MUSIC PROM THE

EARLIEST
NOTATIONS
TO THE
SIXTEENTH
CENTURY

Richard Taruskin

THE OXFORD HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC

OXFORD
UNIVE RSITY PRESS

2010
 Introduction:
The History of What?
The argumenr is no other than to inquire and collect out oj the records oj ali time
what particular kinds of learning and arts have jlourished in what ages and regions of
the world, their antiquities, their progresses, their migrations (jor sciences migrate like
nations) over the different parts oj the globe; and again their decays, disappearances,
and revivals; [and also] an account oj the principal authors, books, schools, successions,
academies, societies, colleges, orders - in a word, everything which relates to the state
oj learning. Above ali things, I wish events to be coupled with their causes. Ali this I
would ha ve handled in a historical way, not wasting time, ajter the manner ojcritics, in
praise and blame, but simply narrating the fact historically, with but slight intermixture
oj private judgment. Por the manner oj compiling such a history I particularly advise
that the matter and provision oj it be not drawn Jrom histories and commentaries alone;
but that the principal books written in each century, or perhaps in shorter periods,
proceeding in regular order jrom the earliest ages, be themselves taken in to consultation;
that so (I do not say by a complete perusal. Jor that would be an endless labour, but)
by tasting them here and there, and observing their argument, style, and method, the
Literary Spirit of each age may be charmed as it were from the dead.
- FRANCIS BACON, DE DIGNITA TE ET A UGMENTJS SCJENTJA RUM UBRI IX ( 1623)'

utatis mutandis, Bacon's task was mine. He never lived ro complete ir; I

M have-but only by dint of a drastic narrowing of scope. My mutanda are

stated in my tide (one not chosen but granted; and for that honor I extend
my thanks to the Delegares of the Oxford University Press). For ''learning and the
arts" substitute music. For "tbe different parts of the globe" substitute Europe, joined
in Volume 3 by America. (That is what we still casually mean by "the W est," although
che concept is undergoing somerimes curious change: a Soviet music magazine I once
subscribed ro gave news of the pianist Yevgeny Kissin's "Western debut"-in Tokyo.)
Andas for antiquities, rhey hardly exist for music. Uacques Chailley's magni6cencly
titled conspectus, 40,000 ans de musique, got through the first 39,000 years-I exaggerare
only slighrly - on its first page.2 )
Still, as rhe sheer bulk of rhis offering arrests, a loe was left, because I rook seriously
Bacon's stipulations rhar causes be investigated, that original documents be not only
cited bur analyzed (for rheir "argumenr, scyle, and method") and that the approach
should be catholic andas near exhaustive as possible, based not on my preferences but on
my estimacion of what needed to be included in order ro sarisfy the dual requirement of
causal explanation and technical explication. Most books that call rhemselves histories
of Western music, or of any of its traditional "sryle periods," are in facr surveys, which

XIII
 MUSIC FROM THE BARLIBST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEl!NTH CENTURY

cover-and celebrare-che relevanr reperroire, bue make linle effort truly to explain
wby and how rhings bappened as chey d.id. This set of books is an attempt at a
true history.
Paradoxically, that means it does nor cake "coverage" as its primary i:ask. A lot
of famous music goes unmenrioned in rhese pages, and even sorne famous composers.
Indusion and omission imply no judgmenr of value here. I never asked myself
wbecher this or thar composicion or musician was "worth mentiorúng," and I hope
readers will agree that I have sought neither to advocate nor ro denigrare what I
did include.
But there is something more fundamental yer ro explain, given my claim of
catholiciry. Coverage of all the musics rhat have been made in Europe and America
is obviously neither the airn of chis book nor its achievemem. A glance ar che table
of contenrs will insrantly confirm, ro che inevitable d.isappointment and perbaps
consrernation of sorne, thar "W esrern music" here meaos whar ir has always meant in
general academic histories: it means what is usually called "are music" or "classical music,"
and looks suspiciously like che tradicional canon that has come under so much justi6.ed
fue for its long-unquestioned dominance of che academic currículum (a dorrúnance
that is now in irreversible process of decline). A very challenging example of that fire
is a fusillade by Roben Walser, a scholar of popular music, who characterizes che
reperroire treated here in terms borrowed from che writings of che Marxist hisrorian
Eric Hobsbawm. "Classical music," wrices Walser,

