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Philosophy of Music Education Review, Volume 16, Number 1, Spring2008, pp. 3-19 (Article)

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THE HISTORICAL JUSTIFICATIONOF MUSICMATTI HUTTUNENSibelius Academy

Abstract: The article deals with various aspects of justifying music histori-cally. In Matti Huttunen’s opinion Western music culture has been stronglyhistorical since the nineteenth century. The article attempts to elucidate thehistorical nature of music, as well as the canon of music, the selective natureof music history, and the influence of aesthetic conceptions in our views onhistory. According to the article, the canon contains not only musical worksbut also other facts of music history. Aesthetic conceptions do not affect onlyour evaluations and analyses of particular works of music but also our waysof organizing history, including our ideas on causal connections in musichistory. The only way of escaping prevailing conceptions of music is to godeeper into them; in other words, it requires proper self-reflection.

INTRODUCTION

“Music is historical through and through.” This well-known phrase ofTheodor W. Adorno characterizes our attitude to music to a great extent. Weconsider the established composers, works, styles, and genres essentially histori-cal not only in the sense that they form the core of the historiography of music

© Philosophy of Music Education Review, 16, no. 1 (Spring 2008)

but also in the sense that they are regarded as historical in everyday discussionon music. History does not only give us a way of looking at music impartially; itis also a way of justifying the music we consider important. We speak of the ‘apol-ogy’ of avant-garde music, for instance, with which many composers and writershave been occupied during the past fifty or sixty years.

Influential writers and thinkers have often defended certain types of music inthe light of history. In his book, Philosophie der Neuen Musik (1948),1 Adornoattempted to defend the music of Arnold Schoenberg against that of Igor Stravin-sky. Adorno used concepts such as ‘tendency of material’ to show thatSchoenberg’s music, in contrast to the new classicism of Stravinsky, was sociallyand historically relevant and at the forefront in its time.2 In a way, Adorno’s entireoutput could be seen as an apology of modern music (Schoenberg and others)against the cultural industry and art that has fallen behind the times (Sibelius,for instance).

Textbooks of music history often defend certain composers and styles ratherthan attempting to depict the history of music impartially. The Finnish musichistorian and the founder of the Helsinki Music Institute (renamed the SibeliusAcademy in 1939), Martin Wegelius, was a devoted Wagnerian and his three-vol-ume book, Hufvuddragen af den västerländska musikens historia (Main Featuresof the History of Western Music, 1891–93),3 was a strong defence of Wagner’soperas. With the aid of Wagner’s own writings (especially Oper und Drama,1852) and some of the general music histories of his day (Ambros, Langhans),Wegelius attempted to show that the whole development of music was a gradualprogression towards Wagner’s musical dramas. He had read his sources well andhad a good knowledge of the music of his day. Thus his book was not merely asuperficial apotheosis of one composer; it was a coherent and convincing treatiseon his subject.

Wagner’s music was a popular object of admiration in the late nineteenthcentury and many music historians have put him in the top position in the his-tory of music. Earlier, the German music writer Franz Brendel had combinedthe Hegelian philosophy of art with a strong admiration of Wagner. In his book,Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich (1852),4 heranked Wagner at the top of nineteenth-century music, but also followed Hegelin placing music only second to poetry. In fact, when reading modern textbooksof music history, one often observes how the Wagnerian concept of history stillinfluences our conceptions, especially in the underestimation of eighteenth-cen-tury Neapolitan opera. By ‘Wagnerian concept of history’ I mean the way ofseeing the history of music—and especially the history of opera—as a gradualprocess, which culminates in Wagner’s music dramas. In Oper und Drama Wag-ner described how opera, in his view, gradually declined towards the

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eighteenth-century ‘Neapolitan style’ and then, after the brave attempts of Gluckand Mozart, developed towards Wagner’s own dramas. Beethoven’s Ninth Sym-phony was an important landmark in this process; in Oper und Drama Wagnerstated that it marked the end of independent instrumental music (a conceptionhe later modified after becoming familiar with the philosophy of ArthurSchopenhauer).5

Wagner was not the only composer who tried to justify himself through his-torical argument. Composers from Gluck to Schoenberg and from Hindemithto Stockhausen have written down their historical ideas on music in theirattempts to justify their own compositions.

Historical justifications of music are not confined to the writing of music his-tory, but also appear in our everyday thinking and discussions. It should be bornein mind that history consists not only of printed texts and that it has an importantrole in our conduct and everyday thinking. History as written and as an everydayconcept influence each other and we should also remember that conceptions ofmusic history appear in the mass media, in concert programs, and recordingbooklets, for instance.

