



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but all the more about the positioning of VillaLobos in his era, and perhaps about the way he was marketed. Valkenburg’s concluding remarks are quite interesting. First, he reverts to a common form of essentialism when he sums up three issues that make up the identity of Villa-Lobos as a composer. Subsequently he corrects this by stressing the classical image of hybridity (café com leite) and referring to VillaLobos’ identity as a life-long process.36 Identities are similar to races; they do not really exist, but are constructed by sets of definitions. The racial paradigm has become more or less obsolete, but is by and large replaced by the concept of ethnicity. Music in the ontological sense of ‘our’ music (versus ‘their’ music) can play a tremendously important role in defining such identities.37 Schools or traditions of music are another example of reified identities. In Indian music, these are known as gharana (for khayal), baj (instruments) or vani (dhrupad). These schools are powerful social organizations supported by an extensive ideological canon. Part of this ideology is to claim an ascendance to legendary musicians that lived many centuries ago. Interestingly, the schools came into being much later than the times in which those legendary musicians lived. The schools are supposed to represent a distinct musical style, a clear identity. In reality however, differences among great musicians within a school may be greater than differences across school-boundaries (at any rate there is no scientific method for measuring these differences). Finally, it should be noted that many of the greatest musicians learned in two or more schools, and through intermarriage the schools also have many ‘hybrid’ branches.38

Process in Music When we speak of hybridity, we refer to a process rather than a state. Hybridity is by nature an interaction. Identities have usually been reified into fixed entities, but we can see at present that a growing number of scholars look at identity as a process, as becoming rather than being.39 Some of the terms traditionally used in describing cultural change are acculturation (transculturation, hybridization, syncretism, synthesis), innovation (invention, creation), permutation (reordering, reorganization), and reduction (impoverishment, abandonment).40 This terminology requires a brief scrutiny. ‘Acculturation’ has become an objectionable and obsolete term because of its connotation of adaptation of a lower cultural form to a higher (politically dominant) one. ‘Transculturation’41 is still used, but perhaps has lost popularity to ‘hybridization’. ‘Syncretism’ and ‘synthesis’ suggest ‘results’, i.e. final states rather than processes. ‘Innovation’, ‘invention’ and especially ‘creativity’ are very much part of the vocabulary of traditional history and criticism of (art and urban) music. It is strongly dogmatic (in western culture) that the ‘progress’ of the art is described in terms of ‘creativity’ of the ‘genius’. The phenomenon of reorganization rarely appears in sociological literature, which is curious since it seems to be so important in all contemporary organizations. Rearranging the furniture in the house may not be spectacular enough for the sociologist, but it can have an enormous influence on the use of space. In music, many improvisational and compositional techniques are based on reordering. In fact, we can very well ask the

36 Cf. Simon Frith, ‘Music and Identity’, in: Questions of Cultural Identity, S. Hall and P. duGay (eds.), London 1996, pp. 108-127. Nicholas Cook, Analysing musical multimedia, Oxford 1998. 37 Philip V. Bohlman, ‘Ontologies of Music’, in: N. Cook and M. Everist (eds.), Rethinking Music, Oxford 1999. 38 Wim van der Meer, Hindustani Music in the Twentieth Century, The Hague 1980. 39 Frith, ‘Music and Identity’. 40 Margaret Kartomi, ‘The processes and Results of Musical Culture Contact: A Discussion of Terminology and Concepts’, Ethnomusicology 25/2 (May 1981), pp. 227-249. Margaret Kartomi and Stephen Blum, MusicCultures in Contact, Convergences and Collisions, Basel 1994. 41 Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo Cubano del Tabaco y el Azúcar, Havana, 1940, pp. ix-xvi. 65



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question if not all creativity in music is a form of reordering. Finally, ‘reduction’ often is discussed in relation to environmental change and it could well be compared to the ‘survival of the fittest’. Musical concepts and ideas are continuously regrouping, hybridizing, renovating and what not, but only some will survive for some time. This survival depends largely on the surrounding society, both in appreciation, stimulation, marketing and rejection. Ethnomusicologists have often lamented the extinction of whole forms of music. Of the many genres of European music that Lomax recorded in the middle of the twentieth century more than half is no longer practiced. Bhabha describes hybridity as follows: ‘[this] interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy’.42 He also insists that it is ‘neither one thing nor the other’,43 thereby implying that he follows neither a monistic nor a dualistic model. This is important, because it is possibly the only key to understanding culture (and music within culture) today. In my opinion this holds true not only for tribal, popular, traditional and contemporary musics that depend very much on the ‘moment now’, but also for ‘dead’ composers, since dead composers are only relevant insofar as they are alive in the minds of listeners, performers, composers, and scholars (in that order?). Bhabha’s concept of ‘neither one thing nor the other’ points to the paradox that culture is in a constant state of flux and yet is revealed to us in specific static forms, shapes, states, entities, and, yes indeed, identities. Bhabha cites a passage by Guillermo GomezPerda on hybridity that illustrates this: ‘The bankrupt notion of the melting pot has been replaced by a model that is more germane

to the times, that of the menudo chowder. According to this model, most of the ingredients do melt, but some stubborn chunks are con44 demned merely to float. Vergigratia!’

This holds true for music as well; or, reversing the issue, music is the perfect model for understanding cultural process.

Objectification and Appropriation The understanding that scores and recordings are reifications with a limited relevance for music in its totality leads to a very important methodological issue, the question of practicebased research. For the score, this implies making the writings (re)sound; for recordings it means practically knowing how the ‘sounding’ has come about. Writing and recording of music vest enormous power in whoever controls the score or the recording. The copyright question is intricate enough in western society, but when there is no legal system, and when there are no lawyers to provide scene and actors in a costly and depressing drama, the only thing that remains is straightforward plundering. As Frith puts it: ‘The problem here is not just the familiar postmodern point that we live in an age of plunder in which musics made in one place for one reason can be immediately appropriated in another place for quite another reason, but also that while music may be shaped by the people who first make and 45 use it, as experience it has a life of its own.’

It is quite common among artists to ‘borrow’ (or steal) musical ideas from others. Or as Picasso is supposed to have said: ‘Good artists copy from others, great artists steal’. Some maintain that the only solution to this problem is to totally liberalize music, i.e. abandon every form of copyright.46 It is however not the small

42 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 4. 43 Ibidem, pp. 25, 28. 44 Ibidem, p. 218. 45 Frith, ‘Music and Identity’, p. 109. 66



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musician who stands to lose here, but rather the multinationals that make and possess the pop stars. As a result, Smiers’ utopian vision will probably never come through. Still, the jungle of hybridization in music – or the musical cannibalism, as tropicalist Caetano Veloso would call it47 – will continue to produce evernew shades of style and genre. Ethnomusicologists have used the most rigorous methodology for objectifying, essentializing, and appropriating music of the other. First they record it (Sachs considered the invention of sound-recording one of the necessary preconditions for the beginning of this branch of knowledge), then they transcribe the recording, in the process reducing and distorting it in such a way as to fit in with their own western categories of musical thought. Kunst even indicates which colour of beads to bring to which island to convince the natives to ‘part’ with their music.48 All this of course with the best intentions, because ethnomusicology is essentially Marxist musicology, if, once again, I may paraphrase Kerman.49 Indian classical musicians are very wary of persons trying to ‘steal’ their music. Music is to them, very much like in the west, a property or commodity that has a market value. Since a musician can keep singing the same song over and over again, he truly possesses the chicken with the golden eggs. But once he parts with a song, or when it is extracted from him by force or temptation, the chicken is dead. Amerindians of the Amazon have a tremendous interest in the music of ‘other’ tribes. Trying to conceal music from other tribes, attempting to steal music by listening from afar, intertribal festivities with which certain songs come along but others remain secret: these are all part of a major activity that sur-

rounds the proprietary rights of music and the powers that go with it. For, whereas the four levels of language handle different types of communication among humans, the nine levels of music provide communication with all the other ‘entities’ of the forest.50 Indeed, hybridization is rarely an act of love. In the introduction to his stupendous project Música do Brasil51 Hermano Vianna says: ‘It is not interesting to classify the recorded music as traditional or folk. Very often such denominations obscure the musical reality that is being recorded. Música do Brasil didn’t go out there to hunt for lost purity or authenticity. The music recorded is alive, and life always implies transformation, confusion, complexity, change. They [musics] interact, dialogue with other musics that circulate through the media, by all means of communication, absorbing elements, but also exporting ideas, rhythms, melodies. In a sense they are linked into a network with other musics – with each other but also with the world of pop. If in São Brás, a region of the supposedly authentic samba-de-roda, we have encountered an electric guitar inspiring the dancers we have not refrained from documenting it. Sambade-roda, as any other musical genre, has a long history of change, proposed or imposed by the outside world or by forces from within its own circle. It would also be simplistic to think that the recordings of Música do Brasil (and the very presence of the team in the communities where the recordings were made), have not participated in this transformation. For, there is no such thing as pure recording, a recording that takes the music as it is, without influence from the person or the machinery that records. Recording (...) is a

46 Joost Smiers, vide http://www.rockrap.com/nomusicbiz/holland.html. 47 Caetano Veloso, Tropical Truth. A Story of Music & Revolution in Brazil, New York 2002 (Engl. transl. of Verdade Tropical, 1997). 48 Jaap Kunst, Musicologica, Amsterdam 1950, p. 28. 49 Kerman, Contemplating Music, p. 159. 50 Menezes Bastos, A musicológica Kamayurá, pp. 101-186. Seeger, Studies in Musicology, pp. 44-51. 51 In which over a hundred musical genres were documented in a period of one year, traversing more than 80.000 km. 67



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succession of choices, artistic and political-cultural, that determines the final result that gets onto the CD. What’s the best place to record, where to put the mikes, which mike to use for which instrument, what recorder to use? These questions can only be answered by a process of negotiation between the recording team and the musicians. And the people, like Caetano Veloso, “refuse to folklorize their underdevelopment to 52 compensate the technical limitations”.’

As such, recording also is recreating...

Practice-Based Research When an Indian musician performs he constructs and deconstructs at the same time. To put it in Cook’s words, ‘as soon as it [music] comes into being it has already disappeared, swallowed up into silence, leaving no trace’.53 Unless we understand the process practically, any analysis of a recording fails to understand its working. That working cannot be described in hindsight, because it is about the split second decisions that the musician makes while creating and destroying. Of course, such performing – often (misleadingly) referred to as ‘improvisation’ – does not fall from the sky. It is rooted in many years of training and many more years of ‘thinking music’, ‘contemplating music’, ‘meditating music’, or ‘composing’. Apparently Bach worked much in the same way, and I wonder if he would have taken the trouble to commit his ‘improvisations’ to paper if he could have simply switched on his minidisk recorder. Scores are not only reifications; they are also simplifications. Musicians ‘know’ how to perform the score. But do they really? Research into the interpretation of scores is not a superficial study of the icing of the cake. Similarly, studying recordings from the point of view of a performer can help to understand the choic-

es that were made, and why. Here we hopefully get to the deepest level of the working of music. This is very much the subject matter of music cognition and music theory. This kind of research has only become possible with modern technology.54

Music and its Others At this point we have to come back to the ‘scope of music’ (to paraphrase Adler). Can we define or perhaps even identify music? What about its ‘others’, gesture, dance, theater, film, text? What is the nature of their interrelation? Do we speak of synthesis or perhaps of amalgamation? Again, a performing art can occur in its ‘pure’ form, such as an instrumental sonata (or Cage’s silence), a recited poem, a silent pantomime. How ‘pure’ this really is, is very debatable, but also it is very rare. Most of the performing arts are hybrid arts. Think of dance accompanied by drumming and singing, of the gestures of musicians in performance, of the poetry that blends with the singing. We may well extend this to other fields of life, for music blends into work, ritual, ceremony, party, festivity, and almost any other cultural process. Yet, to look at music and work as a hybrid process seems like crossbreeding a horse with a room. Be that as it may, the study of multimediality in the performing arts is as inevitable as the recognition of the very hybrid nature of any performing art. Looking at MTV, The Music Box, and TMF, I have rarely heard a piece without words; it is all sung poetry. Yves Bonnefoy once said that Bob Dylan is not poetry, and certain musicologists may think that the music of Brel is trivial. As an answer to such qualifications, Nicholas Cook has done a wonderful job in analysing Material Girl from the angles of music, text, and video.55 Only slowly is the notion seeping through that poetry in the con-

52 Hermano Vianna, Música do Brasil, Ed. Abril 2000, pp. i-ii, translation from the Portuguese by WvdM. 53 Cook, Music, A Very Short Introduction, p. 48. 54 As has been discussed by Henkjan Honing in the same series. Honing, ‘The Comeback of Systematic Musicology’, Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 9/3 (2004). 55 Cook, Analyzing Multimedia, pp. 147-173. 68



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text of music is not the same thing as poetry printed on a sheet. Only slowly is it understood that the music that accompanies a motion picture is (often) different from music played out of this context. The café com leite (neither one thing nor the other) image of hybridity in culture should perhaps be extended to the analogy of the brick.56 The music may be trivial and the poetry stupid, but the combination can be overwhelming. Again, in a score, we will see the music and the text separately. But – how wonderful! – we can hear both as a totality. Which of course is true not only for all the multimedia aspects of performing arts, but also within the music – polyphony, rhythm, and melody.

Hybrid musicology Ideally, musicology would be able to study, if not every music, then at least any music that may be found in the world. To be sure, the number of musics is bewildering. Probably every single language also represents a music (languages are estimated to number more than 5000). Within some language areas there are many different musics. Only rarely does a music family comprise several language groups, as is the case of classical western music (perhaps several dozens?) or classical Indian music (the northern comprising about twenty, and the southern comprising four major languages). Anglo-American globalized pop music may also be considered to be current among many language groups, either in English or in translated versions. Musicologies have emerged as pendants of a particular music, and the tools for studying that music are usually very much directed and limited to that music. This is what I have called ‘endomusicology’.

There have been numerous cases of ‘musicologists’ studying ‘other’ musics, long before comparative musicology and ethnomusicology made claims to this field of knowledge (as has been shown among others by Boilès et Nattiez, and also by Bor57). Generally it is an awkward and clumsy business that I have referred to as ‘exomusicology’. It gives that feeling of trying to drive a nail into the wall with a saw. However, it can be very interesting and inspiring, especially when a very serious effort is made to understand why hammers are better tools for driving nails and what (musical) miracles can be performed with saws. Somehow, music all over the world does have certain common ground in pitched sounds, rhythm and melody. Genetically, the tools for perceiving and producing music are very similar. Where comparative and general linguistics continue to be very viable fields, there is no reason why comparative and systematic musicology should not grow towards and blend into an approach that I have characterized as ‘metamusicology’. Ellis’s study of musical intervals in different musical systems,58 and Daniélou’s ‘tableau comparatif des intervalles musicaux’59 could be considered attempts in this direction. It seems to me, however, that the cognitive approach holds a much greater promise. Finally, I have pointed to a branch of knowledge that is not a musicological but rather a musical way of thinking, either about music itself (immanent music) or about the world outside music (musico-logic), for which perhaps the designation ‘paramusicology’ is appropriate. My aim at outlining these four branches of musicology as a sequel to Adler’s ‘Umfang, Methode und Ziel’ article from 1885 is not to

56 The story goes that if you throw the ingredients of a brick at a person he may not be happy, but will also not be hurt, but when you throw the baked mixture at someone the effect will be different. 57 Charles Boilès, et Jean-Jacques Nattiez, ‘Petite histoire critique de l’Ethnomusicologie’, Musique en jeu 28 (1977), p. 26-53. Joep Bor, ‘The Rise of Ethnomusicology: Sources on Indian Music c.1780 - c.1890’, in: Teaching Musics of the World, eds. M. Lieth-Philipp and A. Gutzwiller, Affalterbach 1995. 58 Alexander Ellis, ‘On the Musical Scales of Various Nations’, Journal of the Society of Arts 33 (1885), pp. 485527. 59 Alain Daniélou, Tableau comparatif des intervalles musicaux, Pondichery 1958. 69



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institute four new societies for which membership is open, and which have corresponding departments in universities. Rather, it is to point out the need for understanding that musicology, like music, must be fundamentally hybrid. When we speak of thousands of different musics around the world, we have to refer back to the concept of race. And much the same goes for (spoken) language. Between the Dutch language spoken at the North Sea coast and the Swiss spoken in the east of Switzerland there is an almost infinite checkerboard of Germanic dialects that flow into each other. Dutch and German are (late) reified codifications of political entities, which of course do have a feedback on the local dialects through the educational systems in the different countries. Between musics the hybridizations, the borrowings, the incursions of one into another may even be stronger than with language. But rather than being ‘neither one thing nor the other’ a hybrid musicology would aim at being ‘both this and that’. Musics, like races, are not inherently separate entities. The ways in which identities are constructed are surely much more varied than the occurrence of ‘stubborn chunks’ that resist melting into the infinite hybrid soup. On the one hand it is constructed as the crossing point of multiple associations (the ‘group of web affiliations’ of Simmel60 or the later concept of networks as developed in social anthropology in the 1960s), but at the same time it is defined in relation to alterity. This can be seen not only regionally, but also in time (old/new) and social environment (high/low).