is che sort of thing Eric Hobsbawm calls an "invenced tradition," whereby presem
intereses consrrucr a cohesive pase ro esrablisb or legicimize presenc-day institutions
or social relations. The hodgepodge of rhe classical canon-aristocratic and
bourgeois music; academic, sacred and secular; music for public concerts, prívate
soirées and dancing-achieves irs coherence through irs function as the most
prestigious musical culture of the twentiech century.J

Why in rhe world would one want to concinue propagating such a hodgepodge in
che rwenry-first century?
The hererogeneity of che classical canon is underúable. Indeed, char is one of
irs main attractions. And while I reject Walser's conspiracy-cheorizing, J defuútely
symparhize with che social and política! impücations ofhis argument, as will be evident
(for sorne - a different some - all too evident) in the many pages that follow. Bue
chat very sympathy is what impeUed me to subject chat impossibly heterogeneous
body of music to one more (perhaps che last) comprehensive examination-under a
revised de6nicion rhat suppües the coherence thar W alser impugns. All of the genres he
menrions, and all of the genres chat are treated in chis book, are Ücerare genres. That is,
they are genres that have been disseminated primarily through che medium of writing.
The sheer abundance and the generic heterogeneity of che music so disseminaced in "the
West" is a truly distinguishing fearure-perhaps the Wesr's signal musical disrinccion.
Ir is deserving of cricical study.
By critica! srudy I mean a srudy that does not take Üteracy for granted, or simply tour
itas a unique Western achievement, but racher "interrogares" ir (as our hermeneutics

XIV
 INTRODUCTION

of suspicion now demands) for its consequences. The first chapter of chis book makes
a fairly detailed attempt to assess the specific consequences for music of a literate
culture, and that cheme remains a conscanc faccor-always implicit, ofcen explicit - in
every chapeer that follows, right up to (and especially) the conduding ones. For ir is
the basic daim of chis mulrivolumed narrarive-its number-one posrulate-rhat che
licerate cradition of W estero music is coherent at least insofar as it has a completed
shape. les beginnings are known and explicable, and its end is now foreseeable (and also
explicable). And just as the early chapcers are dominated by che interplay of literate
and prelicerate modes of thinking and transmission {and the middle chapters rry to cite
enough examples to keep rhe interplay of licerace and nonliterace alive in the reader's
consciousness), so the conduding chapters are dominated by the interplay of licerate
and posditerace modes, which have been discernable at least since the middle of the
twentieth century, and which sene the licerace tradition (in the form of a backlash) into
its culminacing phase.
This is by no means to imply that everyching within che covers of chese volumes
constituces a single scory. I am as suspicious as che next scholar of whac we now call
metanarratives (or worse, "master narratives"). Indeed, one of che main tasks of chis
telling will be to accounc for the rise of our reigning narratives, and show that they too
have histories with beginnings and {implicitly) with ends. The main ones, for music,
have been, 6rst, an esthetic narrative-recounting the achievement of "a.re for art's
sake," or (in the present instance) of "absoluce music" - that asserts the auconomy of
artworks {often tautologically insulated by adding "insofar as they are artworks") as an
indispensable and retroactive criterion of value and, second, a historical narrative-call
it "neo-Hegelian" - that celebrares progressive (or "revolutionary") emancipation and
values artworks according to their contribution to that project. Both are sbopworn
heirlooms of German romanticism. These romancic cales are "hiscoricized" in volume
ill, the key volume of che set, for it furnishes our intellectual present with a pase. This is
done in the fervent belief thac no daim of universaliry can survive situation in intellecrual
history. Each of che genres that Walser names has its own history, moreover, as do rhe
many that he does not name, and it will be evident to all readers chac chis narrarive
devores as much actention to a congeries of "petits récits" - individual accounts of
this and chac- as it does to che epic skecched in che foregoing paragraphs. Bue che
overarching trajeccory of musical liceracy is nevertheless a pare of all the scories, and a
parcicularly revealing one.