My aim in this article is to analyze certain aspects of the historical justifica-tion of music. The question as a whole is broad and a thorough presentation ofit would be possible only in a book dealing with general aspects of the historiog-raphy of music and the philosophy of music history. Here I will restrict myself tofour aspects of this phenomenon. First, I will argue that since the nineteenth-century breakthrough in historical thinking our conception of music has beenessentially historical. I will then discuss the selective nature of music history andquestions concerning the canon—or canons—of music. Recent discussions onthe canon of music perhaps do not leave much room for new ideas, but I thinkit is still necessary to deal with the nature of the canon in this connection.Finally, I will consider the influence of aesthetic ideas on our conceptions ofmusic history, using some general presentations of it as examples.

What I will not deal with is historical truth. Of course, the question of truthis always important when certain music is justified in the light of history, but onthe general level it is far more important to look at the values that influence howwe stress different things in history than to analyze the concept of historical truth.I believe that we can speak of truth in history, even if there is no single true his-tory but rather many parallel stories. A historical account is always only oneversion of a sequence of events in the world, which does not mean that all ver-sions are equally true or good.6

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THE NATURE OF MUSIC HISTORY AND THEHISTORICAL JUSTIFICATION OF MUSIC

As the phrase cited above shows, Adorno believed music to be historical innature. He based his idea on his interest in the material of music, which heclaimed was not something given by nature but was essentially historical. (Theexact definition of the concept of ‘material’ in Adorno’s philosophy is beyond thescope of this article.) Adorno’s belief had profound consequences not only for hisideas of New Music, but also for his attempts to analyze the social content ofmusic.

In my view, Adorno was right in his belief about the historical nature ofmusic, but this should be supplemented with a theory concerning our way ofunderstanding music. We could even claim that he was not radical enough in hisideas: he had a profound knowledge of the historical character of music per sebut he did not analyze thoroughly the historical nature of our understanding ofit. I am making no attempt here to offer a theory of musical understanding. Myintention is rather to suggest some outlines, which could possibly be extendedand sharpened in a further study.

My basic claim is that since the nineteenth century our understanding ofmusic has been essentially historical. The music culture of that time left a biglegacy for later generations. Indeed, we are still living under its influence, towhich the prominent role of public, middle-class concert life and the admirationof musical geniuses, for instance, bear witness. To be sure, the nineteenth cen-tury had many characteristics that seem strange to us nowadays (the way ofplaying the movements of a symphony in different parts of a concert and theaddition of theatrical elements, such as tableaux vivantes, to a musical eveningbeing examples of this). If our modern—or postmodern—music culture is not adirect consequence, we could still claim that a major part of later music andmusic culture has represented a kind of settlement with this nineteenth-centurymusical legacy.

One of the most significant traits of the nineteenth century was the rise of his-torical consciousness. One of Hegel’s great teachings was that everything washistorical. What was previously seen as constant and even eternal (the notion ofreason, for instance) was now seen as historically developing. Not all nineteenth-century scholars and laymen accepted Hegel’s ideas of ‘absolute reason’ or thedevelopment of the self-consciousness of the spirit, but the conviction that his-tory reveals the essence of things was widespread. In music this was evidenced bythree kinds of scholarly activity: massive presentations of the history of Westernmusic (R. G. Kiesewetter, A. W. Ambros), biographies of great composers(O. Jahn, P. Spitta, F. Chrysander), and reports of studies concerning musicalsources (L. Nottebohm, for instance).

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One of Hegel’s ideas was that the word ‘history’ designated history both as aseries of events and as a written record. He thought that ‘objective’ and ‘subjec-tive’ history, historia rerum gestarum and historia res gestae, went hand in hand:“an inner, common basis drives them out together.”7 There is no history as aseries of events unless it is understood historically and vice versa. This means thathistory is not equivalent to any course of events. It becomes history only when itis understood as history.

I do not claim here that the nineteenth century meant the birth of historicalthought in music: there are many pre-nineteenth-century examples of genuinehistorical thought. What I am claiming is that the nineteenth century meant abig qualitative change in our historical consciousness and in the prestige of his-tory as an academic discipline, my thesis being that since that change we havehad an essentially historical attitude to music.

Carl Dahlhaus, the German music historian who influenced the work of awhole generation, published two writings under the heading, What is a Fact ofMusic (Was ist eine musikalische Tatsache).8 In my view, these texts give a clueto the historical nature of the understanding of music. He claimed in both textsthat for something to be considered music it had to be subordinated to a ‘cate-gorical formation’ of the human mind. Acoustic material is not music. Itbecomes music only if someone understands it as such, that is, if a categoricalformation of the human mind makes it music.

