Debate :

a. Ellington, it don’t mean a thing

- It don’t mean a thing if it ain't got that swing
- The jazz standard
- Descending fourths through the cycle
b. Goodman, sing sing sing
- Drum solo

Reading: Harper-Scott and Sampson ​An Introduction to Music Studies ​pp7-24

What and how do we study when we study the history of music?

What is musicology?
- The scholarly study of music
- ‘A field of knowledge having as its object the investigation of the art of music as
physical psychological aesthetic and cultural phenomenon” grove
- Areas covered by the term musicology
- Music history
- Music theory
- Textual research
- Archival research
- Lexicography _the study of naming things
- Organology _study of musical instruments
- Performance practice
- Aesthetics and criticism
- Social / ethnic
- Psychology
- Gender and sexuality in music
Music history
- Research
- Study
- Philosophy and critique
Music history vs. General history
- Time and temporality (past, present, future)
- Where, in history is music?
- Reception history
- What music means through time
- The canon (‘western’ canon)
- The standard list of ‘masterworks’
- Who’s in, who’s out? Why?
Stylistic vs. Social Histories of Music
- Comparisons of musical style reveal pivotal figure
- Between medieval and Renaissance sound
- Contextualizing his work as the product of his circumstance
- Papal singer
- Court composer
- Society in Cambrai and Florence
- The “work concept’
- A piece of music isn’t an object, but an idea (a ‘concept’) with both original
and derivative applications
- Social history of music
- Strips away value judgements
Oral histories
- Oral transmission
- Oral vs. Written does NOT equal ‘simple vs. complex’
- Example: old Roman chant and its relationship with Gregoria
- Musicologists must work like detectives, piecing together ‘clues’
Narratives
- History: a set of stories composed of some of the things that happened to lots of
different people in the past
- Stories will have basics, morals, and consequences
- Sowill histories
- Nationalism: history that focuses on one nation or culture and glorifies it
- The application of nationalism is often anachronistic
- Eras: not as clear-cut as history book make them appear
- They are a convenience, a way of categorizing
- Hidden agendas?
- Perspectives will colour our histories (gender, race, narrator, etc.)
Some kind of cultures being more privileged than the others