Musicology at Amsterdam University Traditionally, musicology in Amsterdam has paid special attention to contemporary music, ethnomusicology, and performance. Recently,

in collaboration with the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music, music theory has become yet another specialization. The MA specializations are: Western music studies, World music studies and Music theory. In all of these, performance, the actual process of the sounding of music, is a central issue, but not as a separate MA specialization. Evidently, such an approach is very much in line with Bhabha’s performative view of culture. And also, the specializations are not tightly closed compartments – quite on the contrary! This is reflected in courses that are given by two or more teachers and in which different angles are offered to the students – explicitly searching for complementarity and interaction of methods. Hybridity is a key concept in both World music studies and the study of Contemporary music, and more so where these fields meet. Hybrid musicology not only receives attention in the sense of attempting to study transnational musics through translational musicologies, but also in the sense of ‘musicology and its others’, dramaturgy, choreology and multimedia arts. The specific profile of musicology at the University of Amsterdam does not mean that there is no room for specializing in ‘traditional’ western musicology, or for that matter in a variety of directions, types of music, or geographical areas. As Ellen Rosand remarked in 1994: ‘Unless there is place for all kinds of fine scholars (...) the discipline of musicology will be sorely impoverished’.61 On the other hand, a new millennium, already a few years old, calls for new approaches that not only cross the borders of traditional disciplines but also look over the fence of the backyard. And that implies not only looking beyond geographic boundaries – an inevitable consequence of globalization (and of course the other is very much present within our

60 Georg Simmel, Conflict & The Web of Group Affiliations, New York 1954. (Engl. transl. of Die Kreuzung sozialer Kreise, 1922). 61 David Greer, with Ian Rumbold and Jonathan King (eds.), Musicology and sister disciplines: past, present, future: proceedings of the 16th International congress of the International Musicological Society (London 1997) Oxford 2000, pp. 182-183. 70



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boundaries), but also looking musicologically at the musics of other subcultures, in particular pop(ular) music, jazz and folk music. I believe that the rise of world music and the increased commercialization that have marked the past decade pose a very serious threat on ‘Hornbostelian’ musics that still survive in the distant corners of our world. Only when we understand how important hybridization has been in the development of all music do we come to appreciate the value of this musidiversity. We may not be able to preserve all these rare gems (even in archives), but by studying them we may give them a stimulus to survive just a little longer, and to find ‘strategies to enter and leave modernity’.62 (Wim van der Meer is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Amsterdam. His main specializations are Indian and Brazilian musics.)

62 Nestor García Canclini, Culturas Híbridas, Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad, Mexico 1989. 71


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musicologists.


and the history and future of Western musical scholarship Richard Parncutt, University of Graz (2007) Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, 1, 1-32. pdf 1.3 MB Abstract Systematic musicology is an umbrella term, used mainly in central Europe, for subdisciplines of musicology that are primarily concerned with music in general, rather than specific manifestations of music. This article aims to explain the concept in English to international music scholars. Scientific systematic musicology (or scientific musicology) is primarily empirical and data-oriented; it involves empirical psychology and sociology, acoustics, physiology, neurosciences, cognitive sciences, and computing and technology. Humanities systematic musicology (or cultural musicology) involves disciplines and paradigms such as philosophical aesthetics, theoretical sociology, semiotics, hermeneutics, music criticism, and cultural and gender studies. The discipline of systematic musicology is less unified than its sister disciplines historical musicology and ethnomusicology: its contents and methods are more diverse and tend to be more closely related to parent disciplines, both academic and practical, outside of musicology. The diversity of systematic musicology is to some extent compensated for by interdisciplinary interactions within the system of subdisciplines that make it up (systemic musicology). The origins of systematic musicology in Europe can be traced to ancient Greece; historical musicology and ethnomusicology are much younger disciplines, and the relative importance of the three has fluctuated considerably during the past few centuries. Today, musicology's three broad subdisciplines are about equally important in terms of the volume of research activity. I argue that the humanities and the sciences are about equally important, both for musicology and for scholarship and universities in general: culture is no more or less important than technology for human quality of life and human survival. But institutions that bear the label "musicological" (departments, societies, journals, conferences) still tend to focus almost entirely on historical musicology. The future development, and perhaps survival, of musicology will depend on the degree to which musicological institutions can again achieve a balance between musicological subdisciplines, celebrate their diversity and promote constructive interactions between them. Introduction Musicology is the study of music. Leading music encyclopediae such as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001, "Musicology") and Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1997, "Musikwissenschaft") offer a broad, all-encompassing account of musicology. They suggest that musicology today covers all disciplinary approaches to the study of all music in all its manifestations and all its contexts, whether they be physical, acoustic, digital, multimedia, social, sociological, cultural, historical, geographical, ethnological, psychological, physiological, medicinal, pedagogical, therapeutic, or in relation to any other musically relevant discipline or context. In this article, I generally use the term musicology in this sense.

The literature that discusses the concept of systematic musicology in both German and English often has the character of a performance without an audience. Outsiders find it quite abstract (too many generalities, not enough examples) and therefore difficult to read. Insiders - the systematic musicologists themselves - find the contents either obvious or dubious, and a metadiscussion of their discipline does not usually help them to make progress in the specific research areas that interest them. In the present article, I try to avoid both of these pitfalls: my account aims to be both comprehensible to outsiders in that it explains fundamentals before proceeding to abstractions, and interesting to insiders in that it puts old ideas in a new light and explores the implications of musicology's structure for its future development. The concept of systematic musicology has been defined in many different ways, of which some are mentioned below. It may be regarded as a subdiscipline of musicology that is primarily concerned with music in general: what is music, what is it for, and why do we engage with it? By contrast, the sister disciplines of historical musicology and ethnomusicology are primarily concerned with specific manifestations of music: styles, genres, periods, traditions, and individual pieces or musical events. These two broad approaches complement each other: historical musicology and ethnomusicology may be regarded as the bottom-up components of musicology, while systematic musicology is the topdown component. Pinker (1997) famously compared music with cheesecake: something that people enjoy although it has no obvious adaptive (evolutionary survival) function. Stretching this analogy in the direction of musicology and its internal structure, systematic musicology may be regarded as a discipline that poses general questions about cheesecakes such as their contribution to a balanced diet or their role in human rituals (meetings, parties, celebrations), while historical musicology and ethnomusicology survey the detail and diversity of cheesecakes from different cultures and historical periods. The commonalities of and differences between the epistemologies and methodologies of different areas of musicology have been discussed by Huron (1999) and Honing (2006). Because the epistemologies and research methods of the humanities and the sciences are so fundamentally different, researchers tend to identify themselves with only one of the two, and to be regarded as experts in only one. Productive communication between the two traditions is difficult and surprisingly unusual. But since the two traditions often address similar research questions - such as for example the ancient question of the nature of musical emotion and meaning - there is a clear need for interdisciplinary interaction between them. Systematic musioclogy involves both sciences and humanities. In the following, I will refer to these subdivisions of systematic musicology as scientific musicology and cultural musicology respectively. The fundamental epistemological and methodological differences between these two sugdisciplines, and the recent expansion of research in both, mean that no individual modern researcher can claim to be an expert in both. Interdisciplinarity is best achieved by personal interaction between individual researchers from the two traditions. The Conferences on Interdisciplinary Musicology aim to promote interdisciplinary collaborations among all subdisciplines of musicology, including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, scientific musicology, cultural musicology, and musical practice.

The length and openness of this list does not imply that "anything goes" in musicology, since the highest standards of international scholarship can be, and indeed should be, pursued in every one of its many subdisciplines, however large or small. But it does imply that any serious academic discipline that addresses musical questions or attempts to explain musical phenomena can, and should, be regarded as a part of musicology.

This article is primarily about scientific musicology. By "sciences" I mean disciplines that promote scientific method, which I assume to be based on data-oriented empirical research. Thus, I am using the word "science" in the modern English sense of natural sciences and not in the Latin sense of all knowledge or scholarship. There is no sharp dividing line between sciences and humanities: social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, economics, geography, linguistics are generally mixtures of sciences and humanities.

The term "systematic musicology" is used mainly in central Europe and mainly in the German language (Systematische Musikwissenschaft). The present text aims to present and explain the concept of systematic musicology in English to international music scholars, many of whom do not regard themselves as "systematic musicologists" but would be regarded as such by German

This article does not attempt to survey the long and complex history of systematic musicology. That would involve comparing approaches to similar questions in three main periods: ancient and medieval ("history of music theory"), European scholarship since the Enlightenment, and international research since the Second World War. Instead, I aim to give a current and balanced account of scientific

http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM

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musicology - musicology that is primarily scientific in its approach and methods. Scientific musicology will be presented in both its disciplinary and its historical context, and I will consider the implications of recent developments in scientific musicology for musicology as a whole. My text begins with an account of the structure of systematic musicology (including scientific musicology) in the context of musicology generally, followed by an account of its (their) history. I proceed to consider the relationship between humanities and sciences, both generally and within musicology, before finally turning to the implications of my conclusions for the future of musicology. The structure of musicology In Central Europe, musicology is often regarded as comprising three largely independent subdisciplines: ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and systematic musicology. The boundaries of these subdisciplines are not clearly defined, but some generalizations are possible: Ethnomusicology and historical musicology tend to focus on specific manifestations of music: pieces, styles and traditions. The research may address either the notated repertoire (regardless of its performance), specific performances (regardless of their notation, if any), or both. Historical musicologists and ethnomusicologists study the cultural and social contexts of music, and their methods and approaches are largely borrowed from disciplines such as history and cultural studies (mainly humanities) and cultural anthropology (a mixture of sciences and humanities). Ethnomusicology attempts to encompass all music, whereas historical musicology focuses on the notated music of Western cultural elites. By contrast, systematic musicology tends to focus on music as a phenomenon, in the sense of something that can be observed to happen repeatedly in different ways and contexts. All three subdisciplines address the contexts in which music is made and experienced, but they focus on different aspects of those contexts - physical, human, social, cultural, geographical, historical, and so on. In recent decades, the expansion of research in areas such as cultural studies (cf. the "new musicology" of the 1990s; e.g. Kramer, 1995) and popular music (e.g. Cook, 1998) has challenged the tripartite model. Questions of subjectivity and gender can be studied either from the point of view of humanities (history, literature) or (natural and social) sciences (psychology, sociology), and vary considerably from one culture to another (the domain of ethnomusicology). Popular music and jazz can be studied either from the point of view of history and notated artefacts; perception, sociology, and media representation; or subculture and ethnicity. Individual researchers in these areas tend to be clearly associated with one of the three traditional subdisciplines - which confirms the validity of the tripartite model, but also points to a need for stronger interaction and more equal balance between the three traditional subdisciplines within the cultural paradigm (e.g. Parncutt, 2002). Systematic musicology can be further broken down into two parts corresponding to the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften, including cultural studies and the theoretical social sciences) and the sciences (Naturwissenschaften, including empirical social sciences and technology): Scientific systematic musicology, or simply scientific musicology, is primarily empirical and data-oriented. It involves empirical psychology and sociology, acoustics, physiology, neurosciences, cognitive sciences, and computing and technology. These various strands are united by epistemologies and methods that are characteristic of the sciences. Humanities systematic musicology, or cultural musicology, is primarily subjective (introspective, intuitive, intersubjective) and philosophical (based on analysis of musical texts, behaviour and experience). It involves philosophical aesthetics, theoretical sociology, semiotics, hermeneutics, music criticism, and (non-historical and non-ethnological aspects of) cultural and gender http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM

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studies (including the "new musicology" of the 1980s and 1990s). These various strands are united by common epistemologies and methods that are characteristic of the humanities. In the remainder of this article I will refer primarily to scientific research in systematic musicology (scientific musicology). The reason is not only that I am myself a scientific musicologist, but that cultural musicology, as defined above, is more closely related to historical musicology than to scientific musicology, and may for practical purposes be considered part of "musicology" in the narrow sense of historical musicology: Leading international representatives of cultural musicology are often also historical musicologists, and vice-versa. Research in cultural musicology is often presented within the conferences and journals of historical musicology. Both historical and cultural musicologists are humanities scholars with broadly similar ways of thinking and research methods (at least by comparison to their scientific counterparts). Both groups focus largely on the music history of western cultural elites. In spite of the changes that their discipline has experienced in recent decades, their main aim is still to understand the great works of the Western canon and their historical, social and cultural contexts. The history of structural divisions in musicology The term "systematic musicology" was famously introduced by Adler (1885), who suggested that musicology be divided into a historical and a systematic branch. In so doing, he was following the example of other, more established disciplines such as law and theology, whose subdisciplines could be neatly divided into historical (diachron) and non-historical or systematic (synchron) aspects. For Adler, the historical aspect of musicology was organised according to periods, peoples, and schools of composition, whereas the systematic aspect aimed to discover the most important "laws of music". The revolution in musical thought that accompanied the rise of atonal composition in the early 20th Century, coupled with a growing awareness of the diversity of the world's music and the aesthetic value of non-Western musics, all but ended the dream of universal "laws of music" analogous to, say, the laws of physics - which of course were subject to a similar shake-up at about the same time. These intellectual developments, coupled with the persecution and emigration of German (systematic) musicologists during the Nazi period, led to a weakening of, and identity crisis in, systematic musicology after the Second World War (Holtmeier, 2004; Leman & Schneider, 1997; Motte-Haber, 1997). Although historical musicology suffered from similar problems, it had been stronger before the war and was therefore able to recover more quickly. The distinction between systematic and historical musicology also corresponds to that between nomothetic and idiographic. Introduced by Windelband (1894) to account for the difference between the role of "objective" "natural" "laws" in the sciences (e.g. physics) and the role of subjectivity (human experience) in the humanities and cultural studies (e.g. history), the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic may be traced to Kant's (1781) distinction between generalizing and specifying. Nomothetic disciplines tend generalize, deriving "laws" (or at least patterns or repetitions) to explain "objective" phenomena, often by quantitative means - which is still typical of today's sciences. Idiographic disciplines tend to specify: to develop detailed descriptions to understand "subjective" phenomena, usually by qualitative means - which is still typical of today's humanities. Today, systematic musicology is sometimes regarded as "basic" research about music, or research about music's "foundations". This idea is reflected for example in the name Richter Herf-Institut für musikalische Grundlagenforschung, a department of Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, one of Austria's three music universities. Terms such as "basic" and "foundations" may be misleading in this context because they suggest that systematic musicology is somehow more important or more musicologically central than historical musicology or ethnomusicology. It would be equally misleading to suggest the opposite, as Adler (1885) did: after carefully dividing musicology into a historical and



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a systematic part, he claimed - without justification - that the systematical part is "based on" the historical part, implying that the historical part is more fundamental. It would be truer to say that there is no intrinsic difference in importance between specificities and generalities: they are the two ends of a single spectrum. Moreover, in the case of musicology at the beginning of the 21st Century, it would appear that a balance has been reached between research about specificities and research about generalities: it would be difficult to demonstrate that the sum total of all research in ethnomusicology and historical musicology was greater or smaller than the sum total of all research in all scientific and humanities subdisciplines of systematic musicology. Instead it appears that all academic disciplines including musicology thrive on interactions between bottom-up specificities and top-down generalities (remembering that the word "top" in this sentence is in no sense superior to the word "bottom"). An important prerequisite for such interaction is the nominally equal status of the participating subdisciplines. The structure of systematic musicology Of the multitude of attempts to define the discipline of systematic musicology, none has clearly prevailed. Dahlhaus (1997, p. 25, my translation) summarized the situation as follows: The concept of systematic musicology designates a discipline - or a collection of disciplines - about which, in the general consciousness of the musically and even musicologically educated, almost nothing is definite: neither the premises upon which it is based, nor the aims that it pursues, nor the boundaries that are drawn around it, nor the methods with which it operates. It is not even clear whether it should exist at all.