Different philosophers have put forward different views on the categoricalformation of the human mind (Aristotle, Kant, Husserl, and Cassirer, for exam-ple) and Dahlhaus left it open as to how it should be seen in this connection.The exact definition of ‘categorical formation’ is something I also leave openhere: it depends on one’s philosophical background and convictions. Still, twoconcepts of classical phenomenology offer some clarification.

First, Dahlhaus’s idea implies that music is not a phenomenon of nature. Itis independent of its acoustical basis, if acoustics can be called its basis at all. Theacoustical frequencies of the tones of a dissonant chord are not musically inter-esting; what is musically relevant is the direction to which a dissonant chordleads in tonal music, for instance. If music acquires its nature as music only inconnection with the human mind, then we could state that it is an object of the‘intentionality’ of the human mind.

Secondly, I would go even further in interpreting Dahlhaus’ idea. Music asthe object of human intentionality belongs to Lebenswelt, understood as theworld as it appears in itself to our minds, while acoustics belong to the mathe-matical-abstract world of the natural sciences: this basic distinction was analyzedby Edmund Husserl in his posthumous work, Die Krisis der Europäischen Wis-senschaften.9 A related but not identical interpretation is that music belongs to

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‘world number three’ in the light of Karl Popper’s distinction between three dif-ferent ‘worlds.’

What is important and necessary—and I will not attempt to analyze the con-nection to Husserl’s philosophy here—is that the categorical formation requiredfor the existence of music as music is historical in nature. It changes during thecourse of time and it is to be understood in terms of history—not only in termsof the past but in terms of history. Categorical formation is historical in twosenses of the word. First, it is historically developing and secondly, it takes musicas a historical entity. One conclusion of this is that, insofar as it is music, it isessentially historical: “historical through and through,” to revert to the phrasethat began this article.

I am not putting this idea forward as a universal principle. I only claim thatnot only is the material of music historical in nature, as Adorno claimed, ourways of looking at Western classical music since the nineteenth century have alsobeen essentially historical.

I will now look more closely at what is meant by the historical nature ofmusic by considering different perspectives on the concept of history. I will firstlook at two of the minimum requirements of historical research and historiogra-phy: the first is that it deals with things that change during the course of time andthe second is that it aims to find connections between historical facts. I will thendiscuss the traditional distinction between historical and systematic musicology.It should then be possible to identify some characteristics of historical thinkingin general.

The idea of history as sequences of change could be questioned by referringto the fact that style is one of the most important categories in writings on musichistory: music historians aim at reconstructing different styles of music and thesestyles, it could be claimed, are static (at least for a period of time) rather thanvariable. There are, naturally, constants in history that do not change, or changevery slowly, but referring to musical styles is not harmful to the idea that historydeals with changing things.

The idea that describing a style is the ultimate end of music historiography isitself historical. This idea was promoted by Guido Adler at the beginning of thetwentieth century,10 and was realized in the book, Handbuch der Musik-geschichte, edited by him in 1924 and in many other volumes that have more orless followed his model. From the perspective of today, descriptions of musicalstyles may still be an important task in music history and music education, butstyle is not, perhaps, the only and dominating aim of historiography. Further,styles are static only when considered from a very wide perspective. In them-selves, they are constantly changing, which was accepted by Adler in his ‘organ-ism’ model of the development of a musical style. All interpretations of larger his-

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torical periods seek some unifying factors that have remained constant, but thisdoes not undermine the fact that history aims at elucidating change. In fact,when we describe change there must always be something that remains constantin it. If two things are said to be different, there must be something in commonbetween them.

Theorists of history have often made a distinction between history and chron-icle. Chronicle is a mere list of historical facts that does not show anyconnections between them, while history becomes history only when events andother facts are connected to each other, thus implying causal relations betweenhistorical facts. Causal relations are, of course, important in historiography, butin many cases the relations a historian seeks are conceptual rather than causal.There is a clear conceptual kinship between the nineteenth-century middle-classconcert culture and the idea of originality, even if it is difficult to show any causalconnection between them. When explaining historical events or other facts interms of context, according to Quentin Skinner, we can refer to two kinds of con-texts: the causal context seeks causal connections between facts and the contextof meaning elucidates conceptual connections.11 Both kinds of connections arevalid channels for explaining historical events.

At first sight it may seem that the idea of music as a thoroughly historicalentity may ruin the traditional distinction between historical and systematicmusicology: if music is “historical through and through,” is there a place for asystematic study? In my view, the idea presented above does not make systematicmusicology unnecessary or impossible and we can still speak of historical and sys-tematic approaches as distinctive modes of music research.

Sometimes systematic musicology deals with things that are historical innature but which change very slowly, which is often the case in music theory.The rules of tonal harmony, for instance, are historical, but they have prevailedfor a very long time, so they can be treated quasi nomothetically. In other cases,systematic musicology may deal with general, and even natural, laws, as is thecase in musical acoustics and in some branches of music psychology.

