Musicology

The other day matt and I were talking, and somehow I was mentioning that I probably wouldn't do very well at studying music theory at graduate school level. I decided this because once you get past what I think is known as the "Common Practice Period" theory (basically up until post-romantic styles... either that or it's just Baroque music... but I'm going to use the term as if it means up until post-romantic music), everything goes crazy because CPP rules no longer apply to that kind of music. So while we have a set of tools for examining, understanding, and comparing music from pre-Baroque through Romantic music, there really isn't anything that is all-encompassing beyond that. Basically this has resulted in the creation of LOTS of tools, that may apply only to a specific genre, composer, or even song. And in all honesty, I just find that quite pointless. I mean the nice thing about CPP theory is that you can use things like roman numeral analysis, forms, and techniques as a constant allowing you to see how the music develops and changes over time in ADDITION to understanding exactly how a song is constructed. And what really interests me is why music developed the way it did. What cultural, historic, personal influences affected the development of a major scale, or a dominant seventh chord. Why do we have things like picardy thirds and chromatic mediants? Theory gave a common language from Bach to Mozart to Chopin. Sure there are caveats, but still... it worked. So basically what I've realized since leaving school, is that ... I'm not a theorist. I'm really more interested in musicology, and specifically in more of an ethnomusicology approach to (shockingly) Western music. I mean seriously... music is a product of a particular culture and a particular time in history, just as much as it is a combination of notes and duration. Anyway... in my music class on monday our teacher told us about a group of musicologist who in the 80s formed the "New Musicology" school. And basically they began to approach music this way. Not that I'm trying to put myself ANYWHERE NEAR their level of scholarness, but I just found it interesting that thought like that didnt really come into play until the 80s... not only that, but many of the "old" musicologists, think that new musicology is a bunch of baloney.

ps- I'm not saying that we should continue using the CPP rules of theory for 20th Century music, but I'm merely pointing out that I dont think having a bazillion different ways of analyzing every different thing is a good enough answer to 20th C. music.

ps II- If anyone with real music scholarly knowledge reads this... I apologize if I am way off base. I'm pretty much just writing off the top of my head... which is a very unscholarly way of writing... but then again, I'm no music scholar... I'm just me.