*****

The first thing chat it reveals is chat che history narrated within these covers is
che hiscory of elite genres. For until very recent times, and in sorne ways even up to
the p resent, liceracy and its fruits have been the possession - che dosely guarded and
privileging (even life-saving) possession - ofsocial elites: ecclesiascical, policical, military,
hereditary, meritocratic, professional, economic, educacional, academic, fashionable,
even criminal. What else, alter all, malees high art high? The casting of the story as

XV
 MUSIC FROM THB BARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THB SIXTEBNTH CBNTURY

the story of the Literace culture of music turns it willy-nilly inro a social hiscory-a
contradictory social history in which progressive broadening of access to literacy
and its attendant cultural perquisites (the history, as it has sometimes been called,
of the democracization of taste), is accompanied at every turn by a counterthrust
that seeks ro redefine elite status (and its acrendant genres) ever upward. As most
comprehensively documented by Pierre Bourdieu, consumption of cultural goods
(and music, on Bourdieu's showing, above all) is one of che primary means of social
classification (including self- classification)-hence, social division- and (familiar
proverbs notwithstanding) one of che liveliesc sites of dispute in Western culture. 4
Most broadly, contestations of taste occur across lines of class division, and are easiest
ro discem becween proponents of !iterare genres and nonlirerare ones; bue within aod
among elites chey are no less porent, no less heated, and no less decisively inBuential on
che course of events. T aste is one of the sices of contention to which chis book gives
extensive, and, I would claim, unprecedented coverage, beginning with chapter 4 and
lasting ro che bitter end.
Indeed, ifone had to be nominated, I would single out social conrenrion as embodied
in words and deeds-whar cultural theorists call "discoursé' (and ochers call "buzz"
or "spio")-as the paramounr force driving this narrative. It has many arenas. Perhaps
the mosr conspicuous is that of meaning, an area chat was for a long time considered
virtually off limits to professional scholarly investigation, since it was naively assumed
ro be a nonfacrual domain inasmuch as music lacks che semancic (or "proposicional")
specilicity ofliterature or even painting. But musical meaning is no more confinable to
marcers of simple semanric paraphrase chan any ocher sort of meaning. Ucterances are
deemed meaningful (or not) insofar as they trigger associations, and in the absence of
association no ucterance is intelligible. Meaning in chis book is caken to represent che
full range of associations encompassed by locutions such as "If t har is true, ic means that
. . . ," or "chat's what M-0-T -H -E-R means to me," or, simply, "know what J mean?" lt
covers implications, consequences, mecaphors, emocional attachmencs, social actitudes,
proprierary intereses, suggested possibilities, motives, significance (as distinguished
from signification) ... and simple semantic paraphrase, roo, when thar is relevant.
And while it is perfecrly true chac semancic paraphrases of music are never "factual,"
their assertion is indeed a social facc-one rhat belongs to a category ofhistorical fact of
che most vital importance, since such faces are among che clearest connectors of musical
hisrory to che history of everyrhing else. T ake for example che current impassioned
debate over the meaningofDmicry Shostakovich's music, wich all ofics insiscent claims
and councerclaims. The assertion chac Shostakovich's mu sic reveals him co be a political
dissident is only an opinion, as is che opposite claim, chat his music shows him to have
been a '1oyal musical son of the Soviet Union" -as, for chac matter, is che aJceroative
claim chac his music has no light to shed on che question of his personal policical
allegiances. And yec the fact thac such assertions are advanced wich passion is a powerful
testimony ro che social and political role Shosrakovich's music has played in che world,
boch during his lifetime and (especially) after bis deach, when the Cold W ar was playing
itself our. Espousing a particular posirion in che debate is no business of che historian.