Systematic musicology, as it were, stops the course of history, but this doesnot affect the ultimate historical nature of music. I should point out that in say-ing that music is essentially historical, I do not claim that psychology andacoustics are some kind of auxiliary sciences to systematic musicology, a notionthat is close to Adler’s original distinction.12 The distinction between core andauxiliary sciences depends on the interests of the particular researcher. The ideathat music is historical in nature does not mean that some areas of research areprima facie secondary in status.

Some post-war authors tried to solve problems concerning the distinctionbetween historical and systematic musicology by elevating some particular field

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of research to dominant positions in systematic study. Albert Wellek positionedpsychology at the centre of systematic research, claiming that music psychologyrepresented systematic study at its purest.13 Walter Wiora, in turn, thought that“new primary research” (Neue Usprünglichkeit) should dominate, by which hemeant basic research involving acoustics and psychology and certain aspects ofmusic theory.14 These ideas are untenable in the present situation. Musicresearchers have the right to give differing versions of music and we have no rightto say what versions are prima facie more valid than others. (This, again, does notimply that all possible versions are equally good.)

Historical thought can be described in such a way as to correspond to the cat-egorical formation that is fundamental to musics. Historical thought and historyas a series of events are intertwined. No series of events is history as such: it mustbecome an object of historical thought. All conceptions of a series of events arenot historical. We need more specific conditions of historical thought.

History concerns change in things and seeks connections between them.This marks a difference between a vague, very general view and a true historicalconception. Very few of us have as coherent a view of history as the best historybooks present, but if events and things form a chaotic conglomeration in ourminds, the picture could hardly be called historical.

Our knowledge in general, and of music research in particular, sheds lightupon different aspects of music. Some of these are objects of systematic andsome of historical study. Our conceptions of music as a whole are historical onlyon a very general and profound level. We can speak of systematic musicology ineveryday language, and we can, of course, use methods of natural sciences inresearching music. The idea that music is essentially historical does not under-mine systematic research. Systematic research stops the course of historymomentarily, whereas historical study puts history “in motion.” Both kinds ofresearch may deal with many aspects of music, and it is futile to make any par-ticular stream—such as music psychology—the focal point.

These characterizations comprise the lowest necessary conditions for histori-cal thinking and are not confined to the realm of academic scholarship. Indeed,I think they are common to both academic research and to everyday ways ofthinking about music. The dividing line between “academic” and “everyday”thinking is not very sharp in historical musicology. It is usually marked by the useof footnotes (and perhaps the methods of music analysis), but not by a differencein general ways of thinking.

The point above about our historical knowledge of music also applies to thehistorical justification of music. We could still say that there are many differentways of justifying music: historical, psychological, pedagogical, sociological, andso on. Still, the historical nature of our thinking about it influences all these jus-

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tification modes. We might speak of historical or sociological justification onsome level, but I believe that ultimately all justification of music is dependant onour way of looking at it historically. I will now leave the question of the generalhistorical nature of music aside and turn to the kind of justification we usuallycall “historical” (that is, that which appears in books on music history, forinstance).

THE SELECTIVE NATURE OF MUSIC HISTORY

A historian must make selections from among innumerable historical facts.The aim to collect everything in one historical account is an impossible oneboth practically and theoretically. It has been said that a historian must be sub-jective in order to be objective: he or she must make selections from his or hermaterial in order to make a historical story intelligible. Paradoxically he or shemust make selections in order to make the story of history veracious.

This is a crucial point in the historical justification of music. Even the selec-tion of certain events, persons, and works in historiography implies theirjustification. Differences in emphasis further point to the fact that certain thingsare more important than others. When one justifies some music purposefully,one inevitably makes historical selections in finding grounds for the justification.

There are many grounds for historical selection. An obvious reason for select-ing a historical fact is that it is part of a meaningful story: “To ask for thesignificance of an event, in the historical sense of the term, is to ask a questionwhich can be answered only in the context of a story.”15 This leads to anotherquestion: What is the unifying force of a historical story? Without going moredeeply into this, I will briefly consider one such factor, namely causality. It couldbe claimed that a historical fact must be selected if it is causally important.

One version of this is to say that a historical fact must be taken into accountif it has many causal followings. This would be one reason for including RichardWagner in an account of Western music. It is impossible to understand the lat-ter part of nineteenth-century music history without considering the immenseimpact of Wagner’s music on composers such as Smetana, Mahler, and Sibelius.On the other hand, there are composers who are regarded as important but whohave not had any major international influence, Carl Nielsen being oneexample.