Today, systematic musicology is a diverse collection of largely independent subdisciplines, many with their own experts, schools of thought, international conferences, societies, and journals. The subdisciplines vary widely in age (from decades to millennia) and scholarly orientation (humanities, sciences, musical practice). There is some disagreement about what belongs to systematic musicology and what does not, which is not surprising given that the discipline (like any other) is constantly developing. The following is an attempt to summarize the current views of systematic musicologists: The subdisciplines of music acoustics, psychology, sociology and philosophy (including aesthetics, which in turn includes empirical aesthetics) have traditionally been regarded as central to systematic musicology - which does not mean that other aspects of systematic musicology are any less important. The subdisciplines of music physiology and medicine (including the musical neurosciences), music computing (including music information retrieval), and music and media (a topic with electroacoustical, computing, sociological, psychological, and cultural aspects) have a shorter history than acoustics, psychology, sociology and philosophy, but are growing more rapidly. Music theory and analysis are sometimes regarded as part of systematic musicology, sometimes as separate disciplines, and sometimes as musical fundamentals (Propädeutika). They are core disciplines of musicology in the sense that they lack parent disciplines outside musicology. Semiotics may be regarded as a mix of music theory, analysis, and cultural studies. The practically oriented fringes of musicology - music medicine, music therapy, and music education - are more closely linked to systematic musicology than to historical musicology or ethnomusicology. To the extent that they are theoretical and research based, they may be regarded as belonging to a broad definition of musicology. In Germany and central Europe, systematic musicology is represented by the Fachgruppe Systematische Musikwissenschaft of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung and by the International Cooperative in Systematic and Comparative Musicology. The range and extent of systematic musicology in today's German scholarship is reflected by departments and researchers such as:


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Gießen (Bullerjahn): film music and compositional processes Halle (Auhagen): motor performance and musical acoustics Hamburg (Schneider): acoustics and psychoacoustics Hannover (Behne): preferences and attitudes Hannover (Kopiez): performance and emotion Köln (Neuhoff): sociology of music Köln (Reuter): acoustics and psychoacoustics Köln (Seifert): computational modeling Würzburg (Lehmann): performance and improvisation At the 2005 Business Meeting of the Music Cognition Group of the Society for Music Theory (USA), participants described work that they were currently doing in music cognition and mentioned the following topics: untrained listeners' responses to silence and expectation, the teaching of aural skills, "impossible rhythms", "gastromusicology" (food as a metaphor for music), the phenomenology of electronic music, how organists emphasize different polyphonic voices, the dynamic perception of form, syntax in non-Western music, computational modeling, melodic attraction, timbre, phenomenology, rhythm in dance music, early 20th-Century music, auditory scene analysis, the historical contingency of aural perception, intonation, beat and meter perception, computational modeling of counterpoint, Schenker, similarity perception, aural-skills acquisition, and short-term vs. long-term musical memory, and "musical forces". International opportunities for studying systematic musicology, that address more than one aspect of systematic musicology (such as acoustics and psychology) in depth, include the following: Austria: Department of Musicology, University of Graz Belgium: International Summer School in Systematic Musicology Finland: Department of Music, University of Jyväskylä Germany: Department of Music, University of Hamburg; University of Music and Theater, Hannover; Department of Musicology, University of Halle USA: Department of Music, University of California at Los Angeles A clear definition and description of the discipline of systematic musicology that clarifies some important links between its subdisciplines can be found in the course requirements of the Department of Music, University of Hamburg (my translation): (1) Systematic musicology addresses the physical, biological, psychological, cultural and social foundations of music, its manifestations, and its effects. It explores the modalities and conditions of musical creation, performance, and reception. It compares the structure, realisation and function of music across societies and cultures. Thus, the aim of systematic musicology is a general, anthropologically based theory of the structure and function of music, plus the methodological tools necessary to achieve that aim. (2) Systematic musicology employs empirical and experimental methods to explore how physically measurable sound processes (acoustics) are picked up by the auditory system, neurally processed, and consciously perceived (psychoacoustics, music psychology). It then investigates the reception and aesthetic evaluation of music (empirical music aesthetics), taking into account the social and cultural context (music sociology, ethnomusicology / comparative musicology). The status and roles of women and men in music and musical culture (gender studies) are investigated in the context of music sociology and music psychology. Specific manifestations of music, their meaning, and their function are investigated in the subdisciplines of musical semiotics and semantics, music aesthetics, music sociology, and - transculturally - in comparative musicology, in which inter-ethnic relations, issues of acculturation, and musical subcultures are especially important. Systematic musicology also addresses modern forms of popular music, the conditions of its production and reception, and the role of technical media. The subdisciplines of music theory, music philosophy, and the study of musical instruments link together systematic and historical musicology. The empirical methods of systematic musicology are similar to those of the natural and social sciences, and its specific theory, methods and history are topics for reflection at all levels of study and research.

In spite of the clarity, breadth, and appeal of this account, it is also problematic. First, it does not clearly separate systematic musicology from ethnomusicology. For decades, ethnomusicology has developed internationally as an independent discipline. Second, it seems to include just about every aspect of musicology that is not normally addressed by historians; systematic musicology is presented as a convenient receptacle for all topics that historical musicologists might prefer to ignore. Third, it situates "modern forms of popular music" within systematic musicology. But popular music and jazz can be, and are, studied within all three main subdisciplines of musicology: historical http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM


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musicology, systematic musicology, and ethnomusicology. Any form of music, whether it be American popular music of the 1970s, the diverse musical styles of (traditional or modern) Australian aborigines, or the choral polyphony of the European Renaissance, can be studied using the "systematic" research methods of sociology or anthropology. Systematic musicology is defined in terms of its parent disciplines - not specific musical styles. Instead of forcing the study of popular music to fit the tripartite model of musicology, it may be more appropriate to regard it as a separate, independent subdiscipline - consistent with the size, success, and internal diversity of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and associated journals and conferences. Similarly, jazz research has established itself as an independent subdiscipline (International Society for Jazz Research, Leeds International Jazz Conference). While the disciplines of jazz research and popular music are related to each other, they are also related to the sociology and psychology of music, ethnomusicology, historical musicology, music theory, music performance research, and so on. Since systematic musicology is so diverse and difficult to define, some may question whether it can be regarded as a "discipline" at all. What are the defining attributes of a "discipline"? The Wikipedia page entitled "List of academic disciplines" included the following (19.4.07): An academic discipline, or field of study, is a branch of knowledge which is taught or researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined and recognised by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties to which their practitioners belong.

Dahlhaus (1997, p. 25, my translation) defined "discipline" somewhat differently: A sketch of systematic musicology, if its right to exist as a discipline is at all plausible, must therefore first outline the concept of music upon which it is based, second justify its specific academic aims, third explain what "systematic" means in terms of methodology, fourth clarify its relationship to history (which is accepted as the complementary antithesis of systematic musicology) and fifth investigate the traditions that, over the centuries and even millenia, have influenced concepts of what systematic musicology is - the theory (contemplation) of tonal systems, the aesthetics of sounding artworks or the experimental investigation of communicational processes.

While all such criteria are arbitrary, they are fulfilled by systematic musicology about as well as by any other discipline, as Dahlhaus's text later demonstrates. Moreover, the subdisciplines that make up systematic musicology satisfy similar criteria. Music psychology, music acoustics and music computing may be considered to qualify better for disciplinary status than systematic musicology, because they are more homogenous and individually maintain well-respected international conferences, societies and journals whose titles reflect their disciplinary labels. Systematic versus "systemic" musicology One might argue that any field of research (or at least its methods) should be systematic - that is, orderly, methodical and thorough. The most important characteristic of systematic musicology may not be a "systematic" approach, whatever that means exactly, but its system of subdisciplines, including their various methods and associated ways of thinking. A system is commonly defined as a complex, unified whole whose parts interact with each other. If systematic musicology is a complex interacting system of subdisciplines, it might best be called systemic musicology (Jiranek, 1993; Schneider, 1993). According to Fricke (2003, p. 13-14, my translation): music can be explained through the interaction among a large number of elements [Wirkungsgrößen] which - as different as they are from each other - all belong somehow to musicology, because they are needed to illuminate the phenomenon of music. 'Systemic' [systemisch] is an appropriate label for such a network of interactions [...] This is the interdisciplinary approach that is increasingly being promoted and supported by granting agencies. All "combination disciplines" such as music psychology, psychological acoustics and music computing are at home here. The establishment of connections, and especially the recognition that phenomena are integrated in a network of interdependencies, is a central feature - and asset! - of these disciplinary combinations. [...] Thus, they are predestined for systemic thinking and systemic research. [...] But there is yet another level: the cognitive interplay of mental processes [...] in a phenomenon like music enables it to be compared to the cognitive interplay of mental processes in language, poetry and other artistic forms of expression.

In the following extended passage, Elschek (1993, pp. 310-311, my translation) takes the "system"


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idea further, poignantly expressing what many systematic musicologists consider to be special about their discipline: Systematic musicology is an area of study that places particularly high demands on its researchers. As a rule, "systematic" researchers do not limit themselves to merely collecting and analysing data, nor do they focus on purely technical questions. Instead, their profession addresses basic questions about the existence, origin and development of music in all its complex interactions and manifestations; about anthropological, ethical, aesthetic and psychological constants and variables; about what determines sound and what affects society; and about the specific effects of music and consequences of musical phenomena. It is not possible to separate the individual from the social, the music-specific from the culturally dependent; instead, these must be investigated in all their internal complexity. The complexity of the problems addressed by systematic musicologists means, as a rule, that their approach is more multidisciplinary than monodisciplinary, and that they are more interested in specific questions than in the classification, autonomy, or "purity" of their discipline. This broad, open and interdisciplinary approach to research is one of the essential characteristics of systematic musicology. In this sense, I regard systematic musicology not so much as a system of different disciplines but as an approach to describing the complex phenomenon of music and the relations between its dimensions (perceptual, aesthetic, social etc.), both analytically and holistically. A diversity of musical manifestations and questions are addressed by a palette of research methods than enable the investigation of individual sounds, the understanding of musical structures, psychosocial influences on their reception, and the different functions of and responses to music in its cultural context. The discipline is not so much "systematic" in the sense that it comprises a system of subdisciplines, but that it allows researchers to select the most appropriate methods for a specific question from a range of different disciplines. This presupposes an acquaintance with many different fields of knowledge and an ability to apply many different methods and procedures. These demands mean that systematic musicology is inherent difficult. The discipline is forced to take a broad view of large disciplinary areas and at the same time to address specific issues within individual disciplines. Results from different disciplines must be reconciled and "systematically" related to each other. In this sense, systematic music research involves not only different approaches - experimental, other empirical (field research, questionnaires etc.), aesthetic, semiotic and so on - but also the ability to integrate and to abstract from individual findings. The resultant musicological synthesis is not biased toward a specific discipline [...]"

Elschek makes the interesting point that systematic musicology may be regarded as an approach rather than a discipline, an idea echoed by several other scholars. While Elschek's focus on multiand interdisciplinarity is undeniably true for some research in systematic musicology, it is also problematic: Most of today's research in systematic musicology is not interdisciplinary as suggested by Elschek, but is confined to specific subdisciplines such as music acoustics and music psychology. But that does not make it any less valuable or less likely to qualify as "systematic". While Elschek's arguments may help to define the boundaries of the discipline and to foster a strong disciplinary identity, they tend to be too abstract to impact on specific research projects. Between the lines, Elschek's account suggests that systematic musicology is somehow superior to its sister disciplines historical musicology and ethnomusicology. Whether this is Elschek's intention or not, I think it is important to refute any such claim. Academic disciplines vary along many dimensions, whose relative importance always depends on the observer's standpoint. The various subdisciplines of musicology have different objectives, methods and values that are tuned to each other within each subdiscipline, but are not necessarily valid when applied to other disciplines. It is difficult to evaluate one discipline from the point of another discipline that has different traditions, methods and ways of thinking. The following quote from Motte-Haber (1997, p. 15, my translation) seems more realistic: Every overview of the subdisciplines of systematic musicology that has recently been presented reflects a strong need for order and an intense desire to trap the concept of music within a network of functional connections. Such projections of a need for security are to be avoided. Research in systematic musicology should be presented as it is actually done, or can be done. For this practical orientation is the least positivistic; it is the most open and does not classify and evaluate questions in advance. It does not inhibit future development. The disciplines are presented that are currently taught or researched, along with their connections. Even when it is not the intention to show a clear hierarchy of more or less important disciplines, a clear distinction between centre and periphery will arise that reflects the urgency of problems and the ease with which they can be addressed.