XVl
 INTROOUCTION

(Sorne readers may know rbat I bave espoused one as a critic; I would like to think tbat
readers who do not know my position will not discover ir bere.) Bur to report tbe debate
in its full range, and draw relevant implications from it, is tbe historian's ineluctable
duty. That report includes the designation of wbat elemenrs within the sounding
composition have triggered the associations-a properly historical sort of analysis tbat
is parricularly abundant in the presenr narrative. Call it semiotics if you will.
But of course semiorics has been much abused. Ir is an old vice of criticism, and
larely of scholarship, to assume that che meaning of arcwork.s is fully vested in chem by
cheir creacors, and is simply "chere" to be decoded by a specially gifted interpreter. Thar
assumpcion can lead to gross errors. Ic is what vitiated the preposterously overrated
work of Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, and what has caused che work of che "new
musicologists" of che 198os and 199os-Adornians to a man and woman-to age
wicb such stunning rapidicy. Ir is, all pretenses aside, still an authoritarian discourse
and an asocial one. It still grants oracular privílege to che crearive genius and his
prophets, the gifted incerpreters. It is alrogether unacceptable as a historical mechod,
alrhough ir is part of history and, Like everyrhing else, deserving of report. Tbe
historian's trick is to shifr che question from 'What does it mean?" to "What has it
meant?" That move is what transforms fucile speculation and dogmatic polemic inro
historical illumination. What it illuminates, in a word, are the stakes, both "theirs" and
,, ,,
ours.
Not that all meaningful discourse about music is semiotic. Much of ir is evaluative.
And value judgments, too, have a place of honor in historical narratives, so long as
they are not merely che hiscorian's judgmenr (as Francis Bacon was already presciencly
aware). Beethoven's grearness is an excellenr case in poinr because it will come in
for so much discussion in che later volumes of this book. As such, the notion of
Beethoven's greatness is "only" an opinion. To assert itas a fact would be che sort of
historians' transgression on which master narratives are builr. (And because historians'
cransgressions so often make history, they will be given a lor ofattention in the pages rhat
follow.) Bue to say chis much is already to observe that such assertions, precisely insofar
as chey are not factual, often have enormous performacive import. Statements and
actions predicated on Beethoven's perceived greatness are what constitute Beethoven's
authoricy, which cerrainly is a historical fact-one rhat practically derermined the
course of lare-nineteench-cenrury music hisrory. Without taking it into accounr one
can explain little of what wenr on in che world of literare music-making during that
time-and even up to the presenr. Whether the historian agrees wich che percepcion
on which Beethoven's auchority has been based is of no consequence to che cale, and has
no bearing on the historian's obligatíon to report it. Thar report consrirutes "receprion
history" - a relacively new cbing in musicology, but (many scholars now agree) of equal
importance to che production bistory chat used ro counr as che whole story. I have
made a great effort to give che cwo equal time, since both are necessary ingredients of
any accounr that claims fairly to represent history.

****

XVII
 MUSIC PROM THE l!ARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEENTH Cl!NTURY

Statements and adions in response tO real or perceived conditions: these are the
essenríal facts of human history. The discourse, so often slighted in the pase, is in fact
rhe srory. It creares new social and incellecmal condicions to which more statements
and acrions will respond, in an end.less chain of agency. The historian needs to be
on guard against the tendency, or the remptation, to simplify che story by neglecting
this most basic fact of ali. No hiscorical evenr or change can be meaningfully asserted
unless irs agenrs can be specified; and agents can only be people. Attributions of agency
unmediated by human accionare, in effecr, lies-or at the very leasc, evasions. They
occur inadvertendy in careless historiography ( or historiography that has submitted
unawares to a master narrative), and are invoked deliberacely in propaganda (i.e.,
historiography that consciously colludes with a master narracive). I adduce what I
consider to be an example of each (and leave it ro the reader ro decide which, if any, is
che honorable blunder and which che propaganda). The firsc comes from Pierer C. Van
den Toorn's Music, Politics, and the Academy, a reburtal of the so-calied New Musicology
of the 198os.

The question of an engaging conrext is an aesthetic as well as an historical and

analytic-theoretical one. And once individual works begin to prevail for what they
are in and of themselves and not for what rhey represenc, rhen concext itself. as a
reflection of rhis transcendence, becomes less dependenr on marrers of hiscorical
placemenc. A great variety of contexts can suggest rhemselves as attencion is
focused on rhe works, on the nacure of both their immediacy and che relacionship
rbar is srruck with rhe concemporary lisrener.s

The second is from the most recent narracive history of music published in America
as of this writing, Mark Evan Bonds's A History of Music in Western Culture.

