This article examines the history of the study of music at university level.
I. Middle Ages and Renaissance, to 1600
CHRISTOPHER PAGE (I), WILLIAM WEBER (II), JEAN GRIBENSKI (III, 1), DAVID HILEY (III, 2), CAROLYN GIANTURCO (III, 3), HOWARD E. SMITHER (III, 4), PETER DICKINSON (III, 5)
The word universitas in later medieval Latin meant any association of individuals and was not restricted to a ‘university’ in the modern sense. The history of the English term ‘university’ and its European cognates therefore shows how the organization of higher learning in the 12th and 13th centuries was shaped by the spread of sworn associations and professional corporations that is an outstanding feature of Western civilization in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In considering these ‘universities’, the danger of anachronism is severe, hence the cardinal importance of proceeding cautiously in the early period, especially the decades from 1180 to 1230, which saw rise of Notre Dame polyphony; in the Western tradition this is the only musical development of epoch-making significance to have taken place in a university city.
The germinating cells of the universities were the masters (magistri). During the ‘long’ 12th century from 1090 to 1210, the period of the nascent universities, a magister was generally a person who had shown such aptitude at a secular school that his best choice of career, at least initially, was to become a schoolmaster himself. Because most of Latin Christendom experienced a phase of urban renewal and demographic increase after about 1050, a process that continued (albeit with less sudden energy) into the 16th century and beyond, the masters invariably based themselves in cities where a relatively abundant supply of money, sustenance and pupils was to be had. The master, in his urban school that was perhaps no more than a rented room, taught his pupils how to read Latin and to compose Latin verse; he also instilled in them some connoisseurship of classical and late antique texts such as the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius. He might also extend his teaching to logic and dialectic. The evidence that some of these magistri composed polyphony appears early. The ‘Codex Calixtinus’ (12th century) contains a number of polyphonic pieces attributed in a slightly later hand to various magistri, including two items by ‘Master Goslenus bishop of Soissons’. Goslenus became bishop in 1126, when he would have assumed the title dominus; if the attribution in the ‘Codex Calixtinus’ is trustworthy, the term magister may carry the date of composition back to the years around 1112 when Goslenus was a noted authority in Paris for his studies of speculative grammar and his opposition to Peter Abelard.
Such evidence is important for establishing the pre-history of the Notre Dame school of polyphonic music, but it reveals little about the formal study of music at Paris. Just as a magister of the Middle Ages and Renaissance might have a limited professional interest in the writings of Fathers such as Augustine – the texts that enflamed the monastic love of learning – so too he did not usually teach plainchant. If the master’s classes touched upon music it was principally through the medium of revered texts such as the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella or the De musica of Boethius. Numerous treatises on plainchant were composed in the 13th century, and indeed later, but Dyer (1990) has emphasized that they reveal only modest traces of the masters’ fundamental technique of comparing the authoritative texts in their inheritance, posing questions (quaestiones) to explore the contradictions between them and then devising a solutio to resolve the question posed. (One author who did, Elias Salomon, showed by his eccentric manner and shaky Latin that he was far from being a magister in the sense described above.) The scholastic colouring is also light in most treatises on polyphony from the period before 1450 or so, and even in the most rigorously taxonomic and objective treatises, such as the Regule of Robert de Handlo, it is rarely to be found or does not appear at all. Certainly it is not to be confused with the use of a rigorous structure of argument and the use of Aristotelian conceptions such as ‘proper’ and ‘accident’ or ‘species’ and ‘genus’; these were the common property of most men after about 1150 who had been educated to read and write Latin on technical subjects. Revealing evidence on this point is provided by a manual for arts students at Paris, compiled between 1230 and 1240–45 (now in E-Bac, Ripoll 109; facs. of section concerning music in Page, 1989, p.140). This mentions the set texts in arts and gives specimen questions and answers to be studied by candidates for examinations. The only set text for music is the De musica of Boethius, which remained among the fundamental materials for the university study of music until at least the 16th century. There is no evidence in this syllabus for the existence of ‘university music texts’ (Yudkin, 1990) other than Boethius, at least at this date.
Where early records still exist, exact musical requirements are often specified: at Prague (1367) ‘ordinary (non-holiday) lectures on music were given as well as on arithmetic, geometry and astronomy’; at Vienna (1389) ‘some books on music and some on arithmetic’ was the requirement for bachelors seeking the licentiate; at Cologne (1398) a one-month study of ‘music in two parts’, perhaps consisting of theory and practice, was required; at Kraków (1400) aspirants to the magisterium heard music lectures for a month; and at Oxford (1431) ‘music for the term of a year’ was required of magisterial candidates.
The study of music as a liberal discipline was supplemented by other university activities such as academic exercises, masses and investitures, and there was also much informal singing, dancing and instrumental performance. Private music instruction was available to those who wanted it, and instruction was regularly given in choir schools connected with university foundations. The school of Notre Dame was allied to the university in Paris, as were St Stephen’s, the Neckarschule and the Thomasschule to univeristies in Vienna, Heidelberg and Leipzig. Collges at Oxford and Cambridge provided for choristers to supply a constant flow of religious services, and some college statutes emphasized music. Thus Queen’s College, Oxford, required chapel clerks skilled in plainchant and polyphony to instruct the choristers, and both New College and All Souls demanded musical proficiency of all their applicants.