In balance, the term systemic is probably describes the discipline more appropriately than systematic. But in truth neither term is very satisfactory. Other possible terms such nomothetic and synchron seem destined to bamboozle the general public as well as scholars in other disciplines. The term empirical means based on experience, which applies to almost all scholarship; it is nevertheless catching on as a label for data-oriented empirical research in musicology (cf. Clarke & Cook, 2004; http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM


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Empirical Musicology Review). Although the term scientific perhaps most accurately describes the contents of the discipline, the expression scientific musicology seems unlikely to find general acceptance in the near future, if only because the long cold war between the humanities and the sciences during the second half of the 20th Century gave the word "scientific" a negative connotation in musicological circles. Systematic musicologists In the real world of international scholarship, a discipline is defined by the interests, knowledge, methods and interactions of its experts. The size of a discipline is limited by the knowledge capacity of individual researchers. According to Ericsson (1996) it takes about 10 000 accumulated hours of work over about 10 years to become an expert in any field. This presumably applies as much to systematic musicologists as it does to chess players or architects. How do systematic musicologists spend this time? What kind of qualifications do they acquire? The diversity of the discipline's internal structure makes this a difficult question to answer. The question may best be answered by studying the qualifications of existing, recognized systematic musicologists. To be recognized by systematic musicologists as a systematic musicologist it is generally necessary to satisfy all four of the following criteria:


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determined by a peer-review procedure (for example, music psychology), or in non-musical journals (such as regular psychology journals). Incidentally, articles on systematic musicology seldom appear in "musicology" journals, which almost always focus on historical musicology. A systematic musicologist's qualifications do not always belong to the same area of systematic musicology as his or her publication(s). Sometimes, a broader view of systematic musicology can be achieved by covering more than one area. For example, the author has undergraduate bachelor's degrees in science (physics) and music, his Ph.D. was officially spilt between three disciplines (psychology, music, and physics), and his publications are mainly in music psychology. Today, most qualifications in "music" or "musicology" are primarily qualifications in historical musicology, because most musicology curricula and programs are historically dominated. The relatively few exceptions include Graz, Hamburg, Jyväskylä, Sheffield, and UCLA. From the point of view of systematic musicology, a qualification in (historical) musicology (or ethnomusicology, or music performance) is of course helpful and desirable, but not a necessary precondition for good research in systematic musicology or for peer recognition as a systematic musicologist - just as a qualification in systematic musicology is not a precondition for recognition as an ethnomusicologist or historical musicologist. The history of (systematic) musicology

Basic musical skills in either music performance or music theory. In this respect, systematic musicologists are like other musicologists. Of course the music in question need not be Western (although it usually is, because most musicologists are Western - if only because Western universities are better funded). A relevant bachelors or masters degree that involves mainly coursework (rather than research) but also demonstrates the ability to apply current research methods in systematic musicology. This criterion may be satisfied in two different ways: The most common way is to obtain a degree in one of the "parent disciplines" of systematic musicology: physics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, computing, physiology, etc. This qualification is not specifically musical or musicological, and tends to determine the area of systematic musicology to which a scholar will later belong (e.g. music acousticians tend to be qualified in physics). It gives the researcher a thorough knowledge of current research methods and theories that are appropriate for tackling systematic-musicological questions in a given area. At some universities, it is possible to become qualified in systematic musicology directly (e.g. the masters degree in Graz) or in one of its subdisciplines, e.g. music psychology (e.g. the masters degree in Keele). Until such qualifications become more widespread, this route will remain the exception rather than the rule. Such qualifications tend to provide a less thorough grounding in research methods than a regular undergraduate qualification in one of systematic musicology's parent disciplines, but they may make up for that by making stronger connections between the methods and findings of systematic musicology and the rest of musicology.

The history and changing roles of systematic musicology are best understood in the context of Western musicology as a whole, in the sense of any scholarship about any music (Parncutt, 2005). The structure of musicology has changed markedly and repeatedly during its long history. Table 1 is an attempt to summarize that history by sketching the distribution of subdisciplines in three key historical periods. The table is constructed so that, as far as possible, humanities are on the left, sciences on the right, and mixtures of the two in the middle. The larger the distance between two disciplines in the table, the more different are the approaches and ways of thinking of their proponents and the more difficult is interdisciplinary collaboration. Antiquity and Middle Ages: Antecedents of music theory and systematic musicology mathematical, philosophical, astronomical and mystical theories of acoustics, interval, scale, emotion The 19th Century: Musicology as music history plus subsidiary or auxiliary disciplines historical musicology comparative music theory systematic musicol. musicol. The present: Musicology as all disciplinary approaches to all questions about all music repertoires, performances and their contexts general phenomena and their foundations history pop ethnology analysis theory sociology acoustics psychology jazz physiology

A Ph.D. (doctorate) in (a subdiscipline of) systematic musicology. A doctorate is a university's way of saying that a person has made a significant contribution to a specific field. In countries where an additional qualification, the habilitation, is a prerequisite for a professorship, a habilitation in the area of systematic musicology may be considered as a further prerequisite for recognition as a systematic musicologist (since in those countries the standard of the doctorate is generally lower than that of the Ph.D. awarded in other countries). Publications in one area of systematic musicology, e.g. music acoustics or music psychology, in a range of journals. This may be regarded as confirmation from a range of sources agree that the person has made a significant contribution to systematic musicology. The publications may appear either in recognized systematic musicology journals, whose content is normally http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM

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media aesthetics, cultural studies, gender

computing

philosophy Table 1. Sketch of the structure of musical scholarship in three different historical periods. Origins of systematic musicology. Like its parent disciplines physics, physiology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, systematic musicology (applying Adler's 1885 concept retrospectively) has ancient roots. Not only Greece, but also the ancient cultures of China and India developed theories of http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM


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scales, intervals, and emotion, and related them to mathematics and astronomy. The ancient Greeks developed theories of musical affect, expressed musical intervals as ratios of the lengths of vibrating strings, and sometimes assumed that both were related to the movements of the stars - an idea that captured the imagination of generations of Medieval and later music theorists. The Quadrivium - a kind of mathematical philosophy taught at medieval European universities - included not only arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, but also "music": the sounds and intervals supposedly produced by the planets were compared with ratios of string lengths on a Pythagorean monochord. Although this theory makes little sense today, the idea that musical intervals can be explained physically or scientifically may now be seen as an important stage in the historical development of music theory; and the creation, questioning, and eventual rejection of such ideas was part of that long historical process that brought forth modern systematic musicology. These early examples of musical scholarship are not related to other aspects of modern musicology; they tended to be neither historical (since they were confined to the music and the concepts of music of the time) nor ethnological (since they were confined to the music of a single region). Thus, from ancient Greece to the Middle Ages, musical scholarship was entirely "systematic". Origins of historical musicology. European historical musicology emerged during the Enlightenment (17th-18th Centuries). Driven by ideals of rationality and progress, enlightenment historians envisaged a universal history of the human race with subdisciplines such as history of society, history of art and music, history of law, history of trade, and so on. Since that time, both history in general and music history in particular have played an important role in European culture, mentality, and identity. Thanks to the continuing expansion of historical musicology and its role in constructing national identities in 19th Century, the term "musicology" appeared in European languages, and musicology was recognized as an independent academic discipline. The construction and reinforcement of national identities had both positive and negative implications, ranging from cultural creativity and diversification on the one hand to racism, militarism and the First World War on the other. Diversification of musical scholarship. The 18th-Century spirit of enlightenment motivated the parallel development of non-historical aspects of musicology that drew on scientific content and methods, such as theory, acoustics, psychology, and sociology. Adler (1885) constructed a musicology divided into two parts of nominally equal importance: "systematic" and "historical". However, the historical aspect of musicology continued to dominate. Musicology's power structure. In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, historical musicology was tacitly or explicitly - considered central to musicology, for the following interrelated reasons: Western music was considered aesthetically superior to non-Western music (an idea that is no longer tenable, but evidently still believed by many: Becker, 1986). In scholarly contexts, the word "music" was used primarily in the sense of the notated works of the Western canon (Cook, 1998). The main task of both musicology in particular and the humanities as a whole was understood, at least implicitly, to document the achievements of white male genius: musicology was implicitly racist and sexist and promoted a concept of genius that conflicts with the findings of modern empirical psychology (Howe, Davidson & Sloboda, 1998). As a result, the volume of research on the history of Western notated music exceeded the volume of other musically relevant research, and musicology (in the modern, broad sense of all musically relevant research in all university departments and research institutes) was dominated by humanities thinking and by scholars with humanities training. Professors of musicology were generally music historians. Although all of the above arguments have since evaporated and a defensible argument for the dominance of historical musicology within musicology no longer exists, the power structure in institutions that bear the label "musicology" has hardly changed. Music historians tend to have, want, or demand, power over all musicology. Emergence of ethnomusicology. In the colonial period of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, European interest in non-European cultures, including their music, led to the development of http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM

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comparative musicology, in which Western music is compared with non-Western musics. This later evolved into ethnomusicology, which aims to describe and document individual non-Western cultures on their own terms and from the point of view of insiders. These developments happened in parallel with developments in the non-musical parent disciplines of anthropology, ethnography, and ethnology. In both Western Europe and North America, the intellectual leadership for ethnomusicology came out of sociocultural anthropology (which may also be regarded as a product of the colonial era). In Adler's original formulation, comparative musicology was part of systematic musicology, but by the middle of the 20th Century, ethnomusicology had established itself as a separate, third major subdiscipline of musicology with its own methods (that are influenced not only by systematic and historical musicology, but also by non-musical disciplines such as cultural anthropology) and a unique and extensive body of knowledge, most of which is unknown to systematic or historical musicologists (Schumacher, 2003). Ethnomusicologists are often Westerners who have lived in a specific non-Western culture and perhaps learned to perform its music; they can also be non-Western musicians describing their own musical culture in a Western academic context. In recent decades, anthropologists as well as ethnomusicologists have defined themselves increasingly in terms of their research methods and approaches and not by by specific kinds of music or musical cultures, which is giving ethnomusicology an increasingly "systematic" character. Ethnomusicological research now addresses all music including Western art music. Development and diversification of musicology. During the second half of the 20th Century, the three main subdisciplines of musicology developed independently. Gradually and consistently, musicology as a whole became bigger, more diverse, and more fragmented. The various subdisciplines of systematic musicology also went their separate ways within their separate international research frameworks. Scientific musicology became more empirical, cognitive and computational (Honing, 2004). Developments in computer technology spurred growth in all areas of musicology, but especially in scientific areas of systematic musicology such as acoustics, psychology, computing, neurosciences, and music and media. Slowly but surely, ethnomusicology and systematic musicology approached, and possibly overtook, historical musicology in the volume and importance of their research output - which is not surprising, considering that ethnomusicology addresses the music of all continents, and systematic musicology comprises a large number of essentially independent subdisciplines. Post-modern musicology in the 21st Century is a diverse collection of more or less equally important subdisciplines without a clear overarching structure. Although musicology's subdisciplines (including the subdisciplines of systematic musicology) have become increasingly independent, they are also interacting with each other in new ways. Graphical representation. These developments are summarized graphically in Figure 1. The graph is supposed to give only a rough overview of a long and complex period of academic history; fluctuations at the level of individual decades (e.g. the Second World War) have been smoothed out. Until about 1600, musical thought was almost all "systematic": it could be classified as theoretical, mathematical, philosophical, aesthetic, acoustical, psychological or sociological. During and following the Enlightenment, historical musicology increased steadily in importance, presumably overtaking systematic musicology around 1800. In 1900, historical musicology was the undisputed focus and centre of musicology. Ethnomusicology (or comparative musicology) emerged during the 19th Century. Although all three areas of musicology grew during the 20th Century, ethnomusicology and systematic musicology grew faster than historical musicology, so the proportion of musicology that was historical declined. At the start of the 21st Century, a reasonable balance has been reached among these three areas of musicology. Because systematic musicology comprises so many independent disciplines, it is now presumably larger than both historical musicology and ethnomusicology. This in no way implies superiority, but simply reflects the number of people who are motivated to do research within each of a set of subdisciplines, keeping in mind that the boundaries of those subdisciplines are somewhat arbitrary. Systematic musicology remains a somewhat artificial construct of loosely related disciplines that, individually, are smaller (again, in terms of volume of research) than both ethnomusicology and historical musicology; the latter are more unified and more clearly defined. http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM


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Marginalization of non-historical musicology. During the second half of the 20th Century, departments of music and musicology tended to ignore the growth in ethnomusicology and systematic musicology and to continue to regard the history of notated Western music as the undisputed central theme of musicology. All other musical topics, inlcuding ethnomusicology and systematic musicology, were marginalised - treated (at least in practice) as peripheral or "auxiliary". Although the rise of cultural ("new") musicology in the 1990s increased awareness of Otherness in musical culture, it had relatively little impact on the tendency for historical musicologists to regard other musicologists as musicological Others. This tendency is still, at the start of the 21st Century, surprisingly strong and shows little signs of abating, at least not in the more conservative musicological institutions. The marginalization of non-historical musicology proceeded differently in Europe and North America. In the following, I attempt a brief analysis of the marginalization of systematic musicology in three arbitrarily chosen regions:

Figure 1. Sketch of the history of musicology since 1600 in terms of the proportion of musicology that was systematic, historical or ethnological. All values are no more than rough estimates. Musicology today. Musicology has become an extensive, complex, multi- and interdisciplinary network that can be represented in various different ways (Parncutt, 2004). In a general approach, each culture, style or genre might be studied from the point of view each relevant discipline and its specific research methods (Caroline Traube, personal communication, 2006). Each cell in Table 2 represents an interesting field of musicological research. While there has been plenty of research on the music of Western cultural elites, research in the other columns of the table is inconsistent and incomplete.

In British universities, departments of music were somewhat more open to scientific aspects of musicology than their American counterparts. In recent years and decades, several British postgraduate programs in music psychology have appeared (e.g., Keele, Sheffield) with good connections to music departments, and Psychology of Music has become the most important British journal in the area of systematic musicology. Music technology is also well represented in British musical academia. But the history of notated Western music has remained the central theme of British musicology.

cultures, genres, styles suprasubdisciplines disciplines

musical core

humanities

sciences

cultural elites

folk/traditional

modern

nonnonavantWestern Western pop/jazz Western Western garde

performance

x

x

x

x

x

x

theory, analysis, composition

x

x

x

x

x

x

history

x

x

x

x

x

x

anthropology

x

x

x

x

x

x

cultural studies

x

x

x

x

x

x

sociology

x

x

x

x

x

x

psychology

x

x

x

x

x

x

acoustics

x

x

x

x

x

x

computing

x

x

x

x

x

x

In Germany, systematic musicology (in Köln, Halle, Hamburg, Hannover, Magdeburg, Osnabrück and Würzburg) and ethnomusicology (in Bamberg, Köln, FU Berlin, HU Berlin, Göttingen, Halle, Hamburg, Hannover, Mainz and München) have consistently been recognized as an essential component of musicology and hence of any serious Institut für Musikwissenschaft. But despite this apparently good intention, non-historical musicology has been marginalized as much as elsewhere. The number and status of professorships in historical musicology continues to exceed the number and status of professorships in systematic musicology and ethnomusicology by a considerable margin. Important decisions within "musicology" are generally made by historical musicologists, since they hold the more important professorships, are more often heads of musicology departments and are more often consulted by grant agencies such as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Table 2. Map of possible fields of musicological research obtained by crossing parent disciplines (rows) with musical styles (columns). The choice of labels for rows and columns is necessarily somewhat arbitrary.


In the USA and Canada, the analytical study of Western notated music, including aesthetics, became firmly established within a humanities-oriented "music theory" (represented by the Society for Music Theory, see also the journals Music Theory Spectrum and Music Theory Online), with links to (historical) "musicology" (American Musicological Society). Scientific aspects of musicology such as music acoustics and music psychology usually did not find, or were refused, a place within musical or musicological academia. Only a few universities maintained programs or departments of "systematic musicology" (e.g. University of Washington in Seattle; University of California at Los Angeles; Ohio State University). Meanwhile, music psychology blossomed outside of "musicology" in two quite separate fields - mainly in (cognitive) psychology, represented by the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, but also in music education, represented by the National Association for Music Education. Music acoustics was supported by physics departments and the Acoustical Society of America. Ethnomusicology (represented by the Society for Ethnomusicology) developed in almost complete isolation from "musicology" and music theory.

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The relationship between humanities and sciences The humanities and sciences differ radically in both their epistemologies and methodologies. What does it mean to be "scientific", both generally and in regard to music? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a scientific approach?