By the early 16th cenrury, the rondeau, tbe lasr of the survivingformes fixcs from the
medieval era, had largely disappeared, replaced by more freely structured chansons
based on the principie of pervading imitarion. What emerged during the 152os
and 153os were new approaches to serring vernacular rexts: the Parisian chanson in
France and rhe madrigal in Italy.
During rhe 152os, a new genre of song, now known as rhe Parisian chanson
emerged in the French capital. Among irs most notable composers were Claudin de
Sermisy (ca.1490-1562) and ClémencJannequin (ca.1485- ca. 1560), whoseworks
were widely disseminated by tbe Parisian music publisher Pierre Attaingnant.
Reflecting che influence of the Italian frottola, rhe Parisian chanson is lighrer and
more chordally oriented than earlier chansons.6

This sort of writing gives everybody an alibi. All the active verbs have ideas or
inanimate objects as subjects, and ali human acts are described in rhe passive voice.
Nobody is seen as doing (or deciding) anyrhiog. Even che composers in che second
extract are nor described in the act, but only as an impersonal medium or passive
vehicle of "emergence." Because nobody is doing anything, the authors never have to
deal with motives or values, with choices or responsibilities, and chat is their alibí.
The second extract is a kind of shorthand historiography that inevitably devolves
into inerr survey, since ir does nothing more than describe objects, rhinking, perhaps,
chat is how one safeguards "objectiviry." The first extraer commits a far more serious

XVIII
 1 NTROD UCTION

transgression, for it is ideologically committed to its impersonalicy. les eliminarion of

human agency is calculated to protect the autonomy of che work-objecc and acrually
prevent hiscorical chinking, which che auchor evidently regards as a chreat to che
universalicy (in bis chinking, che validicy) of che values he upholds. lt is an attempc,
caughc as it were in tbe acr, co enforce whac I call che Great Eitber/Or, che great bane
of contemporary musicology.
The Greac Eicher /Or is cheseemingly inescapable debate, familiar to all academically
crained musicologists (who have had to endure it in their Bedgling proseminars),
epitomized in che quescion made famous by Carl Dahlhaus {1928-89), che mosc
prestigious German music scholar of his generacion: Is art hiscory che history of are,
or is ir che hiscory of art? Whac a senseless discinction! What seemed to make ir
necessary was che pseudo-dialecrical "method" chat case all choughc in rigidly-and
arcificially- binarized cerms: "Does music mirror tbe reality surrounding a composer,
OR does ic propose an alcernative reality:' Does it have common roors wirh political
events and philosophical ideas; OR is music written simply because music has always
been written and not, or only incidemally, because a composer is seeking to respond
with music to che world he lives in:'" These questions all come from che second chapter
of Dahlhaus's Foundations of Music History, che cide of which - "The significance of are:
historical or aesrhetic?" -is yec anocher forced dichoromy. The whole chapter, which
has achieved in its way che status of a dassic, consiscs, throughout, of a vericable salad
of empcy binarisms.7
This sorc of tbinking has long been seen chrough- excepr, ir seems, by musico-
logisrs. A scurrilous lirde trace-David Hackerc Fischer's Historians' Fallacies -chac
graduare studencs of my generacion liked ro read {often aloud, to one another) behind
our professors' backs includes it under che rubric "Fallacies of Quescion-Framing,"
and gives an unforgeccable example: "Basil of Byzantium: Rar or Fink?'' ("Maybe," che
auchor comments, "Basil was che very model of a modern ratfink."8 ) There is nothing
a priori to rule out both/and rather rhan eicher/or. Indeed, if it is true that production
and reception history are of equal and incerdependent importance to an understanding
of culrural produces, chen ic muse follow rhac cypes of analysis usually conceived in
murually exclusive "incernal" and "external" cacegories can and muse function symbi-
otically. That is che assumpcion on which chis book has been wrircen, reBecting its
aurhor's refusal to choose between this and that, but rather to embrace chis, chat, and
che ocher.
Reasons for che long if lacely embacded dominance of internalisr models for
music hiscory in che West {a dominance rhac in large pare accouncs for Dahlhaus's
ocherwise inexplicable prestige) have more than rwo centuries of imellectual hiscory
behind chem, and I shall cry ro illuminate chem ar appropriare poincs. Bue a comment
is required up from about che special reasons for cheir dominance in che recent
hiscory of che discipline-reasons having to do with che Cold War, when the
general intellecmal atmosphere was excessively polarized (hence binarízed) around a
pair of seemingly exhaustíve and cocalized alcernatives. The only alcernative to scrict
intemalisc chinking, ic then seemed, was a discourse chat was utterly corrupced by

