The Musicologist as Historian: A Matter of Distinction

The Musicologist as Historian: A Matter of DistinctionAuthor(s): Gilbert ChaseSource: Notes, Second Series, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Sep., 1972), pp. 10-16Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/896253 .

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THE MUSICOLOGIST AS HISTORIAN: A MATTER OF DISTINCTION

By GILBERT CHASE

According to Professor Palisca, "The musicologist is first and foremost a historian." I have been chewing the cud of that dictum for many months, and the result of my ruminations is doubt. If the statement were true, would we not have more histories of music that stand on their own merits as history, so that they might be read with pleasure and profit by others than graduate students intent on accumulating footnotes for their dissertations, and by professors dutifully "keeping up" with their subject or seeking to "put down" their competitors in the academic arena? We have had precious few such histories since Burney and Hawkins-that is, since the rise of modern musicology and its acceptance as an academic discipline.

It is true that musicologists are chiefly concerned with the past. But so are antiquarians, genealogists, philologists, and nonagenarians-none of whom qualify ipso facto as historians. The historian has a special kind of relation to the past, a particular way of assimilating it and of pre- senting it in his work, that sets him apart from the antiquarian, the genealogist, the philologist-and the musicologist. I propose to show that the difference is not incidental but radical.

At the end of this article I have appended a short reading list of books in which various historians, from Voltaire and Michelet to Collingwood and Carr, have endeavored to define the scope and character of their work, as well as the meaning, purpose, and nature of history. I shall draw upon their testimony to support my view of the wide gulf that separates the musicologist from the historian.

To begin with, how many musicologists have read widely and deeply in the field of history-not only in the great works of historical writing, but also in the theory, methodology, and philosophy of history? When I was giving a graduate seminar on American Musical History, my students were introduced to the historical thought of Dilthey, Colling- wood, Croce, Santayana, George Frederick Turner, and others. But this was generally regarded as a rather odd procedure, and only a few of my best students grasped the principle that if they were to occupy themselves with musical history they should have some knowledge of the art and science of history. In after years, as I have visited with them, I note with

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satisfaction the copies of Collingwood and Dilthey among their desk- books. As long as they remain in musicology they will never be historians "first and foremost" -but at least they have a prospect of what lies beyond their tight little discipline.

To the very big question, What is History?, the best historians seldom offer a ready-made definition that can be wrapped up in a neat little package and kept at hand for easy reference. One reason for this is that history is essentially dynamic: its very nature requires it to respond and to adapt itself to changing conditions and new challenges in society. "The Historian in a Changing World" is a recurrent theme in contemporary historical writing.1 Alfred Weber, in 1946, expressed the atti- tude of many progressive historians when he declared that

. ..we stand at the end and outside of the traditional history of the schools and universities, the history which has western Europe as its center; and it is obvious to us... that an interpretation which surveys the background to the present almost exclusively from the point of view of western Europe has little relevance to our current problems.2

For traditional musicology, "current problems" are irrelevant. More- over, it persists in being centered in the music of western Europe from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. It seldom ventures outside the prescribed boundaries of "the schools and universities," and its main activity is to produce dissertations, theses, monographs, bibliographies, and annotated editions of consecrated monumenta. It would surely regard as heretical Barraclough's contention that "we must banish com- pletely from our minds the old parochial division of history into 'ancient

medieval-modern'-a meaningless time-scheme which makes nonsense of the past." Historical musicology, in its chronic parochialism, clings to meaningless time-schemes that are never more meaningless than when they are arbitrarily applied to non-European contexts, as in the con- ventional periodization of musical history in America-a procedure that truly "makes nonsense of the past." It has little to offer "in place of that empty figment of one linear history, which can only be kept up by shutting one's eyes to the overwhelming multitude of facts" (Spengler, Decline of the West).

A representative attempt to answer the question, What Is History?, is the book of that title by the English historian Edward Hallet Carr. As I have said, there are no neat definitions, but rather a series of chapters discussing various aspects of the scope and character of the historian's work, such as "The Historian and His Facts," "Society and the Individ- ual," "Causation in History," and "History as Progress." From the dis-

'Cf. Geoffrey Barraclough's History in a Changing World (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956).

2Cited by Barraclough (p. 1, op. cit.) from Alfred Weber's Farewell to European History (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1947).

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cussion of these themes, certain generalities arise, such as the description of history as "the serious process of inquiry into the past of man in society." The operative terms here are "man" and "society." For the historical musicologist the proper study is music, not man; he regards the musical work-preferably in the shape of a written score-as his study-object per se. For the historian, the proper study is man in society, and in the changing contexts of time and place. For the historian, human experience comes first; for the musicologist, the musical work comes first.

In the words of the great Belgian historian Henri Pirenne: "The subject of historians' study is the development of human societies in space and time."' The main subject of musicologists' study appears to be the development of musical forms in a very limited segment of space and time.