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It is not easy to define the difference between humanities and sciences, either in general or relative to music and musicology. The humanities are often regarded as more subjective and the sciences as more objective, but scholars in the humanities and sciences agree that this distinction is never entirely clear-cut. In the real world of modern, international, consensual scholarship, pure forms of subjectivity and objectivity are elusive. The following account is written from the point of view of the sciences; humanities scholars may argue differently. For reasons that (paradoxically) are explained in this very account, it is reasonable and legitimate for scholars in the humanities and sciences to view the differences between these two overarching disciplinary groups or supradisciplines in different ways. The author is nevertheless striving to achieve an account that is acceptable to both sides - perhaps driven by a naive scientific belief in the existence of a simple, general explanation. Differences between humanities and sciences: Subjectivity versus objectivity To a large extent, the difference between humanities and sciences involves the tension between subjectivity and objectivity in all scholarship. This difference has at least three separate aspects: Subjects and objects of research. The humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) tend to address the creative products of the human spirit (Geist). These include architecture, arts, literature, music, philosophy and religion - in short, culture. The sciences (Naturwissenschaften) tend instead to address the physical and biological environment of human beings - their natural surroundings (Natur). Relationship between observer/researcher and subject/object of research. This relationship tends to be direct in the humanities and indirect or separate in the sciences, and may represent the most important difference between humanities and sciences today. Researchers in the humanities tend to draw primarily on their subjective experience (called introspection in psychology). Scientists instead try to separate themselves from their object of research and base their research on "objective" data. Humanities researchers are in more direct and immediate contact with the subjects/objects of their research and in particular with their meaning (in the sense of the meaning of words in language). Thus, the humanities place considerable emphasis on a hermeneutic approach when interpreting their sources. However, the hermeneutic idea is also prevalent in the sciences, even if it is not described as such, and may be regarded as common to all good scholarship. For example, a computer model may be refined by gradually adjusting parameter values to optimize the match between data and predictions, and a neural network may settle down into a steady state as the connection strength between neurons is gradually adjusted. In all such cases, the repeated adjustment between particular and general may be regarded as a hermeneutic process. Since scientists base their research on data, they are concerned with testing the relationship between data and the reality they are supposed to measure (validity). These tests are often quantitative, that is, they are expressed as numbers, whereas the humanities tend more often to work with words and text as carriers of meaning. Incidentally, the term "exact" as applied to mathematically based sciences such as physics is misleading, given that theoretical physicists routinely neglect terms in mathematical formulations in order to obtain reasonable approximations that have analytic mathematical solutions. Generality of conclusions. Scientists seek conclusions that are general in the sense that they are independent of the observer - although most would agree that such objectivity is strictly impossible to achieve. In fact, it is absent from quantum theory, in which observation is assumed always to disturb that which is being observed. Moreover, physicists suspect that even Einstein's long-standing theories will someday be replaced by another, equally ephemeral paradigm (Kuhn, 1962). Similarly, scholars in the humanities often consider objectivity to be illusory; conclusions depend not only on the researcher's own subjectivity but also on the http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM

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historical and cultural context. For that reason humanities researchers may shun the idea of general conclusions altogether. Instead, they describe, illuminate, and enrich the subjects/objects of their research. Thus, scientists tend to favour simple, general conclusions (in the form of imperfect generalizations), whereas humanities scholars prefer complex, specific accounts.and s Humanities tend to be subjective, and the sciences objective, in all three of these ways. However there are interesting exceptions. For example, modern psychology tends to be subjective in the first way and objective in the second and third; the same applies to music psychology. Commonalities of humanities and sciences In spite of these sizeable differences between the humanities and the sciences, the two supradisciplines have a similar attitude to many aspects of the nature of knowledge and its acquisition - which may be relevant to the question of how musicology may be united or made more homogenous. Consider the following three general commonalities: The search for "truth" Truth and intersubjectivity. Neither the humanities nor the sciences assume the existence of an absolute truth that is somehow out there waiting to be found, but instead apply the principle of intersubjectivity and consensus to evaluate the truth content of research findings. When different observers in different contexts at different times converge on a similar conclusion, that conclusion may be said, in this limited sense, to be "true" or a "fact". The term "intersubjectivity" tends to be associated with the humanities - but it also arguably underlies the peer-review procedure for accepting, rejecting, and revising submissions to academic journals, which tends to be associated with the sciences. In both cases, scholarship and its "truths" are constructed by human actors. Role of rational argument. Since the ancient Greeks, scholars have been making claims and supporting them with arguments, in an effort to convince other scholars that they are right. Their colleagues have reacted by presenting counterarguments. The original claims have only been accepted when it became clear - at least within the community in question - that the arguments for the original (or meanwhile modified) claim are stronger than the arguments against it. This is essentially the procedure by which a body of knowledge has grown in all periods of history and in all disciplines, including both humanities and the sciences. The procedure is clearly social, suggesting that academic breakthroughs are never entirely due to individuals, but rather to collective efforts. Since the arguments that support scholarly claims are never completely clear, the claims themselves are never completely clear either, implying that "knowledge" can always be questioned. Thus, both the humanities and sciences are in a constant state of flux. Explaining versus understanding. The idea that the sciences tend to explain whereas the humanities tend to understand is itself associated with the humanities (Dilthey, 1883). But scholars in both the humanities and the sciences devote their lives to trying to both explain and understand the objects of their research, and to teach their students to do both these things. Clearly, the process of explaining is difficult to separate from understanding. In practice, you cannot have one without the other. Understanding relationships Relationships between objects. Humanities scholars may get the impression that scientists focus on relationships between the objects of their research and not the objects themselves, whereas humanities tend to focus on the objects themselves and neglect relationships between them. But when specific directions within the humanities or sciences are analyzed, neither of these generalizations holds true. For example, physicists investigate the internal structure of atoms, and historians make comparisons between different historical periods. Causality. From the point of view of the humanities, the sciences seem to be especially concerned with causality and physical or psychological "laws". But modern scientists often http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM


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don't see their work that way. Causality is often difficult to demonstrate, and the idea of "laws" contradicts the anti-positivistic spirit that permeates most modern scholarship. But the humanities are often concerned with questions of causality, too. In history, for example, changes in ways of thinking in one period may be assumed, either tacitly or explicitly, to cause social changes in the next; logical positivists such as Hempel (1942) related the explanatory power of a theory to its predictive power (deductive-nomological approach). In semiotics, the meaning of a sign is explained by processes that supposedly causally, how else? - give rise to that meaning. In fact, any satisfactory answer to the question "why...?" must be about causality - and "why" questions are common to all academic disciplines. Predictions. The ability to make predictions based on research findings is not limited to the sciences, as is sometimes claimed, but common to all disciplines. For example, the idea that one can "learn from history" implies that one can make predictions based on history. Scientific predictions are not generally or necessarily more reliable than predictions in the humanities; consider for example the debate about the future course of environmental change and global warming during the 1990s. Methodological diversity Scholars within the humanities or the sciences are more acutely aware of the diversity of methods and approaches within their own supradiscipline than in other supradisciplines, and may therefore claim that their methods are more diverse than those of the other metadiscipline. In fact, there is a diversity of methods and approaches in both supradisciplines. In both cases, the kind of method or approach depends on the question. Relative importance of humanities and sciences Many believe, or take for granted, that the sciences are somehow intrinsically more important than the humanities. But convincing evidence for this belief is lacking. In the 19th Century, the humanities were situated at the centre of the university, because they addressed the central topics of human culture and the human condition. From the point of view of academic content, they are no less central today. During the 20th Century, the sciences came to be regarded as the centre of the university, because of the countless technical changes that they enabled and the enormous impact that these had on everyday life in modern societies. The sciences enabled not only significant, widespread improvements in the quality of life but also military and environmental threats that could eventually lead to the self-destruction of the human race. It is hard to assess the relative importance of the advantages and disadvantages of 20th-Century science. At the start of the 21st Century, one might argue that the information sciences (computing) have taken over from sciences and now occupy a central position in academia. Meanwhile, the feeling that the sciences are more important than the humanities is still omnipresent and continues to have an important influence on how the financial resources of universities are divided up. But no-one can formulate a clear reason why the sciences might be fundamentally more important than the humanities - or vice-versa. Clearly, both culture and technology are important for modern humans. One could even argue that culture continues to be more important than technology, for without culture, humanity - as normally defined and understood - would not exist. This historical background suggests that there is no essential difference in importance between the humanities and the sciences. They are roughly equally important, or at least not clearly unequal in importance - both in general and, as I will argue in the following, within musicology. Relationship between humanities and sciences in musicology http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM

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When applying these ideas to music, it can help to regard music as a form of communication between a sender and a receiver. The sender can be a performer or composer, and the receiver can be a listener or critic. The sender and receiver can also be the same person (e.g. when performers and composers introspectively examine their experience of their own music). Understood in this way, the sender-receiver model can cover just about all of musicology, from acoustics to cultural studies. The humanities approach to musicology is subjective in the sense that researchers tend to position themselves within the sender-receiver system. The researcher's subjective experience of this system is the primary basis for the construction of descriptions and theories - for without subjectivity, music is essentially meaningless. In British Departments of Music, for example, historical musicologists often perform the works about which they research, and their performance experience directly influences their writings. In a German Institut für Musikwissenschaft, historical musicologists are less likely to perform, but their writings are still directly influenced by their listening experience. In both cases, the scores of musical works, and scholars' essentially subjective interpretation of those scores, remain the most important source materials. In a scientific approach, researchers try to be objective, that is, to place themselves outside the sender-receiver system. Descriptions and theories are constructed on the basis of data such as physical measurements, experimental participants' descriptions of their musical experiences, or statistical analysis of musical scores. Since all such measurements and data are subject to bias and random variation, scientists try to compensate by applying statistical tests. Generality of conclusions is never completely achieved, but scientists assume it can be approached more and more closely when more and more refined research methods are used. Since both the subjective and the objective approach to musicology have specific advantages and disadvantages, and every approach must be a mixture of both (the difference being one of emphasis or proportion), plausible answers to important musical questions are most likely to be formulated when musicology does not adopt a purely humanities or science approach, but instead strikes a reasonable balance between the two. The location of that "reasonable balance" depends on the kind of question being asked - for example, whether the question concerns music as specific repertoire or music as a general phenomenon. This does not mean that the distinction between humanities and sciences is superseded or should be abandoned. Quite the contrary: Scholars in the humanities and sciences have quite different backgrounds and training, and it is hardly possible for one person to become thoroughly grounded in both supradisciplines. Instead, researchers should strive for a thorough grounding on one side of the humanities-sciences divide, and then work together with researchers on the other side. This is the best way to do good interdisciplinary research. A constructive cross-fertilisation between the humanities and sciences can work in the following way: From humanities to sciences. From the point of view of the sciences, the humanities are a creative source of well-founded ideas. Because of their essential subjectivity, however, scientists tend to regard these ideas with scepticism or to treat them "only" as hypotheses. But without ideas or important issues - and these often come from the humanities - scientists would have nothing to test. Hence, scientific research often either verifies, disproves, or qualifies findings from the humanities. A pertinent musical example is research on the perception of musical structure, which tends to test and elaborate on humanities-oriented music-theoretical ideas. From sciences to humanities. Results of scientific research often seem trivial to humanities scholars. But occasionally the scientists come up with something really surprising. It may then fall to the humanities to explore the implications of that finding. That may involve creatively exploring the richness of relationships between various relevant new and old ideas in various disciplines, and considering those relationships in their modern social and cultural context. The quantitative data that scientific research tends to generate is essentially meaningless without qualitative support, which often comes from the humanities. http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM


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The traditional relationship between humanities and sciences within musicology is reminiscent of the modern relationship between philosophy and the neurosciences. Philosophy has a long tradition of debate about the mind-body problem. Modern neuroscientific research has tested many of these philosophical ideas in the laboratory. But the contributions of the neurosciences are incomplete without a thorough philosophical exploration of their implications in broader contexts such as ethics and medicine. The relative importance of (quasi-) objective and (inter-) subjective approaches to musical scholarship fluctuated considerably during its history: Ancient and medieval musical thinkers tended to regard music as a phenomenon rather than as repertoire. Their scholarly methods were antecedents of the musical sciences (Naturwissenschaften). From the 17th to 19th Centuries, music - like art and literature - was regarded increasingly as repertoire, and the study of musical repertoire was arbitrarily confined to the works of great artists - an important topic of investigation within the burgeoning humanities (Geisteswissenschaften). Western music, art, and literature were generally (and often tacitly) considered aesthetically superior to non-Western equivalents. At the same time, research on music as a phenomenon continued and developed rapidly, as the content and methods of the sciences flowed into musicology. Early comparative musicology and ethnomusicology blended methods and approaches of the humanities and sciences. Ethnomusicology has always maintained a multi- and interdisciplinary character, although humanities tended to dominate ethnomusicological thinking in the latter part of the 20th Century. Considering musicology as a whole, a humanities approach dominated the first half of the the 20th Century. In the second half, scientific approaches grew faster than the humanities approaches, such that by the end of the 20th Century they were approaching the humanities in size and importance. However, scientific research about music has often happened outside of university music and musicology departments, which have often been securely housed within schools and faculties of humanities. Instead, it has been supported by departments of physics, psychology, sociology, physiology, mathematics, computing, and so on. Implications for the future of musicology Musicologists tend to specialise in one of musicology's subdisciplines, since it is clearly impossible for one person to acquire basic skills and keep track of the main developments in all (or even more than one) of those subdisciplines. That implies that interdisciplinary research within musicology is best achieved through collaboration between scholars with different backgrounds and expertise, which also promotes the unity of musicology (cf. the Conferences on Interdisciplinary Musicology). Historical musicology is, and will presumably always remain, one of the few central subdisciplines of musicology. However, it is no longer the central discipline of musicology. It is therefore misleading to (continue to) use the terms "musicology" and "historical musicology" as if they were somehow equivalent or synonymous (as often happens in Germany and the USA). It is similarly misleading to assume that scholarship about "music" and hence "Departments of Music" should be exclusively or necessarily associated with the humanities (as often happens in Britain and Commonwealth countries). Yet many musicological conferences, societies, journals, departments, and scholars continue to do just that. Although they define the term musicology in its broad sense, according to which historical musicology is just one of many musicological subdisciplines, they generally use it in the narrow sense of historical musicology, or a musicology in which historical musicology is central and other subdisciplines are peripheral or subordinate. Historical musicology dominates their programs, contents pages, research projects, and curricula. http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM

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For example, the entry "musicology" in Grove dictionary (2001) begins by defining musicology in the broad sense (of all scholarship about all music), and applies this definition when covering the period up to roughly 1900. After that, it tacitly switches to the narrow sense of the term (i.e., historical or humanities-oriented scholarship about Western music) when dealing with the 20th Century and especially the period since 1945. The music psychology of Helmholtz, Kurth, Riemann and Stumpf is regarded as musicology, but that of de la Motte-Haber, Krumhansl, and Sloboda, which is no less musically relevant, is not. Instead, it appears elsewhere in the dictionary under the heading of "music psychology". One could argue that modern music psychology research is often performed in psychology departments, and in this sense no longer belongs to music or musicology. If that were true (in fact, a considerable proportion of music psychology research happens within musicology), it is a dangerous argument. For one could then argue that ethnomusicology research could equally well be performed in departments of cultural anthropology, and music history research (along with art history research) could equally well be performed in history departments. It follows that a music or musicology department is more likely to survive in the face of future funding cuts and changes in university organisation if it brings together several different aspects of musical scholarship under one roof. If the internal organisation of musicology is to reflect the changing distribution of musically relevant research, the conferences, societies, journals, and departments currently labelled "music" and "musicology" need to decide whether they are primarily about musicology in the narrow or the broad sense. If narrow, they might consider a change of name, e.g. to "history of Western music" or "humanities musicology". If broad, they should ensure that they represent the various subdisciplines of musicology more or less in proportion to current volumes of international research in those areas. If they strive both to serve historical musicologists and to serve all of musicology, as for example the International Musicological Society (IMS) does, this ambiguity should be clarified and discussed. A radical solution would be to split the IMS and leading national musicological societies (American Musicological Society, Royal Musical Association, Gesellschaft für Musikforschung etc.) into two - one society for historical Western musicology, and another that fairly represents all musicological subdisciplines. Musicology, one might argue, has grown to be too important for a compromise solution. This raises the issue of whether musicology departments should remain within faculties (or schools) of humanities. When music is conceptually and structurally associated with the humanities, the musicological sciences are neglected to the detriment of musicology as a whole. A partial solution might be to establish faculties or schools of "cultural studies", or better - since not all of musicology is directly about culture - "arts" in the sense of graphic art, music, literature and so on. This may be an ideal solution for graphic arts and literature, but not necessarily for music, which has a stronger scientific component. Perhaps the best solution for musicology is to raise it to the status of a faculty, school, or university, in combination with music performance (as in Austria's three music universities). (Post-) Modern musicology has the character of mini-university in which the approaches, methods, findings, and theories of a large number of university disciplines are applied to musical questions. The parent disciplines - anthropology, history, cultural studies, physics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, physiology, computing - are not unequal in academic importance or social relevance. In a music (ology) faculty, school, or university, it is possible to represent a wide range of musicological subdisciplines and afford them appropriate minority rights. This may be the most fruitful structural basis for an open, forward-looking, self-critical, dynamic, pluralistic musicology. A level musicological playing field? I argued above that the sciences are not intrinsically more important than the humanities - or viceversa. Many academics on both sides of the humanities-sciences divide may take issue with this claim, believing themselves to be superior. Scientists may be so sure of their superiority that they have no need to talk about it. They may http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM


