Robert S. Hatten. Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation

Robert Hatten's Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation is the result of over a decade of research into aspects of musical semiotics. Agawu believes that books like this are much needed, for by exemplifying in a self-conscious way a critical approach that claims to invest as much in the structural as well as in the expressive aspects of a work, they lead us to a better understanding of basic aspects of the musical experience

Does Music Theory Need Musicology?

Understood as a search for "the abstract principles embodied in music and the sounds of which it consists,"l music theory casts a wide net: it calls for a comparative sample and insists on a systematic methodology. As "the scholarly study of music, wherever it is found historically or geographically," musicology casts an even wider net. In practice, however, it has not been possible to transcend historical and geographical boundaries. (How often have you read an article on contemporary rock in JAMS or on Asian music in 19th-Century Music?) Obviously, any attempt to explore the juncture between music theory and music history-my particular brief from the editors of Current Musicology will not get very far on definitions alone. Are not disciplinary boundaries convenient tags sanctioned by a certain distribution of economic, political, and intellectual power? Better, then, to focus on what some theorists and some historians do than to dwell abstractly on the purviews of music theory and music history. Agawu asks these questions and more as he explains the relationship between musicology and music theory

Schubert\u27s Sexuality: A Prescription for Analysis?

What can Schubert\u27s sexuality have to do with the analysis of his music? Four years ago, Maynard Solomon told a compelling story about a leading Austro-Germanic composer, one whose works are unlikely to be excluded from the narrowest definitions of the canon of European music since 1700: he was probably homosexual. Since then, Solomon\u27s tentative argument has hardened into fact in the popular musicological imagination, not because additional evidence has become available, but because, in a field starved of headlines and scandal, such a revelation promised a much needed change of critical perspective

Response to Rice

Timothy Rice is concerned that ethnomusicology—field, discipline, area of study, constellation of diverse musico-intellectual pursuits—has some “serious problems.” It seems that we have either not been reading each other’s work, or not engaging with it sufficiently. Opportunities to develop some “theoretical muscle” have been missed. Specifically, some seventeen articles broaching the favorite theme of music and identity published in this journal between 1982 and 2005 failed to proceed in cumulative fashion. Rice wants to see ethnomusicology “grow in intellectual and explanatory power,” but this will not happen if subsequent writers refuse to engage their predecessors at a theoretical level. A thriving ethnomusicology, he implies, is one in which actors proceed linearly by affirming or invalidating findings that preceded their own in print

Representing African Music

Of all the currents of change that have swept the humanities during the last half-century, the most far-reaching revolve around language. Philosophy, history, and literary criticism, among other language-based disciplines, have developed what is often presented as a largely unprecedented self-consciousness about representation. The message to scholars in nonlanguage-based disciplines is clear: to be taken seriously, one can no longer view language as a transparent window to an objective reality but must confront the foundational political and ideological baggage of the medium itself, as well as its constant slippage in the hands of the producer

To Cite or Not to Cite? Confronting the Legacy of (European) Writing on African Music

