...Jon Michael Spencer Copyright © 1994 by Duke University Press 1994 Musicology as a Theologically Informed Discipline Jon Michael Spencer In an essay in this issue originally published in a theological journal, ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman raised a theomusicological question that derived...

... alternative) to traditional musicological discourse: a kind of writing which, in words Nathaniel Mackey adopts from John Coltrane, allows "for more plasticity, more viability, more room for improvisation."4 In his preface to Early fazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (1968), Schuller declares...

... perspective. Theomusicology, as defined in Theological Music: Introduction to Theomusicology (1991 ),4 is musicology that is theologically informed. This theologically informed musicology borrows thought and method especially from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy, each of which has...

... show in the first part of this essay, traditional musicology and ethnomusicology alone are inadequate for a theological approach to music. What is needed is a theomusicology. A11reological Approach to Music Guido Adler !1855-1941), the father of modem musicology, is credited with articulating...

... of scholars in musicology or ethnomusicology"? Another peer evaluator of my proposal argued that a thorough review of scholarship in related fields failed to show that a new musicological discipline is needed. The evaluator went on to say that the field of ethnomusicology already embraces interdisciplinary...

... have termed this kind of theologizing theomusicology. This theologically informed musicology, which I will detail more definitively in the introduction, is a discipline I started developing while a visiting professor at the Duke University Divinity School from 1986 to 1990. During the fall semesters...

...Jon Michael Spencer Copyright © 1989 by Duke University Press 1989 This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved. Prelate Theomusicology-musicology as a theologically informed discipline-is a musicological method...

... of the popular and classic music worlds, out of which his musicological style evolved, is especially evidenced in the several articles that are historical surveys of American music and musicians: "Fifty Years of Progress in Music," "The Men behind American Music," "Negro Music in the Americas," "The Negro...

.... The first two (also published by Princeton) are The Corded Shell: Reflec tion s on Musical Expression (1980) and Sound and Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation (r 984) . His comment in the preface of Osmin 's Rage explains not only the importance of his work to historical musicology but also...

...), also titled "Negro Music." Other important writings are the introductions to his edited collections of spirituals, the two most important being Religious Folk-Songs of the Negro: As Sung at Hampton Institute (1927) and The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals (1936). Less musicological, but no less...

...- musicology, 17, 20, 23, a.5; black, 21 "I Ain't Superstitious," 129 "I Can't Get Next To You," 286 "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," 225 "I Packed My Suitcase, Started to the Train," 1o5 "I Wanna Know If It's Good to You," 286 I Want You, 226 Ice-T, 266 Idea of a Theater, The, 63 "If This World Were Mine...

..., William Randolph, 121 "Heaven on Earth," 210 heavy metal music, 90, 105 Hegel, G. W. F., 16 "Help the Children," 220 "He's a Battle-ax in the Time of Battle," 226 Highway r , U.S .A., 137 Hill, Billy, I 50 "His Eye Is on the Sparrow:' 226 historical musicology, vii, 59, 61, 69 "Hole in My Life," 87...

... and Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation (r 984) . His comment in the preface of Osmin 's Rage explains not only the importance of his work to historical musicology but also theomusicology's embracing of philosophy in its attempt to theologize about music: ...

....: Creative House, 1971. Laske, Otto E. Psychomusicology: A New Theory of Music. Bombay: Indian Musicological Society, 1980. Leonard, Neil. fazz: Myth and Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Lock, Graham. Forces in Motion: The Music and Thoughts of Anthony Braxton. New York: Da Capo, 1988...

... (212, 239). In this respect, theomusicology too is pragmatically prophetic, a claim historical musicology and ethnomusicology would not make. In contrast to the optimistic theodicy of Emersonian pragmatism (its optimism being its shortcoming), prophetic pragmatism deals more realistically...

...-musicology as a theologically informed discipline-is a musicological method for theologizing about the sacred (the religious/ churched), the secular (the theistic unreligious! unchurched), and the profane (the atheisticlirreligious)-including sacred and secular music as theomusicotherapy in church...

... in the aftermath of slavery. According to Dett's musicological reading of history, the degrading racial stereotyping of the minstrel show helped perpetuate the prevailing social conditions: A miasma of early American minstrelsy was the caricaturing of the Negro church, in which by song and by story the Negro...

... Theology'" (paper presented at the annual conference of the American Musicological Society, Chicago, November 1991); and "Schoenberg's 'Poetics of Music' and the Twelve-Tone System" (paper presented at the City University Music Analysis Conference, London, September 1991, and at the annual meeting...

... Schoenberg, Vol. 1 (cond. Robert Craft, Columbia Records, M2S 6791 1963). For general comments on Pierrot Lunaire (as well as a brief introduction to Schoenberg) see Malcolm MacDonald, Schoenberg (London: J.M. Dent, 1976), esp. 13-4, 139-41. For a more thorough musicological analysis of the work, see Alan...

... should use the criteria and categories normally used in musicological and literary research. It is never enough just to concentrate on the lyrics, because melody, harmony, rhythm, sound, and so forth are basic aspects of a rock song. Background information, visual impressions from the video, the concert...