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tactfully avoid saying anything negative about the humanities, while at the same time behaving as if the sciences are inherently superior; the ambiguity of the English word "science", usually meaning Naturwissenschaft but sometimes more generally Wissenschaft (as if the two were the same thing!), may be regarded as a reflection of this form of arrogance. They may ignore humanities scholarship that is directly relevant to their research, as if it did not exist. For example, international Englishlanguage music psychology has tended, at least for the past few decades, to ignore not only most of the relevant research in other musicological subdisciplines, but also historical developments in music psychology itself, especially in Germany before the Second World War. If asked, scientists may try to justify their superiority by citing the great achievements of their predecessors and reminding us that all members of society benefit from technological developments following scientific discoveries. Scientists may present themselves as naive empiricists, unable to convincingly justify their irrational belief in the omnipotence of scientific methods. Scientists may also forget the importance of culture for humanity in general and for their own lives and values in particular. They may forget the enormous threats now hanging over the world as a result of scientific "progress". They may also forget that since they are seeing science from the inside and the humanities from the outside, they are not objective (in the scientific sense!) and, for this reason, may be overestimating the importance of science and underestimating the importance of humanities. Humanities scholars may also claim superiority, but for different reasons. The 20th-Century dominance of the sciences has given the humanities an inferiority complex. The subliminal feelings of inadequacy shared by humanities scholars seems to be proportional to the small amounts of funding that they tend to attract from both public and private sources. Perhaps they are afraid, deep down, that the scientists might indeed be fundamentally superior (untrue, of course) or that their inability to understand and apply scientific methods and ways of thinking will one day be exposed (even though humanities scholars evidently do not need scientific skills any more than scientists need humanities skills). Humanities scholars may hide their feelings of inadequacy behind a shroud of arrogance or important-sounding language. Or they may attempt to reclaim the high ground by playing power games with their scientific colleagues. Thus, many historical musicologists continue to believe that the humanities in general, and historical musicology in particular (more precisely: the notated music of Western cultural elites) are central to musicology, just as they were in the 19th Century; the ambiguity of the word "musicology", which in spite of an extremely eventful century of musicological expansion and diversification can still mean either "all research about all music" or "history of notated music of Western cultural elites", may be regarded as a reflection of this arrogance (consider the titles and content of journals such as Acta musicologica, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Musicological Research, Journal of Musicology, Musikforschung, Revue de Musicologie, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft). Of course, the notated music of Western cultural elites is no more important or aesthetically valuable than other kinds of music - at least not in any fundamental sense (Cook, 1998) - and the discipline of history is no more important (again, in any fundamental sense) than other disciplines such as anthropology or the parent disciplines of systematic musicology. It is important for the future development of musicology to expose and deconstruct all such tacit assumptions of relative importance. Musicology can only reach its full potential if a space is created within which all musically relevant disciplines can work both together and separately. A precondition for productive collaboration is a level playing field in which all musically relevant disciplines are regarded as equally important. Within universities, music and musicology tend to be regarded as fair-weather activities. When there is not enough to go around, areas perceived to be fundamentally important (such as the sciences, medicine, and economics) tend to get the largest remaining slices. The humanities, to which musicology is perceived to belong, often feel like they are getting the leftovers. Musicologists can respond constructively to this situation by pursuing the following long-term strategies: Structure. Adapt the internal structure of musicology - including the organisation of departments, societies, conferences, and journals - so that the distribution of subdisciplines within them reflects the corresponding distribution of current international research. Reclaim those areas of musicology that have temporarily been lost or marginalized, and re-integrate them. http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM

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Quality and collegiality. Develop and promote efficient, effective quality control mechanisms (such as anonymous peer review) and constructive interdisciplinary communication in all musicological research and teaching. This is the best way to promote clear, sharp thinking in musicology and, in that way, to promote musicology both locally and globally. Or put another way: the best way to threaten the existence of a department is to allow irrational forms of communication and aggressive behaviours to develop, and then to expose colleagues in other departments to that irrationality and aggression over a protracted period. Such a situation can be avoided in the long term by strategically promoting collegiality and the objective expert control of academic quality in both research and teaching. Interdisciplinarity. Demonstrate how humanities and sciences (including social and information sciences) can work together productively within musicology, in order to formulate the most plausible and useful answers to musically interesting questions, as a contribution to a broader understanding of the human condition, to enhance quality of life and promote human survival, and as a model of interdisciplinary productivity for other disciplines. In this structure, there may be little point in maintaining the problematic category of "systematic musicology". It may be preferable to refer directly to the smaller, better-defined subdisciplines of music acoustics, music psychology and so on. A more open structure is more likely to promote interactions both within and between the humanities and the sciences. Continuity. Strive to reach these goals slowly but surely, respecting valuable traditions. If something is already working, don't fix it. Acknowledgement I am grateful to Reinhard Kopiez, Steve Larson, Bruno Nettl, Caroline Traube and an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions. Literature Adler, Guido (1885). Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft. Vierteljahresschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 1, 5-20. Becker, Judith (1986). Is Western art music superior? Musical Quarterly, 72, 341-359. Clarke, Eric, & Cook, Nicholas (Eds.) (2004). Empirical musicology: Aims, methods, prospects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cook, Nicholas (1998). Music: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dahlhaus, Carl (1997). Musikwissenschaft und Systematische Musikwissenschaft. In C. Dahlhaus & H. de la Motte-Haber (Eds.), Systematische Musikwissenschaft. Laaber, Germany: Laaber-Verlag. Dilthey, Wilhelm (1883). Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Versuch einer Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte. Leipzig: Teubner. Elschek, Oskar (1993). Systematische Musikwissenschaft und Persönlichkeitsgeschichte. Systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1/2, 309-338. Ericsson, K. Anders (Ed.) (1996). The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum . http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/SMW.HTM


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Fricke, Jobst Peter (2003). Systemische Musikwissenschaft. In K. W. Niemöller & B. Gätjen (Eds.), Perspektiven und Methoden einer Systemischen Musikwissenschaft (pp. 13-23). Frankfurt: Lang. Hempel, Carl Gustav (1942). The function of general laws of history. Journal of Philosophy, 39, 3548. Holtmeier, Ludwig (2004). From 'Musiktheorie' to 'Tonsatz': National socialism and German music theory after 1945. Music Analysis, 23, 245-266. Honing, Henkjan (2004). The comeback of systematic musicology: New empiricism and the cognitive revolution. Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie [Dutch Journal of Music Theory], 9(3), 241-244. http://www.nici.kun.nl/mmm/papers/honing-2004f.pdf


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Pinker, Steven (1997). How the mind works. London: Allen Lane. Schneider, Albrecht (1993). Systematische Musikwissenschaft: Traditionen, Ansätze, Aufgaben. Systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1/2, 145-180. Schumacher, R. (2003). "Systematische Musikwissenschaft": Eine Stellungnahme aus der Perspektive der Musikethnologie. In K. W. Niemöller & B. Gätjen (Eds.), Perspektiven und Methoden einer Systemischen Musikwissenschaft (pp. 41-48). Frankfurt: Lang. Windelband, W. (1894). Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft. Strassburg: Heitz.

Richard Parncutt, Department of Musicology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Graz

Honing, Henkjan (2006). On the growing role of observation, formalization and experimental method in musicology. Empirical Musicology Review, 1 (1). https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/21901/1/EMR000002a-honing.pdf Howe, Michael J. A. and Davidson, Jane W. and Sloboda, John A. (1998). Innate talents: Reality or myth? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 399-442. http://cogprints.org/656/00/innate.htm

Huron, David (1999). The new empiricism: Systematic musicology in a postmodern age. Lecture 3 from the 1999 Ernest Bloch Lectures. http://musiccog.ohiostate.edu/Music220/Bloch.lectures/3.Methodology.html Jiranek, Jaroslav (1993). Innerdisziplinäre Beziehungen der Musikwissenschaft. Systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1/2, 128-130. Kant, Immanuel (1781). Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Riga: Hartknoch. Kramer, Lawrence (1995). Classical music and postmodern knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Leman, Marc, & Schneider, Albrecht (1997). Systematic, cognitive and historical approaches in musicology. In M. Leman (Ed.), Music, Gestalt, and computing (pp. 13-29). Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Motte-Haber, Helga de la (1997). Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Systematischen Musikwissenschaft. In C. Dahlhaus & H. de la Motte-Haber (Eds.), Systematische Musikwissenschaft (pp. 1-24). Laaber, Germany: Laaber-Verlag. Parncutt, Richard (2002). Interdisciplinary balance, international collaboration, and the future of (German) (historical) musicology. In A. Edler und S. Meine (Eds.), Musik, Wissenschaft und Ihre Vermittlung: Bericht zur Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung (Hannover, Germany, '01) (pp. 42-51). Augsburg: Wissner. http://www-gewi.unigraz.at/staff/parncutt/publications/Pa02_Musicology.pdf Parncutt, Richard (2004). Aims and ethos of CIM04. In R. Parncutt, A. Kessler, & F. Zimmer (Eds.), Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology: Abstracts (pp. 12-23). Graz, Austria: Khil. http://wwwgewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/publications/CimAbstracts_12-23.pdf Parncutt, Richard (2005). Breve storia delle musicologia multi- e inter-disciplinare. Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale, 10 (2), 10-14. (Introduction to the special issue "Musica e ricerca interdisciplinare" edited by Mario Baroni containing papers presented at the CIM04, the first Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, Graz 2004) http://www-gewi.unigraz.at/staff/parncutt/publications/Pa05RATM.doc


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Over de toekomst van de muziekwetenschap Kort gezegd: die toekomst zie ik zonder zorgen tegemoet, afgezien alleen van het verslechterende economische klimaat dat voor afgestudeerden in de kunsten cultuurwetenschappen niet veel goeds belooft. Als je de vakbladen en congresberichten ook maar enigszins bijhoudt zie je dat ze vol staan met nieuwe ideeën en uitwisseling met andere disciplines. De muziekwetenschap heeft nog nooit zo gebloeid als nu. Waar Goethe klaagde dat hij niet meer het gehele veld van wetenschappen kon beheersen, is het nu zelfs zo dat alleen het veld van de muziekwetenschap door zijn pluriformiteit al bijna onoverzienbaar is geworden. Op haar verleden kan de muziekwetenschap trots zijn. Historisch gezien en in vele culturen begon ze als een theoretische discipline, een nog steeds springlevende tak van wetenschap vol nieuwe ontwikkelingen. Het begin van onze huidige muziekwetenschap, waarin die theoretische kant is geïncorporeerd, ligt bij de de eerste muziek-geschiedschrijvingen in de 18e eeuw; gedurende de 19e en 20e eeuw ontwikkelde zich daaruit de historische muziekwetenschap. Het doel was aanvankelijk te begrijpen hoe de muziek van het heden - die als de top van de piramide werd beschouwd - tot stand was gekomen, en dat bracht met zich mee: de ontsluiting van het oude materiaal door middel van bronnenonderzoek en -evaluatie, met als gevolg verantwoorde uitgaven volgens kritische methoden en -analyse. Nog steeds behoort dat tot de belangrijke bezigheden van de historische muziekwetenschap want er komt nog altijd nieuw en interessant materiaal boven water en ook ouder werk moet vaak worden herzien (zie bijvoorbeeld de nieuwe Josquin-editie). Later, vooral in de 20e eeuw, ontwikkelde zich ook een oor voor de esthetische waarde van die oude muziek en voor de interpretatie ervan. Er zijn talloze voorbeelden van te geven. Een uit mijn eigen gebied: Machauts werken waren allang in een editie verschenen, en nog wel op zeer verantwoorde en kritische wijze, door Friedrich Ludwig, voordat de esthetische waardering voor zijn werk op gang kwam, die eigenlijk pas sinds circa 1950 is ontstaan. In die zin was de oude muziekwetenschap een wetenschap puur om het weten en om de bevrediging van de nieuwsgierigheid (Ludwig zelf had vermoedelijk weinig gevoel voor de schoonheid van Machauts muziek); uiteindelijk heeft dat geresulteerd in de ontsluiting van wat een prachtig repertoire blijkt te zijn, dat ons culturele én wetenschappelijke leven zeer heeft verrijkt. Nu, vandaag de dag, bevind ik mij in een discussie met collega’s over de hele wereld uit zowel de muziekwetenschap als de romanistiek over de analyse en de betekenis en interpretatie van die werken. Niettemin moet ik altijd terug naar de bronnen waar ook die scrupuleuze oude editie op gebaseerd is, om te kunnen begrijpen hoe Machaut zélf bepaalde denkbeelden door middel van de notatie in zijn composities heeft gesymboliseerd; de basiskennis die nodig was om de editie te maken, het 19e-eeuwse ambacht dus, moet ik ook nu nog steeds beheersen om mijn interpretatie een stevig fundament te geven. Immers: historische muziekwetenschap baseert zich, als zij muziek uit het verleden wil interpreteren, noodzakelijkerwijs op ontcijfering en analyse van het genoteerde, andere middelen hebben wij niet voor zover het muziek uit het vroegere verleden betreft. Door middel van interpretatie, gebaseerd op die notationele analyse én op context-onderzoek, kunnen we trachten duidelijk te maken waarin de betekenis en de waarde van die muziek schuilt, een oor en oog krijgen voor andere denkwijzen; en dat lijkt mij een prachtig streven, ook voor de toekomst. Ook het contact met, en de reflectie op, de uitvoerings-praktijk speelt een grote rol in het onderzoeken van de in muziek besloten denkbeelden en de esthetische waarde van die muziek. De historische muziekwetenschap heeft er dus voor gezorgd en zorgt er nog steeds voor dat wij ons vandaag de