English Abstract: The current citational practice in Western scholarship is ideologically loaded, being far more suited to a written economy than a primarily oral culture in which knowledge is preserved in memory and disseminated through repeated performance. The impact of orality on musical scholarship should be more closely investigated; African scholars have all too often become informants rather than theorists of their own traditions. It is therefore proposed that the routine citation of a body of scholarship developed without Africa\u27s historically-specific intellectual needs and ambitions in mind should in fact be discouraged. German Abstract: Die heutige Zitierpraxis der westlichen Wissenschaft ist ideologisch beladen. Sie dient weit mehr einer schriftlichen Wirtschaft als einer in erster Linie mündlichen Kultur, die ihr Wissen über das Gedächtnis bewahrt und durch wiederholte Erzählung und Aufführung verbreitet. Der Einfluss des Mündlichen auf die Musikwissenschaft sollte näher betrachtet werden. Afrikanische sind bei weitem zu oft Übermittler statt Theoretiker ihrer eigenen Traditionen geworden. Daher schlägt der Autor vor, der üblichen Zitierpraxis eines Wissenschaftspersonals, ohne Kenntnis der afrikanisch-geschichtsspezifischen, intellektuellen Bedürfnisse und Ziele, entgegen zu treten. French Abstract: Le traditionnel usage de citation dans le savoir occidental est lourd de sens sur le plan idéologique, étant très largement mieux adapté à une économie de l\u27écrit qu\u27à une culture essentiellement orale dans laquelle la connaissance se conserve par la mémoire et se diffuse par le biais de représentations répétées. L\u27impact de l\u27oralité sur le savoir musical devrait être d\u27avantage étudié; les chercheurs africains sont bien trop souvent devenus des informateurs plutôt que des théoriciens de leurs propres traditions. Il est donc suggéré que soit déconseillée la citation de routine d\u27un ensemble de connaissances, développée sans la prise de conscience des besoins et des ambitions intellectuels spécifiquement historiques de l\u27Afrique. Zulu Abstract: Indlela okubhalwa ngayo imibhalo yamanje ngokwemfundo yaseNtshonalanga inezinkolelo ezenzelelayo, ngokuthi ivumelana kakhulu nomnotho obhaliwe kunesiko elikhulunywa ngomlomo kakhulu lapho ulwazi lugcinwa khona engqondweni futhi lusatshalaliswe ngokuthi kwenziwe kuphindelelwe. Kufanele uphenyisiswe umthelela wenkulumo yomlomo emfundweni yezomculo; zonke izazi zase-Afrika ziba ngabantu abanikezela ngolwazi kunokuba abaqambi bamathiyori ayimihlahlandlela.ngamasiko abo uqobo. Ngakho-ke kuphakanyiswa ukuthi ukubhala okuyinjwayelo kwenhlangano yemfundo eyenziwa ngaphandle kokucabanga ngezidingo nezifiso zobuhlakani obuqondene ngqo nomlando wase-Afrika kufanele kungakhuthazwa

The Invention of African Rhythm

African ryhthm was invented in the 1950s when, thanks to pioneering research by the Reverend A. M. Jones, Alan Merriam, Gilbert Rouget, Erich von Hornbostel, and John Blacking, among others, African music was construed as an essentially rhythmic phenomenon. Three decades and a sizable body of empirical research later, it is easy to see that an overriding ideology of difference (between Africa and the West ) motivated these early efforts. This essay reinvents African rhythm not by denying its own ideological construction but by engaging in an imaginary dialogue with earlier researchers in an effort to concretize that which was missing from their representations. In it, I develop a view of African rhythm in which its mechanical aspects (grouping, accents, periodicity) are shown to reside in broader patterns of temporal signification (movement, language and gesture). Although this is a less elegant proposition (in the mathematical sense), it is phenomenologically truer to the African experience. The latter, in turn, is not a mystified precolonial essence but the more contaminated and inherently contradictory condition of postcoloniality itself. African music in this construction is not synonymous with African rhythm, although the latter\u27s apparent complexity, explicitly thematized in earlier writings, reemerges against a richer conceptual background

Edward Said and the study of music

My first encounter with Edward Said’s work was in the 1980s with the book, Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975). I was exploring a semiotic approach to late 18th-century music, specifically, a beginning-middle-ending paradigm (an Aristotelian paradigm) that seemed to me to capture the rhetorical intentions of Classic composers. Said’s wide-ranging reflections and ruminations on beginnings – as inaugural moments, as sites for the establishment of difference, as authorially privileged moments, and as first steps in the intentional production of meaning – proved inspiring. My enduring impression of him at the time was that he was a very good analyst who had also read a lot of books and maintained a humane stance as critic

Lives in Musicology: My Life in Writings

Responding to an invitation from the editors of Acta Musicologica to tell the story of his life in musicology, Kofi Agawu describes his upbringing and early education in Ghana and his university studies in the UK and the US. In a career focused on teaching, research, and writing, he outlines a number of intellectual projects involving the analysis of African and European music. He ends by acknowledging renewed discussions of race and identity in the musical academy today, and hints at his own growing interest in African art music