Pirenne goes on to say that the historian has to take account of in- dividual actions "only as they are related to collective movements, or in the measure to which they have influenced the collectivity." But the musicologist, wedded to the bio-bibliographical approach, to stylistic analysis and aesthetic evaluation, takes little account of "collective movements" insofar as these refer to the "collectivity" of large social groups rather than of elites, or groups presumed to possess superior attributes of discrimination.

I want to continue with Pirenne for a moment, because he raises a point that comes straight home to me. Discussing the importance of synthesis, he writes: "It would be an error to conclude that it is necessary to postpone writing history until all the materials are assembled .... The historian cannot abstain from making a synthesis on the pretext that he does not possess all the elements of his synthesis. We require nothing more or less of him than that he utilize all the data at his disposal at the moment."

In 1946, when I undertook to write a history of American music, there was very little reliable monographic material on the subject. Had I waited "until all the materials were assembled," I might have waited until I was in my grave. More to the point, I would have failed to bear witness to my time-just as Ritter and Elson and Howard bore witness to their times in their books on American musical history: not only bearing witness to the music of their own time, but to the outlook, the attitudes, the values and assumptions of that time with regard to America's musical past.

The problem of synthesis constitutes one of the principal differences between musicology and history. If I remember rightly, Charles Seeger once said (more in sorrow than in anger?) that "synthesis" is a "dirty

3"What Are Historians Trying to Do?" in Hans Meyerhoff, ed., The Philosophy of History in Our Time (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), p. 87.

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word" in musicology. Anyhow, musicologists don't like it, because it runs counter to their monographic and monolinear concept of musical history. For historians, on the contrary, synthesis is essential. In the words of Pirenne: "In order that history may progress, the parallel development of synthesis and source criticism is indispensable."

The American cultural historian Jacques Barzun (author of Berlioz and the Romantic Century) in 1954 gave a lecture for the American Historical Association titled "Cultural History: A Synthesis," which bears directly on my theme, and which I highly recommend to my readers.4 He begins by tracing the widening scope of historiography in the twentieth century, particularly through the impact of such forces as "the cultural anthropology of Frank Boas, the sociology of Durkheim, and the psychiatry of Freud." He recognizes the difficulties faced by the cultural historian, especially "the indefiniteness of 'ideas' when considered as historical agents and the apparent remoteness of the arts from the main stream of history." At the same time, he maintains that, "if cultural history cannot embrace art and thought, it makes an empty claim...." Since 1954, cultural history has indeed made great forward strides in embracing art and thought. To deal with the latter, the cognate discipline of intellectual history has also developed notably; and art history has itself become more "historical" and more "cultural" in the broader meaning of these terms.

Barzun reminds us that "the historian cannot... take culture in its purely honorific sense of 'things of the mind:' the highbrow's culture is too likely to be a very thin slice of life-all butter and no bread- and as such incapable of standing by itself." As Barzun says, "cultural life is both intricate and emotionally complex." It cannot be reduced to an index of filing cards for a doctoral dissertation. Intellectual history deals with minds and ideas, and-to quote Barzun again-we must see these "in history, pragmatically moving toward an unknown future, in- stead of as an event already classified."

I have brought up the matter of cultural history because I believe that is the true locus for the work of the music historian as distinguished from the historical musicologist. Incidentally, why is it that the term "music historian" has a rather odd ring to it? It is not in general use, as "art historian" is. I have tried to apply it to myself, when asked to provide biodata for reference works; but somehow it usually comes out as "musicologist" (which may be an incentive for my writing the present article). One fancies that "musical historian" sounds more acceptable, as though implying that the historian in question has a gift for singing or playing the piano; and yet we do not say "artistic historian." It is

4Printed in revised form in Fritz R. Stern, ed., The Varieties of History. New York: Meridian, 1956.

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true that we do speak of a "cultural historian" -but not of a cultured historian. We assume that a historian may be cultured as well as artistic and musical; but our main concern is that he be a historian-and that he prove it in his work.

Musicologists tend to identify history with historical research; but as Alan Bullock points out, "that makes as little sense as to confuse litera- ture with textual criticism." And in actual practice, so-called "historical musicology" does consist very largely in "textual criticism" of one kind or another. We have only to look at the American Musicological Society's Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology in order to see that a great many entries classified under Historical Musicology do not deal with the dia- chronic mode of history but rather with the synchronic modes of theory and style analysis. Again, Pirenne reminds us that "Historical criticism, or historical erudition, is not the whole of history." But it is very nearly the whole of musicology.

The English historian and philosopher R. G. Collingwood-my favorite writer and thinker on the subject-has some pertinent observations on this topic:5

This work of scholarship is often taken for history itself; and so taken it becomes a special type of pseudo-history. .. . Such work is useful, but it is not history; there is... no interpretation, no reliving of past experience in one's own mind.... Historical knowledge is the knowledge of what mind has done in the past, and at the same time it is the redoing of this, the perpetuation of past acts in the present. Its object is therefore not the mere object, something outside the mind which knows it; it is an activity of thought, which can be known only in so far as the knowing mind re-enacts it and knows itself as so doing.

