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All Arts Aspire to the Condition of Musicology: Victorian Musicology as Interdiscipline

Zon, Bennett

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Contributors

Bernard Lightman
Editor

Abstract

This chapter traces the idea of an interdiscipline to Walter Pater’s famous adage ‘All art constantly aspires to the condition of music’. It utilizes Pater’s idea to identify the origin of Victorian musicology not as a discipline, but as an interdiscipline. According to the rules of anderstreben all art aspires to the condition of music because music is the only art that successfully collapses matter and form. In the construction of their interdiscipline Victorian musicologists, like Pater, would adopt ekphrasis as a methodological practice and anderstreben as a theoretical belief. For one thing Victorian musicologists struggled to understand and explain music’s purpose without reference to other disciplines, and in some instances disciplines like anthropology and theology seemed to hold mutually contradictory opinions, even if voiced through the same musicologist. The Victorian musicological subject defined himself or herself within a matrix of three intersecting areas of socio-cultural development: professionalization, education, and popularization.

Citation

Zon, B. (2019). All Arts Aspire to the Condition of Musicology: Victorian Musicology as Interdiscipline. In B. Lightman, & B. Zon (Eds.), Victorian culture and the origin of disciplines (283-307). CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429277139-13

Acceptance Date Apr 30, 2019
Online Publication Date Jun 24, 2019
Publication Date Jun 24, 2019
Deposit Date Jul 22, 2019
Publicly Available Date Dec 24, 2020
Pages 283-307
Series Title The nineteenth-century
Book Title Victorian culture and the origin of disciplines.
DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429277139-13

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