Paris undoubtedly provided a congenial environment for men interested in music, and throughout the later Middle Ages and Renaissance other universities did the same, notably those at Padua, which provided the milieu for the works of Prosdocimus de Beldemandis, and Oxford, a city that was at least temporarily a home to Walter Odington. Well into the 15th century, however, the question of whether the composition and study of polyphonic music existed as an established university subject remains open in many cases. Palisca (1985) maintains that ‘music early earned a place alongside the disciplines of the humanist curriculum in the main Italian centres of learning’ while judiciously admitting that the facts on which to base such a judgment are ‘meagre’ (p.8). The issue perhaps rests, in part, on what is meant by ‘music’ and ‘musical studies’. For Johannes Gallicus of Namur (d 1473), who studied at the school founded by Vittorino da Feltre at the court of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga in Mantua in 1424, musical studies were conducted with the same textbook used by students in Paris two centuries earlier, namely ‘the Musica of Boethius’. The retention of Boethius – even if he was read somewhat differently, as is surely the case – points to the essential issue. The fundamental requirement for a university subject in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was that its material should be sensed as a universal. The emergence of the university at Bologna, one of the earliest in Europe, is intimately connected with the rediscovery of Roman law and its gradual dissemination throughout western Europe. Theology and medicine, the two other subjects studied in the Higher Faculties, may be spoken of in similar terms, especially in relation to Paris, Salerno and Montpellier. Until the mid-15th century at the earliest, polyphonic music could not readily be regarded in this light because there was no central musical language for polyphonic composition. The rise of ‘music’ to become a ‘university subject’, in something like the sense in which both of these terms are now understood, is linked to the process, chronicled by Strohm (1993), whereby a common language of polyphony emerged in Europe during the period 1380–1500. Music degrees were instituted at Cambridge, and probably at Oxford, in the mid-15th century; it has been claimed that a ‘chair of music’ existed at Salamanca much earlier and a chair was endowed at Bologna in 1450. Evidence like this may easily be multiplied, and it has often been assembled, notably by Carpenter (1958). As Strohm has emphasized, it reveals that the generation of 1450–90 provided the men who ‘began creatively to engage in the development of the art’ as university teachers (p.293).
During the early Renaissance, university music instruction continued to follow a medieval pattern. Musica speculativa was still an essential part of the Quadrivium, and practical musical skills were cultivated in collegiate foundations. Universities established during this period, such as Leuven, Basle and Wittenberg, insisted on musical requirements similar to those of older institutions. Although music taught as a science was gradually allied with physics, it continued to be emphasized as a separate art. The linking of music to humanistic studies, partaicularly Greek and Latin literature, was characteristic of the Renaissance period. At Paris, which was strongly conservative, music remained a mathematical science until the end of the 16th century when it became part of physics, and treatises by mathematicians such as Oronce Finé, the first professor of mathematics in the Collège de France, emphasize this connection. At Prague, knowledge of Johannes de Muris’s Musica, a traditional requirement, was not insisted on after 1528, and in Germany it was not demanded after the mid-century, when musica speculativa became part of physics. In German universities a number of eminent theorists and composers (including Cochlaeus, Listenius, Glarean and Ornithoparchus) with an interest in contemporary music taught either publicly on a university stipend or privately.
The association of musical studies with classical poetry was strong during the Renaissance. The Collegium Poetarum et Mathematicorum, established in Vienna early in the 16th century under Conradus Celtes, became important for the cultivation of choral ode settings. At the Collège de Coqueret in Paris, Jean Dorat, professor of Greek and the teacher of Pierre de Ronsard, sang Greek poetry to a lute accompaniment and investigated Greek theories of the emotional powers of music; similar examinations were the main concert of the Pléiade and Baïf’s Académie de Poésie et de Musique. Several poets held the chair of music at Salamanca in the 16th century, among them Juan del Encina. Wimpheling’s Stylpho, the earliest of all humanistic Schuldramen to incorporate ode settings, was performed at Heidelberg; and at Uppsala the musician appointed to teach singing was even called professor poeteos et musices.
English universities were unique in awarding degrees in music, although they did not maintain staff, and candidates learnt music privately. At Cambridge in 1464 Henry Abyndon, the earliest recorded recipient of an English music degree, became MusB and later that year received the MusD. The earliest recorded BMus at Oxford was Henry Parker, eminent ‘for his Compositions in Vocal and Instrumental Musick’, who received the degree in 1502, though in the same year Robert Wydow of Oxford was incorporated MusB at Cambridge, and must therefore have taken the degree earlier. The earliest known recipient of the Oxford DMus is Fayrfax, who was incorporated from Cambridge in 1511. During the century, many important English musicians obtained degrees from one or both of these universities. Degree requirements were perhaps stricter at Cambridge, where proof of theoretical and practical experience was required. Even Tye had to prove, before ‘incepting’, that he had spent many years studying and practising music beyond the MusB and to compose a mass to be sung at commencement. Oxford awarded honorary degrees in music: Heyther, for example, received both BMus and DMus at the same time; Orlando Gibbons, who composed Heyther’s commencement anthem, was created DMus ‘to accompany Dr Heather’. Late 16th-century statutes of both Oxford and Cambridge list numerous fees imposed on music candidates who ranked with candidates in the higher faulties of law, medicine and theology.
Unlike their counterparts in Germany, France and England the Italian universities played only a modest part in music teaching during the Renaissance. The only certain example of a chair of music at an Italian university during the early part of the period is that held by Gaffurius at Pavia in the 1490s, which Kristeller believed to have been granted to him as a special favour by Lodovico Sforza. Of course there was a good deal of private instruction given in university institutions, such as that of Ramos de Pareia in Bologna, but the main centres of music education in Italy throughout the 15th and 16th centuries remained the cathedrals and courts.
