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Guido Adler's “The Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology” (1885): An English Translation with an Historico-Analytical Commentary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Erica Mugglestone
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Extract

In 1884 a triumvirate of Austro-German music historians, Friedrich Chrysander, Philipp Spitta, and Guido Adler, founded the first journal of musicology,1 the newest fledgeling amongst the sciences,2 namely, the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft [Musicology Quarterly]. The first issue opened with a paper written by Adler, defining the scope, method and aim of the new science. This proved to be a potent formative influence on the establishment and development of the academic discipline of musicology in Europe and elsewhere, notably the United States of America, an influence that is strongly felt to the present day. Thus, in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980: s.v. “Musicology,” by Vincent Duckles, et al.), its importance is made evident in that it is summarised as the still extant model of musicology.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 13 , 1981 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the International Council for Traditional Music

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References

Notes

1. The term Musikwissenschaft had been in existence since the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and was fairly established by mid-century. Nevertheless, Chrysander still used the older term ‘musikalische Wissenschaft‘ in the title of the journal he founded in 1863. By using the term in its title, the new journal set the seal of approval on its acceptance as the designation for the emerging academic discipline. It is in this sense that it was the first to do so.Google Scholar

2. The English word ‘science’ is used throughout in its original sense of ‘any systematised body of knowledge’.Google Scholar

3. This was, in fact, the second chair of musicology to be founded in the German-speaking world. The first was established a year earlier at Strassburg [Strasbourg], where Jakobsthal took up the appointment.Google Scholar

4. It is no accident that the term Kunst [art], and its derivative and compound formations, outweigh by a factor of two the term Musik and its derivative and compound formations. Adler consistently relates the science of music to the science of art in general.Google Scholar

5. This can be perceived more clearly in Adler's inaugural lecture of 1898, where the motto now reads: ‘through understanding of art, to have an effect on art’.Google Scholar

6. The comparative method was the ubiquitous tool of scholarship in the nineteenth century, and was applied in fields other than the physical and natural sciences as well, for example, in linguistics and religion.Google Scholar

7. Stylistic laws reveal a process of selection. As much of Adler's metaphorical language suggests that he perceived history, and music as an art, in terms of a living organism, it is not unreasonable to speak of this process of selection as in some way ‘natural’. The essential originality in Darwin's theory of evolution lay in his attributing to nature the process of selection by means of the concept of survival of the fittest, which is itself a metaphorical view of nature, conceiving it as having some kind of mind. In speaking of the investigation of stylistic laws, Adler's imagery is thoroughly Darwinian. It is not the composer who selects; the musical forms themselves grow, like chains of cells, or die because they are not fit to survive.Google Scholar

8. Although Adler used the word Tonkunst, in the context of the opening historical outline of the development of the science of music, it seemed appropriate to translate the word in terms of this context. However, the opening sentence may be interpreted as meaning that the concept of ‘tonal art’ is a modern one, synchronic with the development of musicology.Google Scholar

9. Adler was referring to pre-nineteenth century systems of notation. The twentieth century has witnessed a proliferation of notational systems.Google Scholar

10. The verb periodisirt has no English equivalent. The concept of periodicity involves regular and irregular recurrence, hence the format of the translation.Google Scholar

11. The German word Klang has the connotation of timbre, but is an indefinite concept which is best translated as ‘sound’, even though the latter term lacks such a connotation.Google Scholar

12. The word Gattung was similarly translated by Strunk as ‘species‘—see Adler (1934). This interpretation is implied by his imagery.Google Scholar

13. The word Tondichter is used as a synonym for ‘composer’. Adler may have had the ‘sister science’ of literary history in mind, or have been using a commonplace Romantic notion of the composer as poet. The term Tonsetzer presents difficulties. Did he mean a ‘compositor of tones’, or a person who sets words to music?Google Scholar

14. The word used is Meister in the sense of a ‘master craftsman’.Google Scholar

15. Adler uses the word zerfällt, meaning ‘to fall into more than one part’, implying a ‘natural’ division.Google Scholar

16. The verb gliedert indicates that, in Adler's view, the history of music acts like a living organism in the process of organisation.Google Scholar

17. In the attached table, the term Territorien is replaced with the term Reichen, meaning ‘empires’, thus indicating Adler's underlying thought.Google Scholar

18. The word used is Taktbezeichnung.Google Scholar

19. The phrase means ‘par excellence’.Google Scholar

20. In the muscial theory of tonal music, seconds and fourths are dissonant, the latter if heard between the bass and an upper voice; therefore, motion in parallel seconds and fourths was anathematic.Google Scholar

21. The German language is particularly rich in words for different kinds of sounds. The words used here are Klang, Schall, and Geräusch.Google Scholar

22. Adler uses the word Bandwurm metaphorically, indicating that these questions persist. They are like the tapeworm in having a beginning (head), but no end in sight as they keep growing a tail.Google Scholar

23. The phrase ‘unter Dach bringen’, meaning literally ‘to bring under the roof’, indicates a late stage in the construction of stone or brick buildings, where the outer walls have to be completed to the height at which they will support the rafters before the roof is put on. In wooden framehouses, the roof is supported by the skeletal framework, and is put on before the walls are clad.Google Scholar

24. ‘One owes respect to the living, and nothing but the truth to the dead’.Google Scholar

25. Adler uses the term Cohärenz which has the meaning of a ‘natural or logical connection’. This word is closer to his thought than that of ‘correlation‘—as used in the translation of the table given in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980: s.v. “Musicology”)— which suggests relationships of a more arbitrary nature.Google Scholar