I just sent the last chapter of my dissertation to my supervisor! Woo-hoo!!! Here is the closing: At present, I regret that most work on the history of performance practice, particularly that which takes baroque performance practice as its critical object, consists of little more than bellicose and bravura repetitions of abracadabras that, when examined closely, seem of no great importance within performance practice studies – except as social stimulants – and bearing no substantial methodological, analytical, or predictive value as models that might be applied outside of the field. Surely, even the tentative and hypothetical application of techniques more closely modeled upon science and logic will be more successful. Given the bravado behind such works as Text and Act, I find it important to recognize some necessary, non-fatal flaws in my own approach. First, I believe that others may eventually find my model to be under-determined by available empirical evidence. That could be shown to valid if another scholar can organize the same evidence is an equally plausible, but structurally different, model. That, however, would not necessarily refute the validity of my model, since invalidity does not necessarily descend from a declaration of under-determination. Second, because the information explosion continues apace, an ever-growing number of documents is becoming available for inspection and analysis. Less than three years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to sketch Fischer’s biography as I have. Twenty years ago, I would have not had access to a digital transfer of Fischer’s WTC recording. I adduce from that historical view that the near future will reveal much about Bach performance in the Weimar Republic that is not now known, and that Fischer scholarship, in particular, will expand exponentially. Third, my application of cognitive data gathered by others is on a lower echelon than the actual practice of cognitive science. Patrick Hogan formulates it thus: “humanists should not think of themselves as simply applying cognitive science to literature, taking up what scientists have taught us in order to glean a few interpretive insights…It is crucial for humanists and scientists to recognize that the arts should not be some marginal area to which cognitive discoveries are imported after they are made elsewhere.” Although I recognize each of these potential criticisms of this dissertation, I also recognize that it stands at the opening of a much broader, cross-disciplinary practice of musicology that will soon be dominated by work that embraces cognitive science, social theory, and anthropological studies in the service of situating cultural objects of the Western canon more properly – i.e., in their holistically adduced historical context – such that the work of critics of that canon can be read, appreciated, and tested or refuted by musicology’s parent disciplines.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 02:53:01 +0000
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