Music philology
The music philology is "an occasionally occurring" designation for a sub-discipline of musicology and called the doctrine of music as a language.
General provision
The music philology describes analogous to classical philology (literature), the study of music in terms of language; because the music can also be measured in terms of time, has structures and a script. The music philology has set itself the goal "to understand, explain and restore" original musical writings. She therefore refers to primary sources such as manuscripts or early printed editions and "tries meticulously - pedantic, as her despisers think" - to reconstruct them precisely:
- "While our exact music philologists are almost uncomfortable with the other classics and throw themselves in swarms on dots and lines, delicious Haydn treasures were left aside long enough." (Editor of a Haydn opera, 1895)
Accordingly, the main goal of music philology is source research and text criticism , that is, the identification and correction of errors in traditional musical notation. Most musicologists take the term even further by including hermeneutics (= art of interpretation).
According to Georg Feder, it can be summarized as follows: “In music we have [...] as the core of the primary source and notation studies (musical orthography and palaeography ), around which the textual criticism is built up, the theoretical textual and Work interpretation (hermeneutics) follows. Music theory forms a further circle as historical musical grammar and as a musical 'lexicon' of tonal language, both in the stylistic [...] sense of a systematic compilation of musical paradigms and in the music-theoretical as a dictionary of musical terms [...]. "
Source research
According to Feder, there are three types of sources in the humanities:
- the source from which the author drew when he created his work,
- the source from which the historian draws in order to gain knowledge of the past,
- the source from which the philologist draws when he wants to determine the correct text of a written work.
While the first-mentioned type of source is not used in musicology, sources of the second type are mainly used for composing composers' biographies or depictions of the musical life of a time. Sources such as publisher advertisements, theater bills or eye reports can also be helpful for the music philologist. Other examples of this type of source are the composer's comments and documents relating to the reception of the work, which primarily serve hermeneutics, or indirect sources such as the files of a music ensemble or church documents.
The third type of source is mainly used in musicology. These include the historical manuscripts and printed music already mentioned, as well as, more recently, sound recordings (e.g. recordings of works by the composer himself). Sketches, corrections and older versions are included. In addition, musical instruments from that time can have a source value.
Source research always includes source criticism . It is the question of the relationship between the narrator and the composer - if a musical text is not in the composer's handwriting - and the credibility of the witnesses or narrators. Depending on the type of source, it also means checking the origin and age of the source.
A well-founded source criticism requires that the concordances of the sources that testify to the musical text, such as text witnesses or templates, are known ( heuristic : the art of tracking down sources). These include catalogs of works, editions of letters, documentary biographies and special treatises as well as general sources on literature ( Répertoire International des Sources Musicales , Eitner 's 'Biographisch-Bibliographisches Quellenlexikon der Musik').
Textual criticism
According to Friedrich Schleiermacher's definition, textual criticism is "research [...] on the age, authenticity and correctness of scripts" or ultimately the only question about authenticity, namely that of the author, the date and the (musical) text.
The musical text criticism means in detail the examination of the author's name, dating, genre, musical notation, form and scoring, composition technique, the performance instructions and other inscriptions, such as dedication and closing remarks, as well as the song text. In a second step, if necessary, the relevant information must be determined if it cannot be taken directly from the source (definition of genre, determination of the missing date, chronological sequence of undated versions of sentences and works).
Since not all copies of a sheet music print are identical, the use of several copies is a necessary procedure for every text critic.
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics are used to interpret, explain and theoretically interpret music; Or in the words of the founder of music-theoretical hermeneutics, Hermann Kretzschmar, from 1902: Hermeneutics is the "exposure of the train of thought of composition". It is decisive for a possible later transcription as well as for the practical performance interpretation:
- "Musicological methods and research results are the basis [...] from the basic philological work (study and evaluation of the sources) to practical performance consequences." (A music publisher on his Bach editions)
Individual evidence
- ^ Spring: Music Philology, Foreword
- ↑ ibid, p. 1
- ↑ a b ibid, p. 22
- ↑ ibid, p. 26
- ↑ ibid, p. 30
- ↑ ibid., P. 43
- ↑ ibid., P. 38
- ↑ cf. ibid., p. 39
- ↑ ibid., P. 83
- ↑ ibid., P. 25
literature
- Dadelsen, Georg von: On the part of interpretation in documentation , in: Source research in musicology , ed. v. G. Feder, W. Rehm & M. Ruhnke (Wolfenbüttel, 1982).
- Feder, Georg: Music Philology. An introduction to musical text criticism, hermeneutics and editing techniques (Darmstadt, 1987) ISBN 3534017846 .
- Nikolaus Urbanek, “What is a music-philological question?”, In: M. Calella, N. Urbanek (ed.), Historical Musicology. Basics and Perspectives , Stuttgart: Metzler 2013, pp. 147–183.
- Music philology. Edited by Bernhard R. Appel and Reinmar Emans. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag 2017 (Compendia Music 3).