Universities, §I: Medieval and Renaissance
N.C. Carpenter: Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York, 1958/R)
M. Huglo: ‘L'enseignement de la musique à l'Université de Paris au Moyen Age’, L'enseignement de la musique au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance: Royaumont 1985, 73–9
C. Meyer: ‘L'enseignement de la musique dans les universités allemandes au Moyen Age’, ibid., 87–95
C.V. Palisca: Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven, CT, 1985)
J.K. Hyde: ‘Universities and Cities in Medieval Italy’, The University and the City: from Medieval Origins to the Present, ed. T. Bender (Oxford, 1986), 13–21
R.W. Southern: ‘The Changing Rôle of Universities in Medieval Europe’, Historical Research, lx (1987), 134–46
C. Wright: ‘Music in the History of the Universities’, AcM, lix (1987), 8–10 [report on Round Table I, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987, 27–89]
C. Page: The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300 (London, 1989)
B.B. Price: ‘Master by Any Other Means’, Renaissance and Reformation, xiii (1989), 115–34
J. Verger: ‘L'université de Paris et ses collèges au temps de Jérôme de Moravie’, Jérôme de Moravie: Royaumont 1989, 15–31 [with Eng. summary]
C. Wright: Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris 500–1550 (Cambridge, 1989)
M. Huglo: ‘The Study of Ancient Sources of Music Theory in the Medieval Universities’, Music Theory and its Sources: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. A. Barbera (Notre Dame, IN, 1990), 150–72
J. Yudkin: ‘The Influence of Aristotle on French University Music Texts’, ibid., 73–89
J. Dyer: ‘Chant Theory and Philosophy in the Late Thirteenth Century’, Cantus Planus IV: Pécs 1990, 99–118
F.A. Gallo: ‘La musica in alcune prolusioni universitarie bolognesi del XV secolo’, Sapere è poeter: discipline, dispute e professioni nell'università medievale e moderna: il caso bolognese a confonto, ed. L. Avellini, A. Cristiani and A. de Benedictis (Bologna, 1990), ii, 205–15
D. García Fraile: ‘La cátedra de musica de la Universidad de Salamanca durante diecisieti años del siglo XV (1464–1481)’, AnM, xlvi (1991), 57–101
C. Panti: ‘The First Questio of MS. Paris, B.N., lat.7372: Utrum musica sit scientia’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser., xxxiii (1992), 265–313
C.H. Kneepens: ‘Orleans 266 and the Sophismata Collection: Master Jocelin of Soissons and the Infinite Words in the Early Twelfth Century’, Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar, ed. S. Read (Dordecht, 1993), 64–85
C.V. Palisca: ‘Francisco de Salinas et l'humanisme italien’, Musique et humanisme à la Renaissance (Paris, 1993), 37–45
R. Strohm: The Rise of European Music 1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993)
O. Weijers: ‘L'enseignement du trivium à la faculté des arts de Paris: la questio’, Manuels, programmes de cours et techniques d'enseignement dans les universités médiévales: actes du colloque international de Louvain-la-Neuve, 9–11 September 1993, ed. J. Hamesse (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994), 57–74
J.P. Wei: ‘The Self-Image of the Masters of Theology at the University of Paris in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xlvi (1995), 397–431
This period falls into two segments: 1600–1750, when the learned study of music shifted away from musica speculativa towards artistic or practical concerns; and 1750–1945, which brought the rise of studies in music history, professorial appointments and a growing role for universities within public musical life. One might see a dichotomy between a practical interest in music in Britain and a more scholarly one in Germany, but the two leading countries in this history differed less than might appear.
2. Towards the modern university.
Five areas need to be considered: curriculum, professional posts, ceremonies, musical life and intellectual life. Music played a small role in university curricula at least until the early 19th century. That was also true of other comparable subjects (art and literature, for example); the universities served basically law, medicine and the church, and to some extent mathematics, and attending it was not expected of a young man of means. Music was taught instead in the church, in the home and in the musician's studio; it had its own university, one might say, in the great cathedrals and courtly establishments.
Yet music played an important part in the ceremonies of many universities, either their religious rites or the acts where degrees were bestowed. The anniversary of a university's founding was usually honoured with an imposing musical performance. The heads of university choirs tended to be high-level musicians who linked academic and civic, religious and musical institutions. Performers came and went from other areas of a university; a choirboy would go on to a professional school but came back to sing in the collegium musicum. Law or jurisprudence seems to have a particularly close relationship to music: Handel and Forkel are two of many musicians who spent their early years in that discipline, and the directing board of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts always had at least one faculty member from it.
A rich world of private and public activities played a central part in the social life of most university communities. As Thomas Mace put it (Musick's Monument, 1676), ‘our University of Cambridge … [is] the home of eminent Performances upon the lute by divers very worthy Persons’, and the subscription list for his book included 150 names from the university. In most places there existed a private music society; Franz Uffenbach said of his visit to Cambridge in 1710, at the one meeting weekly in Christ's College, ‘there are no professional musicians there but simply bachelors, masters and doctors of music who perform … till 11 at night’. Social and intellectual tendencies flowed together: Milton, the son of a musician who studied at Cambridge, 1625–32, wrote his first essay on the music of the spheres.
Differences between the two major confessions brought about major differences in the roles that music played in universities. In Catholic areas those responsible for teaching music could not presume to determine what sort of music was appropriate for the church. University chapels therefore remained limited to a devotional function; in France and Italy particularly the universities played limited roles in musical life after the middle of the 17th century. In Protestant areas, however, the study of practical music entered the university out of the need to understand how cantus ecclesiasticus, the music of the divine service, should properly be accomplished. The Lutheran and Anglican churches allowed the greatest latitude to the highly learned musicians found in university institutions, giving them special opportunities for leadership and innovation. A.H. Francke (d 1727), for example, Rektor of the influential Friedrichs-Universität in Halle, became the spokesman for the new pietistic role of sacred music that harnessed expressive power to serve an ascetic, pious religious life.
The most important early establishment of a university post for a practising musician occurred through the gift of William Heyther to Oxford University shortly before he died in 1627. A lay vicar of Westminster Abbey and a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, he brought the position about through the agency of William Camden, headmaster of Westminster School, who himself endowed what came to be the Camden Chair of Ancient History. Initially, Heyther dictated that there be a master and a lecturer of music. Whereas the former became a permanent post in Oxford musical life called the Music Professor, the latter became a single annual presentation by a succession of speakers. The outcome indicates how practical rather than theoretical music became recognized the more firmly.
Oxford served as the principal centre from which interest in earlier (or ‘ancient’) music developed. While this activity was not considered in very theoretical terms until the late 18th century, the musical life surrounding the university can be credited for helping establish the first set of notions and practices definably ‘canonic’. Henry Aldrich (1648–1710), dean of Christ Church and a major figure in religious disputes, held regular meetings of musicians and interested people in his rooms to perform such music. Similarly, Thomas Tudway wrote an early example of music history – prefaces to a collection of sacred works he made for Robert Harley – while resident in Cambridge. Moreover, the professors of music tended to be men of some learning who took a close interest in the development of a music library and, it would seem, informally educated students in the historical progress of music as they saw it. The most prominent such professor in the 18th century, the elder William Hayes, demonstrated an unusually wide historical knowledge in his Remarks on Mr. Avison's Essay on Musical Expression (1753). William Crotch gave formal lectures, both in Oxford and London, and published his Substance of Several Courses of Lectures on Music in 1831.