This theory of historical importance has many fundamental philosophicalproblems. Here it suffices to say that causal importance cannot be the ultimatecriterion for historical selection. If we had no other criteria, we would sink intoinfinite regression. Inherent in the historiography of music is the need for aes-thetic and other criteria for making ultimate choices. In practice, aestheticvalues play an important role in historical selection. With important works of

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music in particular, we often say they must be selected because they are aesthet-ically valuable.

The same applies to the idea that a historical fact must be selected becauseit forms an important part of a historical chain of development. Examples of thisare Schoenberg’s first serial works (which started a chain of development),Palestrina and Lasso, or Bach and Handel (who ended historical chains of devel-opment), and the reception of Wagner’s music in the 1890s (which marked thehigh point of Wagnerian influence). Here again, we must ultimately refer tosome intrinsic values, otherwise we would have no criteria for choosing the righthistorical chains of development. We easily put intrinsically admirable personsand works at the beginning and end of a historical chain of events: we mightthink that a history of romantic music “from Schubert to Sibelius”16 is reason-able, unlike a story from, say Tómasek to Madetoja.

There are many kinds of intrinsic values that influence our writing and think-ing about history. In the case of music history, aesthetic values have a specialrole. Historical justification is often based on aesthetic justification and viceversa, history and aesthetics being intertwined in a complex way. My aim in thefollowing is to analyze some of this complexity, which entails analyzing not onlyaesthetics as such but also the role of canons of music.

Historical selection is not the only way in which aesthetics influences histo-riography. Our explanations and interpretations—in fact our wholeunderstanding of history—are colored by our aesthetic convictions. Aesthetics—as a system of fundamental and general musical convictions—may analyzeprevailing, ‘real’ intuitions and conceptions of music or it may create new con-cepts and conceptual systems for understanding it: in both cases it belongs to thesystematic study of music. The relationship between aesthetics and music historyis a typical example of the dialectical relationship between systematics and his-tory. Aesthetics influences our view of history profoundly and uses history as itsobject and material. Together with our conceptions of history it develops histor-ically. Ultimately, practical involvement with music, such as its performance, isinfluenced by aesthetic and historical conceptions.

THE CANON OF MUSIC

During the past twenty years discussions on the selectivity of music historyhave centered on the concept of the canon. Originally used in the study of liter-ature, this concept represents an attempt to explain and describe our tendencyto select, time after time, the same works and composers for our historical stories.We do not treat the facts of history democratically, but when making historicalselections we rest on a pre-established canon. This has a deep impact on our his-torical justifications of music and also influences our practical music-making.

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Established conceptions of music steer our way of behaving, be it in composingor in performing. Musicians, for instance, are very much influenced by canonswhen compiling their concert programs.

Criticism of the musicological canon has targeted both the objects and meth-ods of study, as illustrated in Marcia Citron’s distinction between “reportorial”and “disciplinary” canons.17 An analysis of the former is to be found in Dahl-haus’s Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (1977).18 Canonic works have beendealt with by Joseph Kerman19 and William Weber,20 for instance. Kermanmakes a distinction between “repertories” and “canons,” the latter being creatednot by musicians but also by critics and scholars, thus falling on the methodolog-ical side. The feminist critique by Marcia Citron covers both dimensions.

The repertorial and methodological distinction reflects the original twofoldmeaning of the word canon, especially in theology. On the one hand, a canon isa collection of generally accepted texts and works and on the other it consists ofmethodological principles that are believed to ensure correct interpretation andunderstanding. Here I will concentrate on the repertorial canon, insofar as thetwo canonic aspects of music are separable.

Musicologists often tend to identify the repertorial canon with the classicalmusical works that are the mainstay of the Western concert culture. This concep-tion is too narrow. Kerman’s distinction between repertories and canons isrelevant here: even if we did use the term repertorial canon, we should bear inmind that there is a copious amount of musical work that is seldom heard at con-certs but is still strongly canonic. Modern music offers many such examples. Allmusic students who have done their courses in music history know the first worksof the late 1940s and early 1950s that represent total serialism, but not many ofthem have heard these works at concerts.

It seems, however, that there is no reason to restrict the canon to musicalworks. If we think of the historian’s work or of our intuitive conceptions of his-tory as a whole, we could extend the canonical concept to comprise all factors ofmusic history. A certain class of historical persons, works, events, trends, andother historical facts (understood in the very wide sense of the word) are canonicand we should perhaps rather speak of the “canon of facts” than of the repertor-ial canon. There are small and trivial as well as large and sublime aspects.

A canon is anything but an inflexible set of historical facts. To use WernerBraun’s term, the facts of music history form a “pyramid of tradition,”21 at thebase of which are the most established and canonic facts. The facts that tend tobe more controversial and transient lie higher up and the dividing line betweencanonic and non-canonic should be drawn somewhere in the middle.

