[Smt-talk] Degree terminology (was Re: Princeton and Theory)

[Nicolas Meeùs]

A few remarks in answer to Art Samplaski's posting:

1) Adler's description of the discipline (1885) counted only two 
subareas. Comparative musicology (that we'd call ethnomusicology today) 
was part of the systematic approach. Adler's subdivision was very much 
akin to Saussure's later opposition between diachronism and synchronism: 
both subareas have roughly the same objects of research, but envisaged 
either from a historical point of view, or from a systematic, synchronic 
one, that envisages things as they contribute to form a system - Adler 
speaks of "laws" of music, which he considers to some extent immutable. 
Adler's systematic musicology also includes that which cannot be 
envisaged from a historical point of view, among which comparative 
musicology.
     To this may be added that, from the start, /Musikwissenschaft/ has 
been more systematic than any other similar discipline. In late-18th and 
early-19th centuries, /Kunstwissenschaft /meant /Kunstgeschichte/, 
History of Art. Yet, Johann Berhard Logier's /System der 
Musik-Wissenschaft/ of 1827, the first work to use the term, is a 
treatise on harmony, continuo and composition - i.e. a sort of musical 
grammar. Since then,  Musicology entertained a somewhat conflictual 
relation with other sciences of the arts. Chrysander already stressed 
this conflict when introducing the new /Jahrbücher für Musikalische 
Wissenschaft/ in 1863.

1bis) The tripartite subdivision of the discipline in Musicology, 
Theory, Ethnomusicology, is made explicit in Kerman's /Contemplating 
Music/, a century after Adler. I don't know (and didn't try to know) 
whether he was the first to do so - probably not.

2) I always heard that the American split between historical musicology 
and theory was the result of a somewhat harsh clash at a meeting of the 
AMS - I don't know when, nor why - resulting in the creation of the SMT 
in 1977. One striking aspect of Adler's bipartite musicology is that it 
includes nothing of the kind of, say, biographies or sociology, which 
are only side disciplines to what he considers the single object of 
/Musikwissenschaft/: music itself. There has been some drift towards 
these side aspects in the various musicological societies (the first one 
had been the Dutch one, in 1868; the AMS was created in 1934), because 
early musicologists often were general historians with a mere taste for 
music, and because these aspects are easier to deal with without any of 
our technical (and at times esoteric) knowledge.
     Also, the introduction of (Schenkerian) analysis in the American 
academic world must have been resented by some as a threat. In this 
respect, it is striking that the first translation of Schenker should 
have been that of his /Harmony/, in 1954 (half a century before the 
completion of the complete translation of all his published analytical 
works, with /Tonwille /in 2004): it was not meant for musicologists, but 
for practicing musicians, and it is this fact that justifies the odd 
choice of this particular book. /Free Composition/ followed only 25 
years later, having been chosen precisely because it is the most 
"academic" of Schenker's writings.

3) As is well known, music analysis entered the academic world under the 
pretense of scientificity. This not only did some harm to Schenkerian 
theory, but also led to other reactions such as Kerman's, which is 
basically an attack against ill-conceived "scientificity" (or academism; 
it often is the same thing). But that's another story.

Nicolas Meeùs
Université Paris-Sorbonne
nicolas.meeus at paris-sorbonne.fr
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