On the Continent, musical posts did not rank as high as they did in England; the designation of a professor musices in Basle, Samuel Mareschall, in the 1570s, was unusual. But many universities, especially those in Protestant areas, appointed a director of musical activities who became an important figure in the university and also the town. Such a person was appointed as director musices in Uppsala in 1687, and ordinaris musicant in Leiden in 1693, to supervise what were called the collegia musica. In Leipzig a special arrangement developed by which the Kantor of the Thomaskirche also took charge of university music, which formed a regular part of J.S. Bach's duties.
As was the case in the Middle Ages, universities were not discrete institutions but in reality a collection of different and separate academic units, some of an entrepreneurial nature. Thus music schools and humanistic academies developed where singing and playing might be studied and compositions performed. A notable academy of this sort, the Accademia de' Dissonanti, was established at Modena by Duke Francesco II d'Este about 1683, in close conjunction with the founding of the University of Modena. Among the compositions written for it were several cantatas by G.B. Vitali. Such musical activities generally flourished only in proximity to a university. By the same token, from the 16th century onwards, at many universities dancing-masters were appointed who in effect started small schools of their own. This was particularly common in Germany; the dancing-master would instruct students in the ars saltatoria in order to develop them as what was called ‘qualificierte Menschen’. Around 1700 there were six such masters at the University of Leipzig, who also gave instruction in French and Italian, acrobatics and manners.
Just as musical activities interpenetrated the universities' social life, so the intellectual dimensions of musical culture were interwoven within the learned disciplines discussed though not necessarily taught there. What is important is less what was supposedly taught – always a difficult matter to determine – but how members of a university and the many people who passed through these cosmopolitan towns mingled musical topics within other kinds of study in informal discussion and writing.
Between the early 16th century and the early 19th there was a fundamental transformation in the role that music played within Western musical life, and the result was to bring it much more closely into university teaching and writing. What limited the role of music within the universities' intellectual life before the mid-18th century was that few amateurs mastered the rigours of learned composition, the sacred and academic polyphony taught in the cathedrals. Music was further limited by the absence of a corpus of great works from antiquity, such as was regarded as the starting-point for a learned discipline and a pantheon of great works.
Indeed, the tradition of scientific and philosophical study of music in theoretical terms lasted in some respects to the end of the 18th century. While the writings of Boethius were no longer closely involved in musical thinking or pedagogy by the middle of the 16th century, they remained at least to be mentioned as pertinent to courses of study in many places. Scientific thinkers in 17th-century Cambridge (Isaac Newton among them) continued to apply astrological notions to musical tuning even though that subject was no longer closely linked to ideas about the harmony of the spheres. Rameau clung to some such ideas. But at the same time, by 1600 music took a prominent place within the newer areas of discourse in the universities. Even though Mersenne was not based in a university, his thinking on musica poetica was read and discussed there; by the end of the 18th century such ideas evolved into musical aesthetics. In such a fashion, musical learning became reorientated from metaphysical science to the humanistic arts.
In a concrete sense, the history of music in the university is the study of the history of music theory found in musical treatises. If the medieval musica speculativa, the glossing of texts by Boethius or Ptolemy, had only a slight connection to the study of psalmody or secular song, by the end of the Renaissance musica pratica meant theoretical discussion of harmony and counterpoint and their application to composition. Other treatises explained all areas of practical music, from music for dinner or dancing in the halls to the more refined sorts of song. The vast majority of treatises can be directly or indirectly linked to a university environment, where they were copied or read by succeeding generations of students and other transients. The challenge to the historian is to determine to what extent treatises actually constituted part of the learning process of the university: did they merely grow out of the university environment, or were they actual texts of lectures given in the Faculty of Arts? Since learning the Quadrivium had never taken deep root in the universities of eastern Europe, practical music was much more important within musical pedagogy there than further west. While treatises written in France or Italy rarely included examples of known, composed pieces, those east of the Elbe usually included many, in some cases works not found in western collections.
The rapid growth of public musical life during the 18th century gave a strong stimulus to university musical activities and eventually its curriculum. After about 1750, concerts and ceremonies at many universities came to form part of the larger musical world. In Cambridge the Installation of the Vice-Chancellor had always been a major musical event, but by 1749 the one for the Duke of Newcastle was described as ‘a great musical crash … which was greatly admired’. By 1811 the one for the Duke of Gloucester involved diverse concerts and audiences of 2000 people.
Oxford had participated centrally in the rise of public concerts, since events of that nature were held in public houses during the Commonwealth. But after the erection, under Hayes's direction, of the Holywell Music Room, which opened in 1748, the city became second only to London in concert life, partly because the new toll roads made it easy for major performers to go there from London. All authority over public events was vested in the Vice-Chancellor of the University, and the Musical Society was ultimately a creature of university life, its directing committee consisting of representatives from each college, usually a ‘Fellow, Scholar, Exhibitioner, or Chaplain’ (the Articles of 1757). The society provided music and associated concerts for Commemoration, the Acts and the openings of new buildings.
The awarding of the MusB and the MusD changed fundamentally in meaning in the middle of the 19th century. This formed part of the formalization of teaching and expansion of research activities within universities throughout the Western world. During the 17th and 18th centuries the music degrees at the two long-established English universities had served as honorary degrees for musicians thought of particular distinction, with the requirement only that they compose a work for the occasion. In Oxford, Frederick Ouseley, professor from 1855 to 1889, began a long process of designing taught degrees in music, instituting residence requirements and examinations not only in music but also in mathematics, Latin and Greek. Examining boards led to a more formal structure of a music department. Students from other institutions, including conservatories, received degrees under the aegis of the university. At Cambridge, William Sterndale Bennett played a similar role in reforming degree requirements while serving as professor of music between 1856 and 1875. The number of awards of the MusB there grew from 12 in 1800–40 to 44 in 1875–1900. It is also clear that the undergraduate often had much to do with musical life. The letters of John Addington Symonds during his years in Oxford (1857–64) show an intense fascination with works by Beethoven, Mozart and Rossini that was to play an important part in his later writings within the Decadent movement.
The universities contributed significantly to new movements in musical life. The Musical Antiquarian Society was set up in Cambridge in 1840, bringing concerts and the reconstruction of old instruments. The Folk Music Society was founded there in 1898. Charles Villiers Stanford brought Cambridge into close touch with new tendencies in both foreign music and British music as conductor of the Cambridge University Music Society and professor from 1887 to 1924. The dawning of the special role that universities played in new music during the 20th century can be seen in the fact that the distinguished pianist Harold Bauer offered an unusual number of recent works, chiefly by Debussy and Ravel, when he visited Cambridge or Oxford.