The different components of the canon stem from different sources. Some-times the work of a single historian has been decisive, as with Hugo Riemann

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and the Mannheim School, while in others the canonization of a phenomenonbegins almost by chance, as with the so-called Netherlands or Franco-FlemishSchool of the Renaissance. The importance of this school was stressed for thefirst time in R. G. Kiesewetter’s prize entry for a writing competition organizedby the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.

In the end the only common factor behind canonic facts is that they are cul-tivated by tradition. At first this may appear to be circular reasoning: some factsare canonic because they are traditionally held to be canonic. However, if weinterpret “tradition” in the sense it carries in modern hermeneutics, it acquires amore solid basis. In terms of historical musical facts the canon could be seen asa dominant model of thought, which has been rooted in us by the irresistibleforce of tradition. It is neither an object nor even a premise of historical thought,but is rather a horizon of understanding, a prerequisite for the setting of prem-ises and objects.22 The only way of criticizing it is to go more deeply into it:criticism and understanding go hand in hand.

If we think of the canon as a collection of many kinds of historical facts, itwould be better to speak about several rather than one. A basic canon, a “canonof canons,” is formed by the generally accepted facts of the broad canon of West-ern music, exemplified at least approximately in standard text books. There areseveral others: those of national music histories, histories of musical instruments,jazz, rock, and so on. The canonization of Western music took root in the nine-teenth century, but new canons are being developed all the time. Old canonsmay die away, but the disappearance of the one formed in the nineteenth cen-tury is very unlikely in our culture given the strong influence of nineteenth-cen-tury ideas on us.

We tend to justify music that is canonical: it is easier to defend what is gen-erally appreciated than to raise the profile of something that is not. Even if wesucceed in doing this, we inevitably fight against canonic composers and works.

The canon of music has both positive and negative effects on our understand-ing of history. It often hampers our learning of more recent music history. Itmakes our knowledge of the past rigid and our understanding conventional,often in the negative sense of the word. Nevertheless, without anything con-nected to tradition, it would be difficult to deal with the past at all. Canons giveus cornerstones on which to lean, whether we like them or not. Moreover, thenecessity of going more deeply into them in attempts to criticize them shows theimportance of self-reflection in history.

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MUSIC HISTORY AND AESTHETICS

It was stated above that aesthetics and history have a close and dialecticalconnection. Below I will deal with some aspects of the influence of aesthetics onhistoriography and historical thinking.

Aesthetics influences our historical choices. The great number of books andarticles devoted to the music and life of Beethoven—and the great number ofpages devoted to him in textbooks of music history—stem not only from his in-fluence on later music but also from our tendency to regard his music as intrin-sically valuable. The canon also plays an important role here. Aesthetics influ-ences the writing of history in many other ways too: historical explanations andnarrations are deeply affected by our aesthetic convictions.

The importance of the work of music in music history increases the effect ofaesthetics. The potentiality of a musical work to elevate itself to an “aestheticpresence” makes it necessary to use aesthetic criteria in historiography. It wouldbe odd to treat Beethoven’s Fifth only as a historical relic without noticing itsnature as an object of aesthetic appreciation. Music historians use music analy-sis constantly and this also brings aesthetics into the realm of history. Musicanalysis—like history—is influenced by the aesthetic ideas of the analyst. A typ-ical notion, which is implicit in many methods of analysis, is that of the work ofmusic as an organic whole and it is often accompanied by a belief in the coher-ent mind of a genius behind the work.

The elevation of musical works into an aesthetic presence may also have anegative effect on historiography. Sometimes the whole history of music is aes-theticized: the ability of works to open themselves to history is forgotten andhistory is made an object of aesthetic admiration. Here the historical narration isturned into a museum through which the reader can wander admiring thebeauty of the musical works.

The aesthetization of music history also has an impact on historical explana-tion, which is exemplified in Adler’s style-historical method and is based on theidea of the spirit of the time (Zeitgeist). It was believed that the spirit of the timeexplained the whole culture of an era, so it was natural to borrow epithets suchas Baroque and Romanticism from other arts. These epithets contributed toexplanations that convinced many readers and historians, but which were oftenaesthetic in nature.

In my doctoral thesis (1993)23 I investigated the aesthetic premises of theearly Finnish historiography of music. As the basis of my analysis I used GerhardSchuhmacher’s ‘conception of music’ (Musikanschauung), by which he meansaesthetic convictions that lie hidden in our ideas of music but which can be

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made an object of scrutiny.24 I believe that my study showed that aesthetic ideasreally do have an influence on many aspects of the historiography of music.