That is Collingwood being very philosophical; but he can also be quite specific and trenchant when he gets down to the nitty-gritty of the historian's job, as in discussing the nature of historical evidence, and in particular what he calls "scissors-and-paste history." For example: "History constructed by excerpting and combining the testimonies of different authorities I call scissors-and-paste history.... For the scissors- and-paste historian, there is only one kind of problem which is capable of being settled by any sort of argument. This is the problem of whether to accept or reject a certain piece of testimony bearing upon the question in which he is interested." Acceptance or rejection will depend on a critical judgment as to the truth or falsity of the statement. But, as Collingwood affirms, "the important question about any statement con- tained in a source is not whether it is true or false, but what it means" (my emphasis).

5The following quotations are from R. G. Collingwood's The Idea of History (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956), pp. 204, 218, 260, 261.

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To illustrate this principle I shall quote Burckhardt's remarks on "Rousseau's Concept of Music and the Destruction of Churches:"

J.J. Rousseau said about music that all contrapuntal combinations, particularly fugues, were only sottises difficiles [difficult nonsense] which hurt the ears and could not be justified rationally, remnants of barbarism and corrupt taste, just as the portals of our Gothic churches deserve to be pre- served only to the shame of their patient builders.

From this to the destruction of churches was not a big step.6 Clearly, the crucial question here was not the truth or falsity of Rousseau's statement, but its meaning for the historian.

The intuition of such meanings "always involves an imaginative leap and is never arrived at by a simple process of induction from the empirical data."7 That is why history is more than scholarship, more than research, more than academic training. In the words of Theodor Mommsen

It is... a dangerous and harmful illusion for the professor of history to believe that historians can be trained at the University in the same way as philologists or mathematicians [or musicologists] assuredly can be. One can say with more justification of the historian than of the mathematician or the philologist that he is not trained but born, not educated but self- educated.... The historian has perhaps greater affinity with the artist than with the scholar.8

This testimony has all the more significance as coming from one of the greatest historical scholars who ever lived, the author of The History of Rome and of "a monumental treatise" on Roman Public Law, orig- inator of the Corpus inscriptionem Latinorum, whose own bibliography includes some 1,500 items. His History of Rome is recognized as a literary masterpiece as well as a tremendous scholarly achievement. And this brings us to the historian as artist.

The American historian Henry Adams proposed the following "model" for the historian:

The historian must be an artist. He must know how to develop the leading ideas of the subject he has chosen, how to keep the thread of the narrative always in hand, how to subordinate the details, and how to accentuate the principles.9

This concept of the historian as artist-exemplified in all memorable historical works, from Thucydides to Gibbon, from Mommsen to Adams -probably represents the widest gap between the historical musicologist and the music historian. The latter cannot fulfill his mission unless he

6Burckhardt, Jakob Christoph. Judgements on History and Historians. Translated by Harry Zohn. London: Allen & Unwin, 1959. p. 239.

7Manners, Robert A. and David Kaplan, ed. Theory in Anthropology. Chicago: Aldine, 1968. p. 7.

8Mommsen. "Rectorial Address," in The Varieties of History (op. cit.), p. 193. 9Quoted in Ernest Samuels' The Young Henry Adams (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.

Press, 1948), p. 232.

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is both artist and scholar. He must remember, with both pride and humility-but with unswerving devotion to an ideal-that history had a tradition of literary excellence for many centuries before it became an academic discipline; and that history as an academic discipline is ancillary to the great tradition of historical writing.

No less an authority than Leopold von Ranke, the "father" of modern historical scholarship, affirmed that "history is not simply an academic subject."'10 But musicology is-simply, strictly, ineluctably-an academic subject.

In summary, the musicologist is a research scholar working within the strict confines of an academic discipline. The music historian is both scholar and artist, able to combine research with literary skills. He draws on the resources of various disciplines, but is first and foremost a historian. The musicologist takes the musical work as his study-object; the music historian takes the musical experience of man in society as his subject. The musicologist is chiefly concerned with the development of forms and styles, the music historian with cultural continuity and change. Finally, the musicologist must be academically trained and accredited, and his normal career is within the academy. The music historian may be self-educated and may work entirely outside the academy if he so desires. His only accreditation is the work that he produces.

READING LIST Carr, Edward Hallet. What Is History? New York: Knopf, 1962. Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of History. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956. Especial-

ly Part V, "Epilegomena." Dilthey, Wilhelm. Pattern & Meaning in History: Thoughts on History and Society.

Edited & introduced by H. P. Rickman. New York: Harper, 1962. Gardiner, Patrick, ed. Theories of History: Readings from Classical and Contemporary

Sources. The Free Press of Glencoe, 1959. Meyerhoff, Hans, ed. The Philosophy of History in Our Time: An Anthology. Garden

City, New York: Doubleday, 1959.

lOQuoted in The Varieties of History (op. cit.), p. 62.

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The Musicologist as Historian: A Matter of Distinction