Den ny musik og historieskrivningen

Metodeovervejelser

Abstract

Contemporary music and historiography – methodological reflections

This article deals with some of the methodological problems associated with work on contemporary music as an object of historical study. First, it discusses the relationship between aesthetic judgement and the writing of history, rejecting the claim that this relationship is in principle a special problem in the historian’s work with contemporary art: whether we work with old or new art music, complete emancipation from aesthetic premises is neither possible nor desirable. Then I discuss, on the basis of texts by Carl Dahlhaus, Hermann Danuser and Paul de Man, the special slant on the reception-history issue which applies to the study of contemporary music, which has developed its own distinctive dialectic between the rupture with tradition and the extension of tradition, permitting radical reinterpretation of the historical background and artistic innovation to coalesce. Finally, I discuss the concept of “contemporary music as an institution”, which is defined as the determining framework of contemporary music. I argue for the necessity of such an institutional concept which combines aesthetic aspects with the history of composition, reception and organization; but at the same time I point out the epistemological problems of the concept.