XIX
 MUSIC FROM THE EARLIEST NOTATIONS TO TH~ SIXTEENTH CBNTURY

totalicarian cooption. Admit a social purview, ir rhen seemed, and you were part of
the Communist threat to the integriry (and che freedom) of the crearive individual.
In Germany, Dahlhaus was case as che dialectical ancithesis to Georg Knepler,
his equally magisterial Easc German counterpart.9 Wichin his own geographical
and poütical milieu, tben, his ideological commitmenrs were acknowledged.'º In
the English-speaking countries, wbere Knepler was practically unknown, Dahlhaus's
inA.uence was more pernicious because he was assimilaced, quite erroneously, to
an indigenous scholarly pragmacism chac choughc itself ideologically uncommicced,
free of theoretical preconceptions, and tberefore capable of seeing chings as chey
acrually are. Thac, too, was of course a fallacy (Fischer calls it, perhaps unfairly, the
"Baconian fallacy"). W e ali acknowledge now rhac our methods are grounded in and
guided by cheory, even if our cheories are noc consciously preformulated or explicidy
enuncia red.
And so this narracive has been guided. les theoretical assumpcions and consequent
mechodology- che cards I am in process of laying on the table-were, as it happens,
noc preformulated; but that did not make chem any less real, or lessen their potency as
enablers and conscraints. By che end of writing I was sufficiencly self-aware to recognize
che kinship becween che mechods I had arrived at and chose advocated in Art Worlds, a
methodological conspeccus by Howard Becker, a sociologist of are. Celebraced among
sociologisrs, che book has nor been widely read by musicologists, and I discovered ic
aft:er my own work was finished in 6.rsc draft." Bue a shorr descripcion of irs reners will
round out che picture I am attempting to draw of che premises on which chis book
reses, anda reading of Becker's book wiU, I think, be of conceptual benefic not only co
che readers of chis book, bue also to che writers of ochers.
An "are world," as Becker conceives it, is che ensemble of agenrs and social
relations chae ir takes to produce works of are ( or maincain arriscic activiry) in various
media. To study are worlds is to srudy processes of collective accion and mediacion,
che very cbings chat are mosr often missing in convencional musical hisroriography.
Such a srudy tries ro answer in all rheir complexiry questions like 'Whac did ir
cake to produce Beechoven's Fiftbt Anyone who chinks chac che answer ro chac
question can be given in one word- "Beechoven" - needs to read Becker ( or, if one
has che time, chis book). Bue of course no one who has reflected on rhe marter
ar all would give che one-word answer. Bartók gave a valuable clue ro che kind of
accounr chac cruly explains when he commented dryly chat Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus
"could not have been written wichout Hungarian peasanr music. {Neicher, of course,
coul.d ir have been wrirren wichout Kodály.)"1,, An explanacory account describes che
dynamic (and, in rhe true sense, dialeccical) relationship chac obtains berween powerful
agents and mediaring faccors: inscirucions and cheir gacekeepers, ideologies, patterns of
consumpcion and disseminacion involving parrons, audiences, publishers and publicisrs,
crirics, chroniders, commentarors, and so on practically indefinitely until one chooses
to draw the line.
Where shaU ic be drawn~ Becker begins his book wich a piquant epigraph thac
engages che quesrion head-on, leading him directly ro his 6.rst, most crucial cl1eoretical