dag kunnen omringen met werken uit het hele verleden van de westerse muziek, een situatie die nooit eerder is voorgekomen. Historische muziekwetenschap is nu maar een onderdeel van een veel breder vak; muziekwetenschap onderscheidt zich van veel kunsten cultuurstudies door de enorme breedte van haar terrein. Binnen elk van haar subdisciplines is er bovendien een grote diversiteit aan benaderingen, zowel van de positivistische - de documentaire en metende - kant als van de interpretatieve. Je ziet het ook aan de vakbladen waarvan sommige zich vooral op theorie en interpretatiestrategieën toeleggen, andere op middeleeuwenstudies of de 19e eeuw, weer andere op niet-westerse muziekculturen etc. Het spectrum van onderwerpen en benaderingen is zo groot dat zelfs de goedvoorziene Utrechtse bibliotheek het zich niet meer kan permitteren alles aan te schaffen wat er jaarlijks verschijnt. Ik heb dus totaal geen angst dat we zouden achterlopen ten opzichte van andere vakken; integendeel, juist het bestaan van die verscheidenheid lijkt mij een groot goed. Als ik al een algemene tendens zou moeten aanwijzen is dat die van een groeiende uitwisseling tussen de verschillende subdisciplines. Ik wil hier geen titels of namen laten vallen, maar maak één uitzondering, de essaybundel Rethinking music, alweer 5 jaar oud, die een groot aantal uiterst actuele teksten bevat door meer dan twintig verschillende auteurs over tal van onderwerpen, een stimulerend boek met recente gedachten en discussies over het vak en over mogelijke uitwisseling van methoden. Waar zie ik dan nog een uitdaging voor de toekomst? Ik kan zeker niet voor alle subdisciplines spreken maar wat historische muziekwetenschap betreft geldt dit een oud zeer, al veel vaker aan de orde gesteld: de publieke discussie over muziek, met name de omgang met de canon en het zogeheten ijzeren repertoire. Er bestaat een belangrijk discrepantie tussen het veld dat de muziekwetenschap bestudeert en het repertoire dat bij het grote publiek geliefd is, een soort omgekeerde pyramide: een breed spectrum van onderwerpen die worden bestudeerd, een vrij smal segment daarvan dat je in het dagelijkse concertleven tegenkomt. Het ontstaan en de ontwikkeling van het repertoire zijn vrij ingewikkeld (in genoemd boek staat daarover een zeer zinnig artikel dat tot verder onderzoek uitnodigt). Heel ongenuanceerd gezegd: vanaf ca 1800 ontstond in het concertleven een repertoire van veelgespeelde en daardoor klassieke werken, dat zich maar zeer langzaam heeft uitgebreid, aanvankelijk eerder naar voren dan naar achteren: nieuwe werken en nieuwe componisten werden er eerder in opgenomen dan oudere, enkele uitzonderingen (als Palestrina, Bach en Handel) daargelaten. Monteverdi geldt vandaag de dag voor het grote publiek nog steeds als enigszins bijzonder, al zijn zijn opera’s dan inmiddels wél tot het vaste repertoire doorgedrongen. Er is een zeker verschil tussen wat we de canon noemen en het gangbare repertoire: componisten als Schönberg of Monteverdi behoren wel tot de canon maar uitvoering van hun werk is nog altijd geen routinezaak. Nog nooit eerder in de geschiedenis van het het muziekleven was er een zo grote prominentie van muziek die een of meer eeuwen geleden gecomponeerd is. Het begon in de achttiende eeuw met enkele concerten voor liefhebbers van ‘ancient music’ terwijl het gros van de publieke concerten hedendaagse muziek bevatte, maar nu hebben we de ongewone situatie dat het repertoire, ja zelfs vrijwel de hele aankleding van de orkesten en het concertgedrag gefossiliseerd zijn in de 19e- en begin 20e-eeuwse muziekpraktijk, met voornamelijk muziek van meer dan 100 jaar oud. Recente muziek is iets voor een kleine groep liefhebbers (afgezien natuurlijk van de popmuziek); een wat groter publiek zoekt zijn heil in oude muziek, vooral barok en soms nog iets vroeger, terwijl de grote meerderheid blijft bij het


‘symfonisch’ repertoire (overigens is het geheel nog maar een klein segment van de totale muziekmarkt). Als je alleen zou uitgaan van de vraag van het grote publiek, zou er voor de muziekwetenschap niet zo heel veel meer te doen zijn dan het actueel houden van de New Grove (en de MGG voor de weinigen die zich niet door de Duitse taal laten afschrikken). De historische muziekwetenschap heeft, met andere woorden, een enorme nieuwe vleugel aan het museum gebouwd maar het publiek wandelt grotendeels rond in de al bestaande zalen van ca 1700-1920 (niet dat die niet de moeite waard zijn, overigens). Dat is jammer en ik voel een zekere jalouzie ten opzichte van de beeldende kunsten waar het publiek een minder beperkte belangstelling heeft, al zijn er ook daar populaire en minder populaire kunstenaars. Naar mijn idee is het concertpubliek behoudender dan het publiek voor beeldende kunst. Het lijkt mij daarom dat een van onze taken ligt in het nieuwsgierig maken van een groter aantal mensen naar zowel de enorme erfenis die wij uit het verleden hebben als naar nieuwe muziek, én in het ontwikkelen van oren daarvoor. Natuurlijk gebeurt dat al voor een deel: een goed voorbeeld is het zogeheten oude-muziekcircuit waar wetenschap en uitvoerende kunst lange tijd vruchtbaar hebben samengewerkt. Helaas lijkt die beweging haast weer enigszins op haar retour of vercommercialiseerd te zijn: je hoort nu meer ‘vernieuwde’ 19e eeuwse muziek dan 16e of 15eeeuwse (om over eerdere muziek maar te zwijgen). De brede informatie en publieke discussie over muziek zijn geringer dan die over beeldende kunst en literatuur; ze betreffen doorgaans recensies van uitvoeringen, interviews met beroemde solisten en ensceneringen van opera’s, maar gaan te zelden in op de werken zelf. Algemeen toegankelijke artikelen en aankondigingen van interessante werken, mét een goede toelichting over de achtergronden ervan en over de manier van luisteren, kunnen de waarde van andere muziek dan het gangbare repertoire onder de aandacht te brengen en het publiek informeren (een recent voorbeeld was een stuk over Kagels ‘Zweimann-Orchester’ en de bespeling daarvan). Ik blijf hopen dat op de wetenschaps- en cultuurpagina’s van de kranten regelmatig nieuwsgierigmakende stukken over muziek en muziekwetenschap zullen gaan verschijnen. Er wordt minstens evenveel naar muziek geluisterd als er gelezen wordt; boekenbijlagen zijn er vele, maar muziekbijlagen aanzienlijk minder. Het lastigst is het ontwikkelen van een toegankelijke taal waarin toch enkele elementaire muzikale begrippen hun plaats kunnen hebben. Moeilijkheid is dat muziek, net als de wiskunde, op een afsprakensysteem berust, en een extra-complicatie is dat dat afsprakensysteem niet door de eeuwen heen gelijk gebleven is; verder dat werken die intuitief als de mooiste worden ervaren tegelijkertijd vaak de lastigste zijn om in eenvoudige termen uit te leggen. Toch moet het mogelijk zijn, als tenminste de inspanning van beide kanten komt. Niemand klaagt als er op de wetenschapspagina’s wiskundige, natuurkundige of medische zaken worden uitgelegd met een daarbij behorend begrippen-apparaat, maar zo gauw het om muziek gaat zie je bij de redacties een huivering over de rug lopen. Stel je de kunsthistoricus voor die moet proberen een schilderij te beschrijven zonder het over vormen of kleuren te hebben; toch is dat vaak onze situatie. (Laatst werd overigens geschreven over ‘wellustig samensmeltende sexten’: zou dat een manier kunnen zijn?) De universiteit zou die discussie kunnen stimuleren door ook deze vorm van publiceren wat hoger te waarderen in de wetenschappelijke output. Een mede-oorzaak voor de gebrekkige communicatie tussen muziekwetenschap en publiek is de geleidelijke verdwijning van een cultuur van zelf-muziekmaken, alleen of in gezelschap, die vroeger de basis moet hebben gevormd van de maatschappelijke discussie over muziek. Deze actieve muziekcultuur is grotendeels vervangen door de passieve van radio en CD


waardoor vrijwel uitsluitend vastgelegde, ‘versteende’, topuitvoeringen te horen zijn. Op zichzelf zijn opnamen een groot goed, maar juist het zelf actief muziek beleven op verschillende niveaus is een groot gemis dat, denk ik, een basis aan de discussie heeft doen ontvallen. Sinds het begin van de 20e eeuw is het mogelijk om steeds weer dezelfde uitvoering te horen, gefixeerd in het barnsteen van de opname. Het lijkt daardoor alsof de permanentie die eigen is aan genoteerde maar nog niet klinkende muziek, dus het objectmatige en museale aspect van muziek, het proces - de levende uitvoering met haar eenmaligheid en onherhaalbaarheid - is gaan vervangen, met verwarrende gevolgen voor de beschouwing van muziek. De invulling van dat gat is moeilijker en door de muziekwetenschap niet te beïnvloeden; daar ligt meer een taak voor het onderwijs. Als de muziekwetenschapper zelf ervaring heeft met actief muziek maken is dat niettemin een goed ding; het confronteert hem met de directheid en onomkeerbaarheid van de uitvoerende kant van muziek. Men is zo gewend het knopje aan te zetten waarna de muziek zich afspeelt zoals verwacht, dat wel eens uit het oog verloren wordt dat een musicus zelf, noot voor noot, zijn muzikale betoog voortbrengt en dat er in de realisatie van een partituur duizenden keuzemomenten zijn die per keer een verschillend, onverwacht en onvoorspelbaar resultaat opleveren. In recentere publicaties wordt trouwens meer en meer aandacht besteed aan de uitvoerende, processuele kant van de muziek in samenhang met haar analyse (zie ook Frits Noskes inaugurele rede aan de UvA, Forma formans uit 1969, waarin hij het belang van analyse van muziek als proces al benadrukte). In de zin van: ‘op grond van waarnemingen voorspellingen doen’, zie ik echter geen grote taak voor onze wetenschap; voorspelbare muziek of voorspelbare uitvoeringen zijn doorgaans niet de interessantste. Er ligt, kortom, een uitdaging voor het vak in de opdracht de vele aspecten van muziek die zij bestudeert dichter bij het publiek te brengen en andere mogelijke manieren van luisteren onder de aandacht te brengen; verschillende soorten muziek: niet-westerse of oude westerse, vragen immers om verschillende luisterhoudingen. Die communicatie is noodzakelijk, omdat onze basis in de maatschappij ligt. En we zíjn absoluut nodig: er wordt enorm veel naar muziek geluisterd, vele luisteraars zijn geïnteresseerd in uitleg en het mankeert dus vooral aan de overdracht via de publicistiek. Een teken van die belangstelling: een toch niet al te gemakkelijk boek als Christoph Wolffs Bach: The learned musician vloog de winkels uit. Nieuw is mijn verhaal bepaald niet; maar het probleem is nog steeds actueel. Wat onze opleiding betreft voel ik eveneens een verantwoordelijkheid betreffende de binding met de maatschappij: onze studenten, althans de meeste, moeten op een gegeven moment werk vinden en daartoe dienen ze beslagen ten ijs te komen. Met andere woorden: ze moeten het basismateriaal en de basistechnieken kennen en er mee om kunnen gaan; en alleen al dat basismateriaal is enorm. Die vaardigheden en kennis, het handwerk dus, moeten zij hier leren, op zo veelzijdig mogelijke wijze. Vrijwel ieder artikel in de vakbladen en in bijvoorbeeld genoemd boek (Rethinking music) gaat ervan uit dat die basale kennis aanwezig is; daarzonder worden zulke teksten onbegrijpelijk. Pas op grond daarvan kunnen studenten leren denken over het vak, reflectie uitoefenen op de methode die ze gebruikt hebben. Slechts weinigen van de afgestudeerden zullen in het academische milieu en de daar heersende discussies terechtkomen; velen meer worden werkzaam in de cultuursector van de maatschappij en daar zullen zij, hoop ik, de uitdaging waarover ik hiervoor sprak kunnen opnemen. Jacques Boogaart


Transitional Musicology: A Snapshot From The Late Noughties Having absorbed postmodernism (a.k.a. ‘New Musicology’), historical musicology in the early 21st century appears poised for the ‘next big thing’ in the scholarly product cycle. A number of possibilities present themselves: Performance research already began to make a certain impact; interfaces between music, the human being, and technologies in the widest possible sense (e.g., Web 2.0-level research tools; music perception; the mechanics and aesthetics of digital composition) seem due for serious consideration. Meanwhile, a voluntary abrogation of history in societies at large, combined with the ongoing erosion of the Austro-Germanic model of music aesthetics in vast parts of the market, are quickly turning entire areas of musicology into endangered territories, throwing the long-term sustainability of the field in a post-colonial, globalised world into serious question. Nothing short of a fundamental genetic transposition seems needed to ensure survival. Karl Kügle earned his PhD in Musicology from New York University (1993) with a study of the late fourteenth-century manuscript Ivrea 115. Having held teaching and research posts in the US, Belgium, Germany, and at the University of Hong Kong, he was appointed to the Chair in the History of Music before 1800 at Utrecht University in 2004. His research interests include late medieval music and manuscripts from France, the Low Countries, Italy and Cyprus, as well as the epistemology and historiography of music and musicology from the late eighteenth century to the present.



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Een poldermodel voor de toekomstige muziekwetenschappen?1 emile wennekes Op het gevaar af dat ik niet alleen onderstreep dat de muziekwetenschap een ‘verspätete Disziplin’ is, maar dat wij ons tevens bedienen van intussen anachronistische metaforen, heb ik deze bijdrage toch maar ‘Een poldermodel voor de toekomstige muziekwetenschappen?’ gedoopt. Zoals we weten maakt de muziekwetenschap hier te lande in toenemende mate deel uit van geesteswetenschappelijke constellaties. In navolging van de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek en de Universiteit van Amsterdam kent ook de Universiteit Utrecht – in ieder geval op papier – nu een faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen. Intussen omgedoopt tot subfaculteit existeert ook ‘Letteren’ de jure en de facto nog steeds, en daarvan maakt muziekwetenschap nog altijd deel uit. Aan de ene kant biedt de ruimbemeten multidisciplinaire academische context van de tegenwoordige geesteswetenschappen kansen. En: zicht op nieuwe, ongekende horizonten, door intellectuele gedachtewisselingen en allianties met de nieuwe en oude zusterdisciplines. Waarbij we niet uit het oog mogen verliezen dat de musicologie ook in andere academische velden, neem de bèta- en de gammawetenschappen, haar natuurlijke gesprekspartners heeft, of weer zou moeten krijgen. Dus zo ruim bemeten is die context ook weer niet. Maar het aardige – voor sommigen overigens een doorn in het methodologisch oog – is dat veel geesteswetenschappelijk onderzoek een subjectieve kant heeft, of anders geformuleerd: dat ‘subject, object en methode niet strikt gescheiden zijn, maar in elkaar grijpen’, zoals de taalfilosoof Martin Stokhof het formuleerde.2

1

Inter- of multi-, of wellicht beter: intradisciplinair onderzoek waar kunsten, taal-, geschieden godsdienstwetenschappen elkaar naderen is bepaald niet nieuw. Twintig jaar geleden kreeg deze interdisciplinaire benadering vanuit verschillende, vaak principieel subjectieve uitgangspunten nog eens een nieuwe impuls door uiteenlopende sleutelfiguren als Joseph Kerman en Susan McClary. Voor de uitwisseling van methoden en theorieën lijken de wanden van de onderscheiden disciplines in theorie meer dan ooit semi-permeabel. Of muziekwetenschap zich in deze interdisciplinaire omgeving voldoende staande kan houden, is evenwel een terechte vraag, die ook door Sander van Maas werd gesteld in zijn pleidooi voor een (in mijn optiek wat al te) ‘radicale musicologie’.3 Of interdisciplinariteit voor de muziekwetenschap zal leiden tot méér dan incidentele gevoelens van Aha! of van imitatiegedrag op het gebied van theorie en methode – zoals dat eerder bijvoorbeeld gebeurde bij de semiotici, die taalkundige modellen toepasten op de muziek, maar daardoor wel tot nieuwe gezichtspunten kwamen – blijft de vraag. En soms zou je wensen dat van elders geïmporteerde concepten binnen de muziekwetenschap wat verder zouden worden uitgebouwd. Dat het bijvoorbeeld niet blijft bij de constatering dat een literair-receptietheoretische keten voor minstens één schakel tekort schiet – namelijk de uitvoerder als de subjectieve lezer van een notentekst – maar dat daar dan ook meer structureel wat mee wordt gedaan. De muziekwetenschap heeft tot dusverre nog niet bewezen een science-pilot, een academische gidsdiscipline te zijn, of dit zelfs maar te

Deze tekst is de bijdrage van de auteur aan het Colloquium Muziekwetenschap aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, 9 december 2004, dat deel uitmaakte van een serie “De toekomst van de muziekwetenschappen”. Eerdere bijdragen aan deze colloquia zijn gepubliceerd in: TvM 9/3 (2004) en 10/1 (2005).