The entrance of music into university curricula formed part of a much wider integration of musical thinking into intellectual life as a whole. The neo-classicism of the 18th century permitted a new variety of principles, by which music of the 16th century was now termed ‘ancient’ music, such as would have seemed foolish a century before. Public musical events and periodicals for general readership stimulated each other: columns of news on concerts and the opera became standard by 1800. In Britain and German-speaking countries members of universities were closely involved in the new musical press, from William Hayes in Oxford to J.N. Forkel in Leipzig.
Almost all the newer British universities made appointments in music by the early 20th century. One had been made in 1764 at Trinity College, Dublin (the Earl of Mornington); there followed Edinburgh in 1839, Aberystwyth in 1872, Durham in 1890, London in 1902, Birmingham a few years later and Glasgow in 1930.
That the same was not true in France indicates how deeply and how long it remained divided over religious matters, and how much that limited the role of music in the universities. The Sorbonne had a relationship each with Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sainte-Chapelle for ceremonies, and during the 18th century there existed a music director for such events. But music did not play an important role in its rituals, nor within its intellectual life. Only at the end of the 19th century did musical writings begin to come out of that university. During the 1890s and early 1900s the doctorat ès lettres was awarded for theses on musical topics to Romain Rolland, Louis Laloy and Jules Comparieu, through the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, a professional school closely linked to the university. In 1896 Lionel Dauriac began lecturing on musical aesthetics, and some 15 years later André Pirro became chargé de cours for the history of music, offering two different certificates. But the scholarly study of music history remained almost entirely in the Conservatoire, in the Schola Cantorum and among private individuals until after World War II.
German universities led the world in the modernization of programmes: since most had maintained neutrality in confessional identity since the Reformation, they were unusually open to innovation and leadership. Music directors took on specially high status in the academic hierarchy, both conducting ensembles and lecturing on music theory and history. The two most important early figures were Forkel in Göttingen and D.G. Türk in Halle; after both were appointed in 1779, Forkel was honoured as Magister ohne Examen und umsonst in 1787 and Türk was named professor in 1808. A series of other German universities followed suit: F.J. Fröhlich in Würzburg (1811), F.S. Gassner in Giessen (1818), H.C. Breidenstein in Bonn (1826) and A.B. Marx in Berlin (1830). Many were active in musical life as writers and critics as well as performers; Forkel, for example, published a series of almanacs on musical events. Their salaries were nonetheless usually less than half that of a professor, requiring them to continue activity outside the university.
Careers devoted to music history emerged out of those followed by music directors, a process that took over 100 years. Forkel, regarded as the founder of music history as a scholarly discipline, mixed theoretical, practical and historical topics in his lectures; specialized historical study was not established until the end of the 19th century. Among the most important milestones were the bestowal of the first doctorate of philosophy for a musical topic (Über das Schöne in der Musik) to Briedenthal in Giessen in 1821, and the award of the Ordinariat to Eduard Hanslick in Vienna in 1870, Gustav Jacobsthal in Strasbourg in 1897 and Hermann Kretzschmar in Berlin in 1904. The grounds for legitimization of the profession changed from period to period, from a humanistic idea of the whole person made by Marx (who had to remain Professor Extraordinarius) to a scientific one by the end of the century. In the process, lines were drawn between preparation of scholars, performers and teachers: the purer kind of scholar emerged in the careers of Oesterley, Nohl, A.W. Ambros and Spitta. During the first half of the 20th century, music history dominated most schools of music in universities, and the study of performance increasingly shifted into the conservatories (now called ‘Hochschulen’).
The training of musicians and teachers entered the Scandinavian universities more centrally than was the case in Germany. The first professors were appointed in 1918 in Helsinki, in 1926 in Turku and Copenhagen and in 1947 in Uppsala. In the Netherlands and Belgium practices followed the German example more closely, with appointments in Brussels in 1931, Utrecht in 1934 and Amsterdam in 1953.
In the USA, the first university musical activities were performing societies of a convivial nature, usually not officially recognized by the institutions. At Harvard the Pierian Sodality (1808) and the Glee Club (1858) performed both vocal and instrumental music and gradually shifted to giving public concerts. The Glee Club grew out of the appointment of a choir director for the university chapel and obtained its own head, Archibald T. Davison, in 1912. John Knowles Paine built up the music department as the first professor of music between 1875 and 1906, and the first doctorate was granted in 1905.
Music grew up within Yale University largely under the beneficence of graduates, chiefly from the Battell family, who gave funds for instruction and performing groups. In 1854 Gustave Stoeckel, an émigré from Kaiserlauten, was engaged to teach students without offering credit. The Bachelor of Music degree was introduced in 1893, ‘for the study of the Science by students already proficient in the elements of it’. The first faculty members were the prominent organist and composer Horatio Parker and Samuel Simons Sanford, an accomplished pianist from a wealthy Bridgeport family, who served without pay as Professor of Applied Music from 1894 to 1910. As was the case at the University of Michigan, American universities developed active music programmes but did not attempt to train performers in this period. Other early programmes included the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; the first chair of musicology in the USA came with the appointment of Otto Kinkeldey at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1930.
