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Abstract

The history of music in UK universities can be divided into three periods: (a) from 1945 to the mid-1970s, which saw the emergence of most major music departments and music as an established area for academic study and research, but during which time most research took the form of textual scholarship, monographs for general readers, and teaching aimed to produce music teachers, professional organists and choir directors; (b) from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, with the growth of a humanities-inclined approach to music research, the foundation of the SMA and the journal Music Analysis, with important new textbooks (Cook 1987; Bent 1987; Dunsby and Whittall 1988), and a consequent growth of systematic music analysis; (c) from the mid-1990s to the present day, with major growth of academic music technology, commercial music and musical theatre, an elision of divides between academic and practical work, and latterly the closure of various more ‘musicological’ departments and programmes, as well as new ideological challenges to the traditional humanities and music analysis. In this paper I outline this history, identifying key milestones in research, and offer a range of arguments for declines in these respects during period (c), whilst drawing upon Horton 2020, Donn and Pace 2023, and Cavett et al 2023 to analyse perspectives on the value or otherwise of the study of musical notation and theory/analysis, and reflect on the implications for the future of the discipline.

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of Sociology & Criminology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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