in your opinion, how should music history be written?
leftist historiography is quite different; these are not terms I am obsessed with, but they are fairly common. leftist historiography is quite different; these are not terms I am obsessed with, but they are fairly common. To summarize, leftist historiography focuses on sociology, economic and social scenarios; rightist historiography on personalities.
practically the entire repertoire of cantus planus (so-called Gregorian) has no author. And we are talking about centuries upon centuries of music. In our hypothetical book of music history, what do we talk about when we get there? Regarding other medieval, and even Renaissance, authors, we know very little, and often the information is so doubtful that it becomes, precisely, mythography. What do we do there? You pointed out something very correct, but in my opinion, drew the wrong conclusion from it: music is made of works, but not necessarily of authors. If we are talking about works, then let's talk about those. (Claudio)
Comparing more sources while taking into account anthropological needs and transversally considering the Artistic, Cultural, Religious-Ritual, and Linguistic fields. (Xenakis)
Xenakis's approach seems to me very close to that of ethnomusicology (Frank)
But don't you think – that is what I am asking you – that 'right' and 'left' can coexist fruitfully? (Luca)
« The bathtub is on the right and the shower is on the left » was more or less how a song by Giorgio Gaber went, among many other things.
Personally, I like this game of right and left very much, unlike Claudio, and I find it pertinent because, unlike many self-righteous people nowadays who believe these two terms are an outdated legacy of the last century, I think that right and left will exist at least as long as the first, the second, the third, the fourth... the last ones exist. Only when humanity reaches – if it ever does! – a substantial equality, will right and left no longer make any sense. Do we want to call them Scrooge and Goofy instead? Fine! That is not the problem: the problem is that you are either with Scrooge or with Goofy, and as long as both exist, I will be with Goofy, taking sides as Gramsci invited us to do and as remembered by Otello.
That said, just as the bathtub and the shower can coexist in the same environment, I also think it is right and appropriate that works and authors do the same, but with works at the center and authors somewhat in the shadows.
While it is true that centuries upon centuries of music have produced music by anonymous authors and, consequently, also masterpieces by anonymous authors - I am thinking among all of them of the “Ludus Danielis” by an anonymous from Beauvais in the 12th century, to the “Carmina Burana”, not the Orff ones of course but the original ones from the 1200s - it is also true that substantially from 1600 onwards all music, at least that which has mattered in its historical journey, has a first and last name behind it, and it would be unfair and biased to ignore it for reasons I have already expressed in other topics.
So, what should a leftist history of music be like? Let's let Giordano Montecchi, professor of Music History at the University of Bologna, as well as a music critic for L'Unità, say it.
Giordano Montecchi wrote 15 years ago in two volumes “A History of Music” published by Bur, precisely « because, although resembling what was once called “History of Music” tout court, it stems from the conviction that all histories that are written always arise, by necessity, from a certain point of view and are therefore all provisional and in need of being rewritten.
(...) the discipline of music history possesses a vast articulation of perspectives and methodologies, which alongside the “great composers,” play an equally important role: elements such as different styles, genres, forms, different nationalities, and relationships with the cultural and social conditions of various eras.
Even at this level, and perhaps even more accentuated, the notion of music history nevertheless falls within the boundaries of what is obvious and well-known. It is the discipline responsible for a wide range of themes and tasks, dealing with ancient musical civilizations, Gregorian chant, troubadours, the Flemish school, the Baroque style, the aesthetic conceptions of Romanticism; but it equally studies the evolution of notation, the transformations of musical theory, the changing conditions of musicians within society, the conception of the avant-garde; furthermore, it deals with problems posed by related disciplines such as text philology and performance practice, ethnomusicology, musical analysis, and others.
What usually remains in the shadows, or at least in the background, is instead the fundamental question, namely the historicity of such"}
notion. The history of music, in other words, has itself, as a discipline, a history, a genesis, a succession of profound transformations in its premises and purposes. These transformations are certainly linked to the evolving philosophical and theoretical background of the changing social and cultural framework within which they take place. But, within this general framework, it must be kept in mind that the history of music changes primarily as its own object changes: music itself. Ultimately, it is the changing notion of music that determines a history of music. »
That said, it seems quite evident to me that “a history of music” should first and foremost be written by many hands, not only because within its scope there are those more expert in ancient music, those in Baroque music, and so on, but because it requires the contribution of many “professionals” who are not solely musical. Music historians and musicologists certainly foremost, but precisely because it is connected to history tout-court, to philosophy, to all the other arts, to poetry and literature, it requires the intervention of experts in these subjects who know how to put everything into relation.
For example, “a history of music” cannot disregard the importance of poetry which, during the Trecento, the Quattrocento, and the Renaissance, invested it. Just as it cannot disregard painting, which in many of its masterpieces expressly “speaks” of music.
« “Painting transforms space into time, music transforms time into space.” Hugo von Hofmannsthal's aphorism (...) binds the two arts together in a relationship of complicity, as if there were at work, since always, a secret and even subversive project of transforming the world. That project has existed since the origins of communication in terms of civilization. Consider the wall paintings in Egyptian tombs, in which the hierarchy of the universe finally composes itself into perfect and eternal forms in comparison with the mutable and chaotic becoming of real things; and, with a leap through the history of the equally so-called homo sapiens, let us reflect on the messianic function of the Tristan chord, thanks to which from 1865 onwards it has become possible to understand how a chord characterized by an anomalous G# undergoes a transubstantiation and transforms into a filter of love such as to irreversibly change our anthropological essence, or how an Eb pedal does not “symbolically represent” but “is ontologically” the origin of the cosmos, or even, how at the end of the first act of Parsifal time truly transforms into space. » (Quirino Principe)
Here, my two eyes have already rediscovered
all the strength of a time,
and with my two ears
I hear the harmonies arising from the divine Order
of the Universe.
Like Ra, I navigate the ocean of time
(Book of the Dead of ancient Egypt)
