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Searching for New Ways: Implementing Musicology as an Independent Program

Chae， Hyun-Kyung 1

1이화여자대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

Musicology was introduced to our culture in the 1980s and seems to flourish as it is reflected in diverse academic journals and annual meetings. Contrary to its invigorated appearance, however, musicology as a discipline has not found a stable home in most Korean universities. Its stagnant status not only causes serious problems in music research but also hinders from creating a music culture of our own. Most musicologists working at several institutions as part-time instructors do not have stable environment nor time for both research and teaching. For about 10 universities have musicology programs, but many still belong to the composition department without its own administrative establishment. In this paper I review the changes in musicology as an interdisciplinary field in the West and advocate for the establishment of musicology program at our universities. Since the 1980s musicology has gone through rapid and enormous changes in the West and now scholars of both historical and anthropological musicology seem to ‘tolerate’ the differences and ‘accept’ the importance of socio-cultural context of music after many years of de-construction process of ‘traditional’ musicology. The process of changes occurred first by anthropologically-oriented musicologists in the 1970s, then was re-invigorated by Joseph Kerman in the 1980s in historical musicology. After nearly 3 decades of arguing and struggling, the majority of new types of musicologists exposed to both fields are now “rethinking” musicology and even asking such ontological questions as “music may be what we think it is, or it may not be.” They do not have the confident and authoritative voice that they once had as the leader of musical world. In this paper I plea for the establishment of independent musicology program in Korean universities in order to create our own musical culture. In order to educate well-rounded musicians rather than mere technicians, we need to have curricula that enable students to think and understand the need to combine performance with historical and theoretical knowledge, and eventually to create their own musical culture. To implement new curricula, we need administrative power and thus I call for organizing the Association for Korean Musicologists that can together advocate the establishment of musicology departments at music schools around the country.

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