Evolutionary themes in British music historiography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12118065 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Oldroyd (corresponding author), David R Oldroyd |
| Year | 1982 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 52-66 |
| Publication date | 1982-08-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Musicology Australia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0814-5857 • E-ISSN: 1949-453X |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/08145857.1982.10415934 |
| OpenAlex | W2315592391 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
The present paper was stimulated, in the first instance, by my reading of W. D. Allen's well-known volume, Philosophies of ‘Music History (1939),1 the only full-length book in English that examines in detail the intellectual underpinnings of music historiography. Allen’s work is today considered by musicologists to be somewhat dated. Nevertheless, it raised for me an interesting question that this paper seeks to resolve, namely, the nature of the relationship that exists between certain explanatory categories to be found in many nineteenth- and twentieth-century works dealing with music history and the wider intellectual community within which such works were written. The particular aspect of this relationship that I wish to examine here is to be found in the use of evolutionary and organic models in the structuring of music historiography and the way in which, in general terms, a biological way of thinking about music history was employed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The method of analysis used allows us, I believe, to see something of the very large-scale changes in ways of thinking about the world and its history that occurred in the nineteenth century and allows us, in a general way, to make certain claims about the aetiology of such changes. Thus we may be able to see whether the use of evolutionary ideas in music historiography occurred as a direct result of the successes of evolutionary biology in the nineteenth century — and in particular as a result of Darwin’s work — or whether historiographical and biological evolutionism may have been manifestations of some much more broadly based intellectual movement. The range of material examined has been wide, even though it has, for convenience, been restricted to British texts only. Whether the conclusions that are drawn from the present enquiry would hold good if it were extended to (say) French and German texts would have to be the subject of a wider and more extended investigation
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| Highly cited | No |
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