Historical selection is one of these aspects, as claimed above. Ilmari Krohn,the “Father of Finnish musicology,” was a folk-music researcher and music the-oretician who did not write much music history as such, but whose theories werebased on a firm idea of history. He was somewhat influenced by the theories ofA. B. Marx and Hugo Riemann (especially by Marx’s idea of the supremacy ofthe sonata form). He believed in the ‘purity of form’ exemplified in the works ofBeethoven, Wagner and Sibelius, and thus he treated the works of these com-posers more expansively than the works of others. Krohn’s belief in the formalstrength of Wagner’s operas and music dramas is especially noteworthy. In hislater writings he moved away from Wagner’s own work and placed Mozart andE. T. A. Hoffmann (instead of Gluck) as the predecessors of the formal aspectsof Wagner’s dramas. His core ideas were based on the classicist aesthetics thatwas created in the new Humanism of the early nineteenth century.

It is not only the selections made by historians, but also their larger contextthat are influenced by aesthetics. Heikki Klemetti was a choir conductor, com-poser, and a prolific writer who believed in the naturalness of tonality andadmired the music of J. S. Bach. His idea of history had a connection with thatof Riemann, but whereas Riemann believed in the transcendental nature oftonality, Klemetti’s stance was biological.25 He explained history as a steady evo-lution of musical hearing, which enabled him, unlike Riemann, to acceptmodern music, at least to a certain extent.

In Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte, Dahlhaus distinguishes between fiveparadigms of aesthetics (or theory of art) that have had a profound influence onour views of history: the ‘functional’ (referring to the Renaissance way of bindingmusic to social functions), the ‘representational’ (referring to the doctrine of theaffects of the Baroque era), the ‘personal’ (referring to the tendency in Romanti-cism to admire great composers), the ‘structural,’ and what I would call the‘composition-historical,’ which refers to the post-war avant-garde view of the his-tory of music as a history of compositional problem-solving.26

Dahlhaus’ distinction is ingenious, and the personal and the composition-historical paradigms in particular describe the mainstream historiography ofmusic very well. It has its problems, however: the paradigms are rather broad andinflexible, not to speak of the general problems of applying Thomas S. Kuhn’stheory of paradigms to the human sciences.

In terms of the historiography of music, I would rather refer to differentresearch traditions. Sometimes traditions compete with each other; sometimesthey live peacefully side by side. We could speak of the accumulation of knowl-edge within a tradition, but it is very difficult to assume that historical research

16 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW, 16:1

as a whole accumulates; such is the influence of aesthetic and other implicitideas in historiography. Aesthetic ideas belong to factors that are not empiricallyverifiable but which influence research (and which were analyzed by Larry Lau-dan in his book, Progress and its Problems27).

Aesthetic convictions have a special role in the formation of our music-his-torical ideas. They influence both our historical choices and our interpretationsof the chosen elements. Results that are similar to those derived from the Finnishhistoriography of music could probably be achieved if we studied the works ofAmbros, Adler, Adorno, and other influential music historians. Adorno, forinstance, was influenced by the Hegelian idea that art must express truth, but hewas interested in the social nature of music rather than in Hegelian idealism.28

His work also shows the influence of the Marxian division between ‘base’ and‘superstructure,’ even if he followed Marxism very loosely.

Again, constant self-reflection is important to historians of music; only whenthey make their values and other implicit ideas transparent can they select theirmaterial reasonably and seeingly and give convincing—and not just schoolmas-terly—explanations and views of history.

CONCLUSION

History lives in historiography, but we also have strong everyday conceptionsof it. Studying and reflecting on these everyday ideas is an important task ofresearch that has been far from adequately addressed. Music is ultimately histor-ical in nature, thus it is natural that the apology of certain music is oftenhistorical too.

The historical justification of music touches many important fields ofresearch and thought, such as the ideology and politics of music, musical world-views, music education, and research ethics. I would speak of “blind” and“seeing” historical justifications of music. This distinction has a connection withboth music education and research ethics. A seeing historian is prone to self-reflection and to the explication of the historical ideas behind his or her studies.This also applies to exact-source research, which sometimes hides its premises ina positivistic way.

The idea that historiography should present the facts of history democrati-cally without any indication of preference is untenable. In that case it shouldpresent all known facts of the past—and even then it would be partial because itwould neglect all unknown facts. This is nonsense. Historiography must selectand emphasize things, otherwise it is not historiography at all. As pointed outabove, there is not one single history, but rather several, but not all versions areequally good.

Furthermore, historiography is in itself a document of its time. When histo-

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rians put their values into play reasonably, their stories represent not only theirobjects of study, but also the values of their own day. In this sense, historicalaccounts written, say, a hundred years ago give important knowledge of the val-ues and ideas of that time.

