Towards the History of Ideas in Ethnomusicology: Theory and Methods between the Late 18th and the Early 20th Century

Year 2018, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, 1 - 31, 30.06.2018

Ulrich Morgenstern

https://doi.org/10.33906/musicologist.439321

Cited By: 1

Abstract

The history of ethnomusicology is the history
of ideas and concepts of why and how to deal with expressive practices in
social formations which are usually located outside the researcher’s primary
cultural experience. Ideas in ethnomusicology (comparative musicology,
anthropology of music, folk music research, folkloristics) are interlinked with
other scholarly disciplines and academic fields. The history of the field is
sometimes described as a shift from either a more philologically oriented study
of “national” folk music or “armchair anthropology” to a modern anthropological
concept expressed in context-oriented, sociological, and performer-centered
research, as well as in urban ethnomusicology. However, a great deal of issues
frequently associated with English-speaking mainstream ethnomusicology of the
last five decades (the “ethnographic turn”) appeared in the intellectual folk
music discourses as early as the late 18^th and the 19^th century. In a similar
way, the history of comparative musicology as a scholarly concept can be traced
back at least to the Age of Enlightenment. This article traces the emergence
and early history of motivations, theoretical paradigms and research methods by
discussing the following key issues and conceptual oppositions:

Comparative study of musical cultures; Fieldwork
experience; Aesthetic appreciation vs. value-free textual analysis; Relativism
of expressive cultures: "our" and "their" concepts
(emic/etic issues); The paradigm of orality vs. Kunstlieder im Volksmunde; “Living
antiquities” vs. the sociology of folklore; Cultural homogeneity vs.
performer-centered research; Studying songs vs. studying singing; Music in its
cultural context—“uses and functions”; Standards of notation and documentation;
Rural vs. urban research; ‘Cultural purity' vs. intercultural exchange.

Keywords

Ethnomusicology, History of ideas, Folkloristics, Folk music research, Comparative musicology

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