Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T14:06:43.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2023

Get access

Summary

While studies in music history inevitably revolve around musical works, the concept of the ‘musical work’ itself remains as elusive as it is pervasive. The term suggests a range of assumptions about the composer’s agency and aesthetic goals, and about the dissemination or influence of the composition. Philosophers and music scholars have argued that around 1800 the musical work had been conceptualised in its most elaborate, discrete form, crystallising as a specific set of regulative practices in musical production and reception, against which modern and postmodern composers would have to battle. What constitutes the musical work so defined, and why it held sway during the nineteenth century, has become a subject of lively debate.

The musical work, however, existed as both artefact and concept for many centuries before 1800. This was the starting point for Reinhard Strohm’s seminal re-evaluation of the historiography and ontology of the work-concept in his article ‘Looking Back at Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical Work- Concept’. Strohm argued against the commonly held view that around 1800 the paradigm of the work-concept had changed dramatically. Examining twentieth-century theorising about the musical work, Strohm showed how it resulted from the methodologies and biases peculiar to the authors and their era. Most importantly, he collapsed the argument for a watershed in Western art music marked by the emergence of a regulative work-concept. He drew attention to discussions about the musical work reaching back to the fifteenth century and insisted that the conceptualisation of the musical work as such was part of a long-standing discourse that continually revisited basic themes: the unparalleled skill of creative artists, the impulse to memorialise their output, and the tension between artistic expression and social function. On this last point Strohm challenged reigning opinion by emphasising that an otherwise autonomous musical work could be integrated with social and cultural practices.

The essays in this volume build on Strohm’s argument by demonstrating how social and cultural practices generate different conceptualisations of the musical work at different times and in different places. As such, this collection shifts the debate about the work-concept from the ontological plane onto the historical.

Type
Chapter
Information
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
Essays in Honour of Reinhard Strohm
, pp. 4 - 8
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×