Vol. 3 • No. 1 • 2019

Defamiliarizing the West

Edited by Lukas Christensen and Daniel K. L. Chua

Global musicology is a provocation. It is not just a matter of including the Other but allowing the Other the change the way we understand ourselves. In this issue of IMS Musicological Brainfood, we consider how a global perspective challenges music theory and music history. Its alterity both distances us from what we assume we know, and encourages us to see how our identities are so connected with the Other that it is entirely feasible to write a history of Western music without Western music as the focus. Also, for the first time, we have a group-authored article; as the scholarship becomes more global, the interconnections across time and space that define the object of study, make it difficult to contain expertise in a single author. The global is just too complex: is group scholarship itself a symptom of global musicology?

Working Group “Future Histories of Music Theory”

Going Global, In Theory

“Global” is hot. Witness: global history of ideas, global history of philosophy, global history of science, global medieval studies, global history of music, etc. Laudably, the recent and various global-historical turns have been accompanied by self-critical reflections on the methods …

Rethinking Early Modern “Western Art Music”: A Global History Manifesto

I’ve long been struck by how historical musicologists working on what they call “Western Art Music” (in English, at least) consider the conceptual boundaries of their subject to be self-evident. There are conventions for studying, performing, and listening; a standardized …