Aesthetic ideas have an essential role in the historiography of music. Com-plementing them are embedded ontological, metaphysical, and epistemologicalnotions, but the aesthetic ideas remain at the center because they are connectedto the nature of music as art. (This also applies, in my view, to earlier periods ofmusic, even if the word aesthetics was introduced by Alexander Baumgarten onlyin the mid-eigthteenth century.)

The historiography of music is a battlefield in which different ideas and val-ues are in conflict: we need only to think of the writings of Wagner and Adornoand of the fanatic disputes they have caused. Someone who has the right histor-ical—and we could also say philosophical—attitude is not burned at the stakebecause of his or her ideas, however. He or she understands history as a gradualprocess of seeking meanings in the past, consisting of interpretations, which bytheir nature are never complete.

NOTES1Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and

Wesley V. Blomster (London: Shed and Ward, 1973 [1948]).2See Max Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press), 265–271; Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp, 2003), 420–424.

3Martin Wegelius, Hufvuddragen af den västerländska musikens historia från kristnatidens början till vår egen tid (Main Features of the History of Western Music from theBeginnings of the Christian Time to Our Own Day) (Helsingfors, 1891–1893).

4Franz Brendel, Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich. Vonden ersten christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart. Zweiundzwanzig Vorlesungengehalten zu Leipzig im Jahre 1850 (Leipzig, 1852).

5Jack M. Stein, Richard Wagner and the Synthesis of the Arts (Detroit, 1960), 113.6On this kind of epistemological conception, see Nelson Goodman, Ways of World-

Making (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1978).7G. W. F. Hegel, Järjen ääni: Hegelin historianfilosofian luentojen johdanto, trans.

into Finnish by Mauri Noro (The Voice of Reason: Introduction of Hegel’s Lectures onthe Philosophy of History) (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 1978), 61.

8Carl Dahlhaus, “Was ist eine musikalische Tatsache,” in Schweizerische Musik-zeitung (1975) 3; “Musikwissenschat und systematische Musikwissenschaft,” in Systemat-ische Musikwissenschatf hrsg. Von Carl Dahlhaus und Helga de la Motte-Haber. NeuesHandbuch der Musikwissenschaft Bd. 10. (Laaber: Laaber, 1982). The title Was ist einemusikalische Tatsache appeared as the heading of a section in the latter article.

9Edmund Husserl, Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften: Eine Einleitung in diephänomenologishce Philosophie (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1982).

10See Guido Adler, Der Stil in der Musik. I Buch. Prinzipien and Arten des musikalis-chen Stils. (Leipzig, 1911); Methode der Musikgeschichte (Leipzig, 1919).

11Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,’ in Historyand Theory VIII (1969).

12See Guido Adler, “Umfang, Mothode und Ziel der Musikwissenschat,” in Viertel-jahrsschrift für Musikwissenschat I (1885).

13Albert Wellek, “Begriff, Aufbau yund Bedeutung einer systematischen Musikwis-senschat” in Die Musikforschung I (1948).

14Walter Wiora, “Die Musikwissenschaft als Ganzes: Systematische Musikwis-senschat,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Band I, s. v. Musikwissenschat(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1961).

15Arthur C.Danto, Narration and Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press,1985), 11.

16Arnold Whittall, Romantic Music: A Concise History from Schubert to Sibelius(London: Thames and Hudson, 1987).

17Marcia Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993), 9.

18Dahlhaus, Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (Cologne: Gerig, 1977), 149–171.19Joseph Kerman, “A Few Canonic Variations,” in Write all these Down: Essays on

Music (Berkeley, 1994).20William Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A

Study in Canon, Ritual and Ideology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992). 21Werner Braun, Das Problem der Epochengliederung in der Musik (Regensburg,

1977), 94–96.22Matti Huttunen, “The ‘Canon’ of Music History: Historical and Critical Aspects,” in

The Maynooth International Musicological Conference 1995: Selected Proceedings.Part Two, eds. Patrick F. Devine and Harry White (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996).

23Huttunen, Modernin musiikinhistoriankirjoituksen synty Suomessa: Musiikkikäsi-tykset tutkimuksen uranuurtajien tuotannoissa (The Beginnings of Modern Historigraphyof Music in Finland) (Helsinki: Suomen Musiikkitieteellinen Seura, 1993, includes aSummary in English).

24Gerhard Schuhmacher, Musikästhetik (Darmstadt, 1985), 45. 25Heikki Klemetti, Musiikin historia I-II (A History of Music) I-II (Porvoo: WSOY,

1916–26).26Dahlhaus, Grundlagen, 38–42, 123–127.27Larry Laudan, Progress and its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).28See Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics, 15.

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