Ten Years of University Music in Oxford, being a Brief Record of the Proceedings of the Oxford University Musical Union during the Years 1884–1894 (Oxford, 1894)
M. Brenêt: ‘La musicologie’, Rapport sur la musique française contemporaine, ed. P.-M. Masson (Rome, 1913), 18–19
A. Schering: Musikgeschichte Leipzigs (Leipzig, 1926)
W.R. Spalding: Music at Harvard (Cambridge, MA, 1935–77)
N.C. Carpenter: Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman, OK, 1957)
W.F. Kümmel: ‘Die Anfänge der Musikgeschichte an den deutschsprachigen Universitäten’, Mf, xx (1967), 262–80
J.A. Symonds: The Letters of John Addington Symonds, ed. H.M. Schueller and R.L. Peters (Detroit, 1967–9)
C.R. Nutter: 125 Years of the Harvard Musical Association (Cambridge, MA, 1968)
Bach-Dokumente, Bach-Archiv, Leipzig (Kassel, 1969)
K.W. Niemöller: ‘Zur Musiktheorie in enzyklopädischen Wissenschaftssystem des 16./17. Jahrhunderts’, Über Musiktheorie: Berlin 1970, 23–36
M. Crum: ‘An Oxford Music Club, 1690–1719’, Bodleian Library Record, ix (1974), 83–99
F. Knight: Cambridge Music from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (Cambridge, 1980)
S. Wollenberg: ‘Music in 18th-Century Oxford’, PRMA, cviii (1981–2), 151–62
M. Delahaye and D. Pistone: Musique et musicologie dans les universités françaises (Paris, 1982)
K.W. Niemöller: ‘Zum Einfluss des Humanismus auf Position und Konzeption von Musik im deutschen Bildungssystem der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Musik in Humanismus und Renaissance, ed. W. Ruegg and A. Schmitt (Weinheim, 1983), 77–97
L. Noss: A History of the Yale School of Music, 1855–1970 (New Haven, CT, 1984)
J. Caldwell: ‘Music in the Faculty of Arts’, History of Oxford, iii, ed. J. McConica (Oxford, 1986), 201–12
K.W. Niemöller: ‘Musik als Lehrgegenstand an den deutschen Universitäten des 16./17. Jahrhunderts’, Mf, xl (1987), 303–19
M. Staehelin, ed.: Musikwissenschaft und Musikpflege an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Göttingen, 1987)
C. Wright: ‘Music in the History of the Universities’, AcM, lix (1987), 8–10
D.J. Fisher: Romain Rolland and the Politics of Intellectual Engagement (Berkeley, 1988)
‘Thomas Tudway and the Harleian Music Collection’, British Library Journal, xv (1989), 187–205
R. Szeskus: ‘Bach und die Leipziger Universitätsmusik’, BMw, xxxii (1990), 161–9
G. Engmann and B. Wiechert: ‘Tag voller Anmuth, voller Pracht: zur musikalische Gestaltung der Universitätsjubiläen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert’, Göttinger Jb, xl (1992), 253–79
W. Weber: Rise of Musical Classics in 18th-Century England (Oxford, 1992)
J. Burchell: Polite or Commercial Concerts? Concert Management and Orchestral Repertoire in Edinburgh, Bath, Oxford, Manchester, and Newcastle, 1830–99 (New York, 1996)
G. Rothmund-Gaul: Zwischen Takstock und Hörsaal: das Amt des Universitätsmusikdirektors in Tübingen, 1817–1952 (Stuttgart, 1997)
J. Fulcher: French Cultural Politics and Music: from the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (New York, 1999)
H. Irving: Ancients and Moderns: William Crotch and the Development of Classical Music (Aldershot, 1999)
Universities, §III: After 1945
Between 1945 and 1968 music was entirely absent from the curricula of French universities. Musicology was taught in only three: Strasbourg (from 1872), Paris (from 1903) and Poitiers (from 1961). It was a subsidiary subject, to be studied as an adjunct to education in another discipline such as history or literature. The one major innovation during this period was the creation of a first postgraduate doctorate, the doctorat de 3e cycle, in 1958. This new diploma, requiring a shorter thesis than those submitted for the full doctoral degree (the doctorat d'Etat or doctorat ès lettres still essential for candidates applying for positions as university teachers), prompted a sharp rise in the numbers of submitted theses on musicological subjects, from about five a year in the 1960s to about 15 a year in the 70s.
Reforms instituted in 1969 progressively introduced music into university studies on a par (at least in principle) with other disciplines in the humanities. The primary motive was to bring the training of secondary-school teachers of music and the plastic arts into line with that of teachers in other subjects. (Until 1968 music and art teachers qualified at teachers’ training centres outside the universities.) As a result, musicology became a possible choice of special subject in a complete university course in music, and for the first time universities would offer posts to musicologists. The reforms took place in the context of a wider series of changes manifested in the founding of more universities, and particularly in the splitting of the University of Paris into smaller units. Since 1969 Paris intra muros (within the city) has had seven universities, four of which (Paris I, Paris III, Paris IV and Paris V) have part of their premises at the Sorbonne, the prestigious site of the old Faculty of Letters. Six more universities in the suburbs, Paris VIII to Paris XIII, were added to these seven. In 1969 Paris IV and Paris VIII were authorized to provide music teaching; a year later Aix-en-Provence in association with Marseilles I, Tours in association with Poitiers, and Strasbourg II also introduced the new subject.
In 1984, the French system of doctoral studies was simplified in order to facilitate mobility among researchers and make it more like the system in other countries (notably Germany, the UK and the USA). A single doctoral degree was introduced, and training in research, previously almost non-existent, is now conducted within a doctoral training group. The first year of doctoral studies leads to a diplôme d'études approfondies (diploma in further studies; DEA), which recognizes both theoretical and methodological training, and introduces basic research techniques. The recommended period spent writing the post-DEA thesis is two to four years. The old ‘main’ thesis for the degree of doctorat d'Etat has been replaced by an habilitation à diriger des recherches (authorization to supervise research work; HDR), which is required of anyone applying for a position as a university professor.
In 1999 music was being taught in 20 of the 85 French universities. While there is considerable variation in curricula, all universities must prepare students for national diplomas, and the content of these studies is set by the government. (The advantage of this system is that students can begin their studies at one university and continue them at another.) The teaching covers aural training, composition, practical music (singing and instrumental performance), criticism and analysis, music history and acoustics; part of the course is usually set aside for non-musical subjects (such as literature, the other arts or languages), and part remains free for options chosen by the university or the student. The first two years of study lead to a diplôme universitaire d'études générales (DEUG), and the third year leads to the first degree, after which the student has two options: either to take the high-level competitive examination to recruit secondary-school teachers, or to spend a year working for a master's degree, which usually involves more intensive work and sometimes original research (candidates applying to study for the doctoral DEA must hold a master's degree). Of the 20 universities teaching music, only 13 prepare students for the master's degree, and there are only eight centres for doctoral training in music and/or musicology.
