What is musicology? How and why do scholars write about music? This course will address the issues involved in making music a scholarly object of enquiry and will examine the methods by which its history has been constructed. Our approach to these issues will take as a central point of reference one main topic--the idea of the musical work. This topic will serve as a prism through which musicological debate can be understood. Students will be introduced to various contemporary and historical issues in musicology and the theoretical background behind research methodologies. Topics covered will include musical analysis, contrasting approaches to the history of music and musicians, archival research, manuscript study, editing, canonicity, reception history, historiography, and performance studies. |