Editorial: Musicology in an Era of Response and Responsibility

Abstract

Strong ideological positions have historically generated many of the most influential discourses in musicology, shaping the distinctions between local, individual approaches to understanding music and the more universal, collective practices of music scholarship. The rise of modern musicology during the nineteenth century and its globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have depended no less on the spread of grand theory than on the ability to redeploy musicological method through ideologies that served the few rather than the many. Among the ideologies that most closely accompanied musicology’s expansion were those that laid the most passionate claims for ownership and the valuation of self over other: nation and race, particularly in their most extreme ideological expressions, nationalism and racism. At various historical moments, different attributes accrued to nation and race, often making it difficult to view the musics of national and cultural entities positively or negatively. . . .