The French system is unusual in attempting to combine music and musicology on the basis of a three-year common-core curriculum. This approach has its advantages but is not without drawbacks, the most serious being the growing predominance of technical studies (solfeggio, harmony, analysis and theory) over intellectual studies (notably in music history). Increasingly, the main objective seems to be to train secondary-school teachers, and research (a field in which there are admittedly fewer openings) is rarely given priority.
See also Musicology, §III, 1.
Universities, §III: After 1945
After World War II, institutes of musicology with the right to award the PhD (in some cases called ‘seminaries’) were built up again in German universities, in their traditional place within the philosophy faculty. Some new universities, mostly created in the 1960s (Bochum, Kassel, Oldenburg etc.), also acquired musicological institutes, and others were attached to Staatliche Musikhochschulen – colleges of music responsible for training in musical performance and for the teaching profession (Berlin, Hanover, Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf etc.; see Conservatories, §IV). Ideals deriving from Wilhelm Humboldt's views on university education provided guiding principles: the education of a cultured personality rather than vocational training; freedom to change one's place of study (academische Freiheit); and the interdependence of research and teaching. The only condition of entrance to university was, and still is, the attainment of the higher school-leaving certificate, or ‘Abitur’. For over two decades after 1945 the doctorate was still the only degree awarded. As numbers of students grew, especially during the 1970s, the MA degree was established, both to determine whether the student was suited for the PhD and to provide a new finishing qualification. For many years there was no BA degree; a continuing rise in student numbers at the end of the 20th century, however, brought the realization that not all can or wish to profit from the lengthy MA course. The economic burden of long years of study also forced a consideration of the BA, and, in a few cases, its actual introduction.
German students study two or three subjects for the MA, of which musicology may be the principal or a subsidiary subject. (In the German Democratic Republic, 1949–89, it was also possible to take a diploma in musicology without subsidiary subjects.) The general pattern of study is now that of about four semesters (two years) up to an intermediate examination (the Zwischenprüfung, a relatively recent development), and about six more semesters until the MA examination. If musicology is the principal subject, a short thesis is submitted. Students are free to choose both the time when they will be examined and their examiners (another aspect of academische Freiheit), although guidelines about the length of time of study are becoming more rigidly enforced. Courses are therefore divided generally into those suitable for study either before or after the intermediate examination, but there is no division into first-year or second-year courses. After the MA, students may proceed to the PhD (Promotion). An extra qualification, however, the Habilitation (sometimes thought of as a second doctorate), is required before a professorship may be taken up.
German musicological institutes are strongly hierarchical, usually with two professorships (three or four in a few large universities) and one assistant on a limited-term contract, who will typically be completing the Habilitation or seeking a professorship. Almost all other courses will be given by part-time teachers. The competition for professorships, even after the long and arduous road to the Habilitation and beyond, is correspondingly intense. It has resulted in a relatively narrow, élite stratum of scholars, of considerable social prestige (and civil-servant status), many of whom will be directing research and editorial projects. Below this level, however, posts are neither plentiful nor secure nor well paid. Posts equivalent to, say, that of the British lecturer do not exist.
There is great variation in the size of music departments. Some have only a handful of graduates in a year, others several dozen. The actual number of students enrolled ranges from 50 or fewer to several hundred (the extra teaching load in bigger departments is taken up by part-time teachers, while professors remain in charge of examining).
Professorships have traditionally been held by music historians covering complementary periods of music history. In the 1970s pressure gradually mounted for more attention to be paid to the different branches of systematic musicology (such as acoustics, music psychology and sociology). Despite the obstacles inherent in the system to changing the orientation of a professorship, or creating a new one, posts in systematic musicology were established in some larger universities (e.g. Cologne, Hamburg). A few professorships in ethnomusicology also exist.
With some variation depending on the make-up of the teaching staff, German students will study mainly music history, with little or no systematic musicology. Such areas as jazz and popular musics are also rarely represented. Harmony, counterpoint, score reading and so on are commonly taught in the early stages of study. Musical analysis as a more highly developed discipline has been slow to establish itself. To some extent this reflects the distinction still maintained between ‘education’ and ‘training’. (In those universities with teacher-training departments, the teaching of some musical skills may be shared between the musicology and music education departments.) Musical performance as an element in degree courses is practically unknown, although universities usually support an orchestra, choir and other ensembles open to members of all faculties.
Lists of the main lectures and seminars held at musicological institutes in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are published twice annually in Die Musikforschung (in many respects the organization and curricula of Austrian and Swiss universities resemble the German pattern). Whereas in the 1950s there were musicological institutes at 17 universities in West Germany and West Berlin, this number had doubled by the end of the 1970s. In East Germany, with initially five university institutes, the twin pillars of research and teaching were sundered, many musicology departments being closed or reduced to servicing teacher-training, while research was concentrated in special institutes outside the university system. The Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, founded in 1948, remained common to the two Germanies until 1968, when East German members were obliged to resign and join the Kommission für Musikwissenschaft des Komponistenverbandes. After the reunification of Germany in 1989, university institutes in the former German Democratic Republic were integrated into a unified system. In the late 1990s there were over 40, with seven comparable institutes in Austria and four in Switzerland.
The challenge of rebuilding the edifice of German musicology after 1945 was met by outstandingly gifted scholars, who were able to launch such landmarks in the history of the discipline as the encyclopedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (ed. Friedrich Blume), new complete editions of several composers’ works and other monumental series. In retrospect, the institutional environment for these achievements appears to have been propitious. In the last quarter of the 20th century, however, several factors made it difficult to pursue the traditional goals as single-mindedly as in the first two decades after the war. The intellectual upheaval at the end of the 1960s questioned the concentration of musicology on historical and philological research. Alongside the great expansion in the potential scope of the discipline itself, student numbers increased inexorably, making traditional patterns of study and teaching impracticable. The need to coordinate courses at a European level also became important. All these factors will presumably lead to changes in the way musicological institutes function in Germany in the future.
See also Musicology, §III, 4.
Universities, §III: After 1945
Apart from a few private universities, none of which offers courses in music, the Italian university system is public and was formerly organized nationally, initially under the control of the Ministry of Public Education and then (from 1989) under the Ministry of the University and Scientific and Technological Research.) Entrance to university before World War II was restricted to graduates of an accredited classical lyceum who passed a national exam; after the war this requirement was gradually relaxed and entrance is now open to all who complete any accredited secondary school curriculum. By the late 1990s the number of universities had risen to 69, with a teaching staff of 49,000, an administrative staff of 58,000 and 1,700,000 students.