XX
 INTROOUCTION

poinr: namcly, thar ":ill artistic work, like all ht1man acrivicy, involvcs rhe joinr acriviry
of a nt1mber, often a large number, of people, chrough whose coopcration che arr work
we evenrually see or hear comes ro be and continues ro be." The epigraph comes from
che aurobiography of Anrhony Trollope:

Ir was my pracricc ro be ar my rabie every morning ar 5:30 A.M.; and ir was also my
pracrice to allow myself no merey. An old groom, whose business ir was ro call me,
and to whom I paid f.5 ayear extra for che dury, allowed himself no merey. During
ali rhose years ar W::iltham Cross he was never once lace with che coffee which ir
was his dmy ro bring me. T do nor know rhac 1 oughc nor ro feel rhar 1 owe more
co him rhan co any one else for rhe success I have had. By beginning ar rhar hour 1
could complete my licerary work before I dressed for breakfasc.' 3

Quite a fcw coffee porrcrs, so ro speak, will figure in che pagcs rhac follow, as
will agenrs who cnforce convenrions {and, occasionally, che law), mobilize rcsources.
disseminate produces (ofren alrering chem in che process), and creare rept1tacions.
AU of rhcm are ar once porenri:il enablers :ind porenrial constraincrs, and creare rhe
condirions wirhin wh1ch crearivc agenrs acr. Composers will inevirably loom largesr
in che discussion despire all cavcacs, because rheirs are che names on che arcifacrs
char will be mosr closcly analyzed. Bur che acr of n;iming is irsclf an inscrument
of power, :tnd a prop:i.g:i.cor of master nnrr:i.tives (now in a second, more liter:Jl,
mcaning), and ir too muse receive ics mccd of inrerrogacion. Thc very firsr chapccr
in Volumc l can stand as a modcl, in a scnse, for the more rc:ilisric assessmenr
of rhe place composers and composirions occupy in che gener:il historical schcme:
firsr, bccausc ir namcs no composers ar ali; and sccond, becausc bcfore any musical
artifacts are discussed, tbe srory of their cnabling is told ar considcr:ible lcngrh-a
scory whosc case of charactcrs includes kings, popes, tcachcrs, painrers, scribcs ,mcl
chroniders, rhe laucr Íurnishing a R.as'1omo11 choir of concradicrion, disagreemenr
and conrcnrion.
Anocher advanragc of focusing on discourse and conrencion is chac such a view
prevencs rhe lazy depiction of monolichs. T hc familiar "Frankfurc School" paradigm
rhat cases che history of rwenciech-cencury music as a simple rwo-sidcd barde bccween
an avanr-garde of hcroic resisters and che homogenizing commercial juggernauc known
as rhe Culture Induscry is one of the most conspicuous and deserving viccims of che
kind of close observarion encouragcd herc of che actual statemencs and actions of
human agenrs ("rc:il people"). Hisrori:ms of popular music have shown over and over
:igain rhat rhe Culture Indusrry has nevcr bcen a monolirh, and all ir rakes is che
reading of a cot1ple of memoirs - as wirnesscs, never as oracles- co make ir obvious
rhar neirhcr was che :ivanr-garde. Borh imagined enrirics were in rhcmselves sites of
somecimes furious social conrencion, cheir discord brceding diversiry; :ind paying due
artenrion ro thcir inrramural disscnsions will vascly complicare che depiccion of rheir
murual relacions.
If noching else, chis brief accounc of prcmises and mcrhods, with its insisrcnce on
an eclecric mulripliciry of approaches co observcd phenomena and on gready expanding
che p urview of what is observcd, should hclp ;1ccounc for che exrrav:iganr lcngrh of rhis

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 MUSIC FROM THB BARL I BST NOTATIONS TO THB S IXT BBNT H CBNTURY

submission. As justification, 1 can offer only my conviction thar che same factors thar
have increased its length have also, and in equal measure, increased its inrerest and its
usefulness.

R.T.
El Cerrito, California
16 July 2008

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