Publication date:
17 November 2011Length of book:
332 pagesPublisher
Scarecrow PressISBN-13: 9780810876712
We seldom consider how much we mistakenly presume in hewing to definitions of music that differ dramatically from the standpoint of other cultures. In What Makes Music European, Marcello Sorce Keller examines the limitations of accepted wisdom about the concept of music in Euro-Western culture. His investigations of the conclusions reached by music researchers of the past several decades considerably upsets the concepts relied upon by the concert-going public. Sorce Keller insightfully asks: Who makes the music? Should music be original, and how much can it be? Why do people identify with songs, pieces, styles, and repertoire? Why is music so ideological? Why do we misunderstand the music of different times and places, and why do we enjoy doing so? He also explores the juxtaposition of economy, society, and music making, as well as the concept of "illegal harmonies."
In What Makes Music European, Sorce Keller addresses the little-discussed matters that are essential to an understanding of how music intersects with the life of so many people. Readers are offered an approach for thinking about music that depends as much on its history as on the concepts and attitudes of the social sciences. What Makes Music European concisely demonstrates, to those familiar with Western music, how peculiar Euro-Western concepts of music appear from a cross-cultural perspective. At the same time, it encourages ethnomusicologists to apply their knowledge to Western music and explain to its public how much of what listeners take for granted is, at the very least, highly debatable.
In What Makes Music European, Sorce Keller addresses the little-discussed matters that are essential to an understanding of how music intersects with the life of so many people. Readers are offered an approach for thinking about music that depends as much on its history as on the concepts and attitudes of the social sciences. What Makes Music European concisely demonstrates, to those familiar with Western music, how peculiar Euro-Western concepts of music appear from a cross-cultural perspective. At the same time, it encourages ethnomusicologists to apply their knowledge to Western music and explain to its public how much of what listeners take for granted is, at the very least, highly debatable.
Sorce Keller's express intention is to examine the European art-music tradition with the same tools and from the same perspectives that an ethnomusicologist would employ to examine music of a non-Western culture. The working out of this agenda does not go as one might expect. This is a fascinating, personal, broadly provocative book that can be approached by readers far beyond the discipline of ethnomusicology. The current notion of European art music, or the very idea of "music" in Europe, seems to have been constructed in the 19th century; it was tied strongly to social and economic change, among other things. Fundamental European assumptions about music (e.g., that there are musical "works" and that there are "composers" of those works), then, do not emerge inevitably from the stuff of music itself. Sorce Keller raises these issues and many more within a purview that comprehends European music's relationships with other musics and with its own history. This book is particularly appropriate for libraries with holdings in musicology, especially other volumes in the "Europea" series. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.