2

NWO-Geestesoog 4 (december 2004), p. 1.

3

Sander van Maas, ‘Radicale musicologie’, in: TvM 9/3 (2004), p. 238 e.v. tijdschrift voor muziektheorie, jaargang 10, nummer 3 (2005)


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discussie - een poldermodel voor de toekomstige muziekwetenschappen?

ambiëren. De vraag is daarbij echter meteen of dat wel voorwaarde is om een zinvolle dialoog met derden aan te kunnen gaan. Aan de andere kant loopt de muziekwetenschap door de schaalvergroting van de directe academische context van de geesteswetenschappen misschien meer dan ooit het risico een etiket te worden dat voor de buitenwacht een al te uniforme benadering van subject, object en methode suggereert. Al decennia geleden werd er voor geopteerd de wetenschappelijke studie van muziek juist als een faculteit sui generis te beschouwen, omdat zij ‘in zich zoovele ver uiteenlopende disciplinen’ verenigt. Aldus K.Ph. Bernet Kempers bij zijn rede, die hij in 1937 uitsprak bij het aanvaarden van het ambt van lector in de muziekwetenschap aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam.4 Politiek en financieel is zo’n zelfstandige faculteit utopisch, maar de opmerking attendeert wel op een problematisch punt. Het musicologische landschap is er de laatste decennia trouwens alleen maar pluriformer op geworden. De aloude drieslag van de historische, de etnomusicologische en de al door Guido Adler gepropageerde systematische muziekwetenschap is aan het verwateren, omdat de systematische invalshoek een dusdanige wildgroei vertoont dat herdefiniëring of zelfs herverkaveling op zijn plaats is. De systematische muziekwetenschap is hoe langer hoe meer een containerbegrip geworden, dat vooral vanuit een negatieve identiteitsbepaling lijkt uit te dijen – alles wat niet strikt onder de noemer etno- of historisch te vatten is, wordt automatisch toebedeeld aan de systematici. In arren moede zijn intussen ook de ‘new musicology’ en het ‘nieuwe empiricisme’ systematisch verankerd. Enige ordening kan hierin geen kwaad, en gelukkig worden daartoe ook pogingen ondernomen. Henkjan Honing stelde in deze discussiereeks al ordeningen voor vanuit cognitief, empirisch of computationeel gestructureerde vraagstellingen.5 Evident is dat er tal van musicologische subdisicplines zijn ontstaan, die elk weer een ander facet van de muziek, van de muzikale gebruiksaanwijzing 4 5

die wij partituur noemen, van haar uitvoeringen, of van de productieve, publieke of cognitieve receptie tot onderwerp heeft. De muziekwetenschap is in object en methode steeds meer verkokerd aan het raken. De meervoudsvorm muziekwetenschappen (of zelfs de naam ‘muziekenwetenschap’, om de grote variëteit van mogelijke bevragingen aan één enkel muziek‘stuk’ te onderstrepen) ter aanduiding van onze discipline lijkt meer opportuun dan ooit tevoren. Waar er tot voor kort een vrij en vrijmoedig grensverkeer bestond tussen de historische en de systematische muziekwetenschap en deze feitelijk moeiteloos methodisch in elkaar overvloeiden,6 ontstaan er binnen de tweede categorie steeds meer afscheidingsbewegingen, die soms – zo lijkt het althans – met sardonisch genoegen grenspostjes inrichten, van waaruit sterk normatief naar de omliggende gebieden wordt gekeken. En elk meet zich een eigen taal aan, die voor een belendende cultuur vaak maar lastig te doorgronden is. Het kan helemaal geen kwaad dat er een lappendeken bestaat van verschillende benaderingswijzen en opvattingen. Zoals men zich binnen de muziektheorie tegenwoordig zonder veel problemen kan presenteren als een Schenkeriaans analist, als een semioticus, als een motivisch analist of wat dies meer zij, zo kan toch ook de hedendaagse musicoloog zich desgewenst tooien met een fraai adjectief, dat de ene keer meer dan de andere keer steekhoudend is of haar musicologisch credo afficheert. Als ik nu zelf kleur zou moeten bekennen, zou ik opteren voor een eclectische musicologie, één die zichzelf niet op voorhand aan een stelsel bindt, maar die al naar gelang de vragen of zelfs deelvragen die men beantwoord wil zien een methode of een invalshoek kiest. De varianten kunnen gerust naast elkaar blijven bestaan, met aan het ene instituut die kwaliteiten en specialismen en aan het volgende weer andere. En laten we dan ook op internationale schaal meer structureel gaan samenwerken – dit colloquium is daar feitelijk een mooi voorbeeld van. Ik deel overigens ten volle de kritiek

K.Ph. Bernet Kempers, Muziekwetenschap in den loop der tijden, Rotterdam 1937, p. 29. Henkjan Honing, “The comeback of systematic musicology: new empiricism and the cognitive revolution”, TvM 9/3 (2004), p. 242.

6

Zie bijv. Paul Op de Coul en Frits de Haen, “Musicology in the nineties”, in: E. Zürcher en T. Langedorff (red.), Humanities in the Nineties. A view from the Netherlands, Amsterdam/Lisse 1990, pp. 153-174.

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die doorklinkt in de helaas wat in een voetnoot weggemoffelde opmerking van Sander van Maas, dat het toch wel saillant is dat de discussie van dit colloquium niet gepubliceerd wordt in het enige nog bestaande musicologische vakblad in Nederland, het Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis. Maar dat heeft met geheel andere conventies en principes te maken. Ik ben er geen voorstander van om enkele benaderingswijzen – veelal betreft dat de historische invalshoek – op voorhand te willen afserveren ten gunste van een nieuwere of andere benaderingswijze. Laten we een Franse Revolutie binnen de (Nederlandse) muziekwetenschap buiten de deur proberen te houden. Want ook voor de meer actuele uitingen binnen de systematische muziekwetenschap geldt het aloude adagium dat men slechts gezeten op de schouders van de personen uit het verleden – ik vermijd nu maar met opzet het woord reuzen – verder kan zien. De meer actuele inzichten bouwen tenslotte, al is het maar ten dele, voort op wat de historische muziekwetenschap met haar voor sommigen oubollige of achterhaalde filologische aanpak heeft voortgebracht. Uitgaande van de aloude definitie van de American Musicological Society onderstreepte Henkjan Honing dat de musicologische gerichtheid op de muziek als (autonome) kunstvorm of -object langzaam verschoven is in de richting van muziek als een proces, waarin uitvoerder, luisteraar en de muziek als ‘sound’ een centrale rol spelen. Opvallend is dat hij niet meteen de gelegenheid te baat neemt om de traditionele gerichtheid van de muziekwetenschap op de kunstmuziek te attaqueren. Want op dat gebied heeft Nederland nog heel wat terrein te winnen, vergeleken met het buitenland, waar de popular music studies academisch intussen stevig in het zadel zitten. “Every music is different, but every music is music, too”, luidt het inclusieve credo van iemand als Nicholas Cook.7 De impact van het cultuurmaatschappelijk functioneren van muziek is in veel gevallen niet te begrijpen als we hierbij niet ook, en onmiddellijk, de uitingen van de populaire cultuur betrekken. Herman Sabbe had in zijn betoog over een antropologie van de wes-

terse muziekcultuur slechts een korte inleiding nodig om de vinger op de zere plek te leggen door zich af te vragen “wat is dat: ‘Beethoven’?”8 Is dat een traditionele concertuitvoering, een oude plaatopname, de filmmuziek van Clockwork Orange? Is dat een hardrock cover van Rainbow, is dat een voetbalstadion dat het slotkoor van de Negende meekweelt, of een sample in een song van Michael Jackson? De muziek van Beethoven is kennelijk zo sterk dat die via recyclage- of creatieve receptieprocessen in verschillende maatschappelijke geledingen een functionele rol kan spelen. Beethoven als brug tussen de E- en de U-Musik, tussen hoge, lage, volks-, elite- en massacultuur. De bestudering van de popmuziek gebeurt in ons land, de uitzonderingen ook in Utrecht daargelaten, nog te vaak vanuit sociaal-wetenschappelijke of sociaal-historische vraagstellingen, en veel minder vanuit musicologische. De populaire muziek per se zou veel meer aandacht mogen krijgen, al moeten er dan wel nieuwe, met name analytische methoden worden ontwikkeld om deze op haar muzikale merites te kunnen schatten. Als we de popmuziek serieus nemen, tekenen zich ook daar verschillende terreinen af, die niet eens zoveel verschillen van die van haar oudere zusterdiscipline. Ook hier is een historisch, zelfs esthetisch of antropologisch zwaartepunt denkbaar, dat het fenomeen van het ‘populaire’ problematiseert en dat de populaire muziekuitingen in heden en verleden bestudeert. Daarnaast is er een systematische kant – om dat begrip toch nog maar even vast te houden – die meer muziekanalytisch van aard dient te zijn. En daarbij ontkomen we er op den duur niet aan om zoiets als de sound centraal te stellen, want de structuur en de harmonische progressies blijven vanuit klassiek oogpunt doorgaans toch wat triviaal. Wellicht geeft dat dan aanleiding tot een betere onderverdeling van genres, want het onderscheid tussen E en U, licht en klassiek en ga zo maar door, is voor niemand echt bevredigend. Zeker niet wanneer we ons realiseren dat luisteraar en uitvoerder in toenemende mate culturele omnivoren zijn, die in menige situatie moeiteloos van het ene naar het andere domein omschakelen. Misschien moeten we wel denken aan een onderscheid tussen geproduceerde muziek,

7

Nicholas Cook, Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford 2000, foreword, p.2.

8

Herman Sabbe, ‘All that music’. Een antropologie van de westerse cultuur. Leuven en Amersfoort 1996, p.7 e.v. 277



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discussie - een poldermodel voor de toekomstige muziekwetenschappen?

geïmproviseerde en gecomponeerde muziek. Ook deze begrippen zijn niet voldoende, soit. De kennis die bij de bestudering van de sound wordt opgedaan, kan weer ten nutte komen aan de zusterdiscipline die zich meer richt op de gecomponeerde muziek (als dat begrip hier tenminste als onderscheidend kan standhouden...). Immers, ook bij de bestudering van de muziek van iemand als Stockhausen zou de sonologische analyse van (zoveel-dimensionale) sound nog niet zo gek zijn; wie weet is dat op momenten zelfs zinvoller dan het bestuderen van toonhoogte, -duur en -lengte. Er ligt een wereld open voor de benadering van de sonieke kanten van de muziek, voor de sonic studies. Onderzoek naar de verschuivingen in klankkleur van orkesten in de loop der tijden valt daar evenzeer onder als het onderzoek naar de uniciteit van de sound(s) van The Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, Prince, Björk of Madonna. Tot zover deze losse opmerkingen; het zal duidelijk zijn dat ik het op punten hartgrondig eens ben met de eerdere sprekers, op weer andere punten ben ik het hartgrondig met hen oneens. Op vier, laten we het fronten noemen, zal de muziekwetenschap van de toekomst zich naar mijn idee moeten wapenen; twee domeinen daarvan zijn intern muziekwetenschappelijk te situeren, de andere twee zijn meer extern gericht. Om met die laatste te beginnen: extern disciplinair onderzoek kan zowel binnen als buiten een academische context geschieden. Ik zou in dat laatste geval willen pleiten voor een maatschappelijk betrokken musicologie, een musicologie die zich niet alleen mengt in actuele discussies binnen het muziekleven en het componeren, maar die tevens beargumenteerd stelling neemt ten opzichte van maatschappelijke ontwikkelingen die het muziekleven of de cultuur in het algemeen raken. N’importe of het hierbij gaat om politieke of beleidsmatige plannen met verstrekkende gevolgen, economische spin-off, of om een reflectieve encadrering van uitingen van maatschappelijke of morele onvrede, zoals die bijvoorbeeld manifest wordt in het repertoire van Lange Frans, die zich expliciet afzet tegen zinloos geweld, met de muziek als zijn voertuig. Door zo’n betrokkenheid kan de muziekwetenschap haar maatschappelijke relevantie enigszins (her)vinden; zij ontwikkelt immers

geen levensreddende operatietechnieken of medicijnen, en maakt geen producten die van een hoge economische waarde zijn, terwijl zij toch graag door gelden van de gemeenschap in stand wil worden gehouden. Zonder de academie haar plaats van reflectie te misgunnen of haar positie als intellectueel autonome vrijplaats te willen ontkennen, lijkt mij de ivoren toren-strategie niet de meest aangewezen, of desnoods enige vorm in het huidige tijdsgewricht. Het is en/en. Onder extern disciplinair, maar wel binnen een academische context moeten we de interdisciplinariteit scharen. Ook andere sprekers wezen al op de kansen en verplichtingen die de plaats van muziekwetenschap binnen een geesteswetenschappelijke context met zich meebrengt. En laten we dan ook die andere, eerder genoemde faculteiten niet uit het oog verliezen. Binnen de eigen discipline en intern gericht zal het discours over de herverkaveling van benaderingswijzen en methoden moeten plaatsvinden. En dat bij voorkeur niet vanuit schuttersputjes, maar in decente debatten, en met respect voor elkanders eigen(aardig)heden. Het poldermodel, zeg maar. Binnen de eigen discipline maar extern gericht zal er aandacht moeten zijn en blijven voor de muziekpraktijk. Natuurlijk is het zelf een beetje behendig met een instrument om kunnen gaan een pre, geen must, om zinvolle muziekwetenschappelijke observaties te plegen. Een bioloog hoeft immers ook geen Drosophila te zijn, vooraleer hij iets zinvols kan debiteren over de Drosophila. Maar laten we wel zijn, zo stupide is het natuurlijk ook weer niet dat een musicoloog gevraagd wordt of hij zelf een instrument bespeelt; die vraag zou zelfs overbodig moeten zijn. Van een fietsenmaker verwacht je toch ook dat hij naast het stellen van een diagnose over de staat van je vehikel, zelf ook wel eens zijn been over het wieltuig zwaait? Dat hij daarbij geen Tour de Francewinnaar hoeft te zijn, staat buiten kijf. Een dienstbare opstelling hoeft niet corrumperend te zijn, zoals wel is gesuggereerd. Een levende dialoog met de muziekpraktijk blijft te allen tijde wenselijk. Ook in de opleidingen is het verstandig de praktijk in ogenschouw te houden, en de studenten een aantal praktische vaardigheden mee te geven, en ze dus niet alleen als intellectueel getrainde musicologen de boze wereld in te sturen. De invulling van

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een musicologie die zich manifesteert als een ‘naar de wetenschap verplaatst l’art pour l’art’ was een schrikbeeld, dat Marius Flothuis dertig jaar geleden al schetste in zijn rede bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van gewoon hoogleraar aan wat toen nog heette de Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht.9 Achter dat standpunt kan ik mij nog steeds scharen. Maar los van dit alles, en los van de attitudionele opvattingen, is de toekomst van de muziekwetenschap natuurlijk niet afhankelijk van intellectuele exercities of methodologische richtingen alleen. Zij is daarnaast in hoge mate afhankelijk van de technologische ontwikkelingen, van de mogelijkheden en de onmogelijkheden die deze met zich meebrengen. En daarover kun je wel dromen, maar voorspellingen doen is onmogelijk. (Prof. dr. Emile Wennekes is hoogleraar muziekwetenschap aan de Universiteit Utrecht.)

9

Marius Flothuis, Taken van de hedendaagse musicoloog. Hilversum 1974. 279


Debat over de toekomst van de muziekwetenschappen

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