CRASSH

 

This first session tries to accomplish two things. First, we map out the disciplinary and sub-disciplinary overlaps and distinctions between musicology (including musical analysis) and those fields devoted to the study of music in relation to the social: sociology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, and popular music studies. We discuss the distinctive styles and methodologies offered by these different traditions. Second, we take Adorno’s writings as one indicator of this fractured disciplinary terrain, and as a (problematic) theoretical and conceptual starting point for the analysis of music and society. We follow some critiques and appropriations of Adorno, and the diverse directions opened up by them.

21 January
Discourse, Field, Mediation: Semiotics, Foucault, Bourdieu and beyond
In this session we pursue the development of sociological thinking on music (and culture) in three directions. We first address the development of broadly semiotic and discursive approaches to the analysis of music, which take a number of forms: from ideology critique, to communication theory, to social semiotics, to Foucaultian analysis. We then examine Bourdieu’s influential contribution to the sociology of culture, which addresses both production and consumption, and which lends itself readily to music. Third, we tackle the recent turn to sociological and anthropological theories of mediation, which attempt to make good the deficiencies of the earlier approaches. 

Performance, Practice and Micro socialities

Performance has been separated from academic music for much of musicology’s history, as a practical rather than an intellectual engagement with music.  The untenability -- even deafness -- presupposed by the traditional musicological reliance on scores has long been challenged by ethnomusicology and sociology, and more recently also by several different strands of musicology itself, including critiques of performance practice, histories of activities such as the piano recital, and the development of a new sub-discipline of performance studies.  These musicological developments will be considered alongside and against the strong ethnomusicological, sociological and anthropological literature on the micro socialities of performance.

 

4 February
Capitalism, Class and Institutions

The study of musical institutions, and their interactions with questions of class and the structures of capitalism, has become increasingly central to musicological research in recent years.  This session will begin from a set of readings that consider these subjects from the perspective of opera both as institution and as social microcosm.

 

11 February
Technology and Media

In this session, we will seek to bring recent ideas about the role of technology in musical production -- first through the recording industry, and later through portable music players, sampling and downloading -- together with an examination of the role that technology has played in the development of earlier music, whether in the form of notation, print culture or instrumental innovations.

 

Perhaps the greatest difference between the disciplines of sociology and traditional musicology has lain in the focus on the everyday experience of music, as opposed to the ideal, informed understanding (sometimes with access to no more than a score) available to the connoisseur.  Attention to the idea of listening, both in historical and contemporary terms, has also generated some of the most interesting recent writing on music and society, and it therefore makes sense to end this course by dwelling on theories of lived musical experience in a wide number of social settings, ever more shaped by the technologies discussed in the previous week.

 

25 February
Ideology and Identity, with Prof. Veit Erlmann (University of Texas, Austin)
Music’s capacity to define, construct and undermine different types of group and personal identities, whether racial, national, sexual or local, has produced a wide range of stimulating scholarly work over recent years.  Professor Erlmann will introduce these questions in the light of his own work, and we will also examine how theories of identity can be constructively nuanced by ideas about identity from non-musicological disciplines.

 

The inextricable links between music and musicians and politics in a variety of forms has been noted from Plato onwards, even as composers and musicologists have sought -- desperately at times -- to rescue music from such grubbily worldly concerns.  This session will examine some of the extraordinary variety of ways (positive and negative) in which music has been used to political ends, as well as considering the ideological claims made for music’s social separation.