The University of Turin offered a course in music history as early as 1925. The first chair of music was established at the University of Florence in 1941 (it was eliminated in 1953), the second at the University of Rome in 1957; among those who campaigned for music courses were Raffaello Monterosso and Giuseppe Vecchi, as well as Diego Carpitella. Until the 1970s most universities recruited untenured teachers on a yearly basis. An important university reform law of 1978 established the tenured categories of full professor (professore ordinario), associate professor (professore associato) and researcher (ricercatore). At the same time music history, which previously had generally been taught within an institute of art history or Italian literature, was grouped with related disciplines in departments of the arts or performing arts.
By 1998 music history was being taught at some 30 Italian universities. Other courses (musical dramaturgy, musical philology, paleography, ethnomusicology, history of theory etc.) may also be offered, but only a few universities regularly teach several music subjects. Those granting degrees in musicology are the universities of Pavia at Cremona (since 1952), Bologna (1970), Macerata at Fermo (1989) and Cosenza (1990). Universities do not offer practical training in music – this is left to Conservatories – and even university choirs are rare.
The student of music at a university usually pursues a liberal arts degree; the 21 exams (which may have a written part but, by law, must also contain an oral part) cover the music subjects available at the particular university, as well as a selection of other liberal arts subjects. A degree related to preserving Italy's artistic heritage was instituted in the 1990s, but it only occasionally includes courses concerned with music. All university students must write a final thesis: given the availability in Italy of primary sources, this is most often based on original research and may be on the level of a PhD dissertation. In 1999 a government proposal was passed which would reduce university courses to three years (without thesis), followed by an optional two-year course (with thesis); specialization, for instance in education, would entail a two-year course.
An advanced degree called Dottorato di Ricerca was instituted in 1978 and is available only at universities which specifically request it from the government. Until 1998 students could take part in the advanced degree only if they passed an entrance examination and obtained one of the few government grants. In the future, however, it is expected that each university will award its own grants. In music, in order to provide more courses and facilities, groups of two or more universities have offered Dottorato di Ricerca programmes jointly, with administrative seats established at Bologna in 1983, Pavia at Cremona in 1987 and Rome in 1991.
Faculty openings are filled by public competition, held at the government's discretion. Because such competitions have been infrequent, university music careers in Italy have been largely stagnant. A new system of competition, however, was implemented in 1999, resulting in a marked increase in the number of full and associate professors. In 1993 the Associazione fra Docenti Universitari Italiani di Musica was founded to promote discussions with the government; in 2000 it had 103 members, with F. Della Seta as president.
See also Musicology, §III, 2.
Universities, §III: After 1945
Most colleges and universities in the USA, unlike their European counterparts, offer both academic and applied studies in music. Since 1945 many universities have established schools of music combining both types of study; among the larger schools are those of Indiana University and the universities of Michigan, Illinois and Texas. Such schools typically have much larger faculties and student bodies than academic departments of music. The department usually forms part of a school of arts and sciences, and its chair reports to the dean or director of the school. A school of music has more autonomy than a department, and its administrator reports to a higher level, usually the provost of the university. Most departments of music in colleges and most schools of music in universities offer both academic and applied instruction in music. Some departments, such as those at Harvard, Princeton and Columbia universities, maintain the European approach of excluding applied music but include instruction in composition (see also Conservatories, §IV).
Undergraduates typically choose a ‘music major’ leading to the Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Music (BM) or Bachelor of Music Education (BME) degree (the labels for these degrees vary: some institutions, for example, award the Bachelor of Fine Arts or Bachelor of Science in Music). In general the BA places more emphasis on the liberal arts and less on musical performance and composition than the BM; the BME prepares students to teach music in secondary schools. All three programmes include courses in the history and theory of music. Colleges and universities also offer numerous courses in music appreciation, music history, music literature and music theory for undergraduates not specializing in music.
At the graduate level students may work towards the Master of Arts (MA, an academic degree) or master's degrees in music performance or education. Master's degrees usually take one to two years to complete. Qualified students may then proceed to the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in musicology, ethnomusicology or music theory. Schools of music usually offer the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in performance. The doctorate in music education (DME) is most often administered by schools of education rather than departments or schools of music. Schools of music typically offer advanced degrees not only in applied music but also in academic studies, culminating in the PhD. Yale University is unusual in its inclusion of both a department of music for academic studies and a school of music for applied studies.
The range of academic courses offered in music for both undergraduate and graduate students has expanded greatly since 1945. An important impetus was the arrival in the USA during the late 1930s and 40s of numerous European musicologists, mostly German and Austrian, who fled the Nazi regime; among them were Alfred Einstein, Karl Geiringer, Otto Gombosi, Hugo Leichtentritt, Edward Lowinsky, Paul Nettl, Curt Sachs, Leo Schrade, Eric Werner and Emanuel Winternitz. Two disciples of Heinrich Schenker, Oswald Jonas and Felix Salzer, exerted a significant influence on music analysis.
In the years immediately following World War II undergraduate music-major courses consisted mainly of surveys of music history, courses in the music of specific composers and historical periods, and various theory courses. Musicological study at the graduate level was mostly historical, with special emphasis on medieval and Renaissance studies. In the mid-1960s, graduate schools began to pay more attention to later historical periods, although traditional musicological methods continued to be applied. The traditional approach to historical musicology has been maintained in many fields, especially in music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but new approaches have become increasingly important at both the graduate and undergraduate levels (see below). Graduate schools have also placed greater emphasis on the theory of music, in particular Schenkerian analysis, set theory and computer technology.
In the 1960s scholars such as Charles Seeger, Alan P. Merriam and Ki Mantle Hood brought the discipline of ethnomusicology to prominence. Merriam, active as an anthropologist at Northwestern University in the 1950s and at Indiana University beginning in 1962, emphasized the study of music within culture, as reflected in his book The Anthropology of Music (1964). From 1954 Hood taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he established the Institute of Ethnomusicology in 1961. In The Ethnomusicologist (1971) he argued that music must be understood both on its own terms, by participation in performance, and within the context of its society. His was the first programme in North America to offer instruction in playing the Javanese gamelan, and his institute also provided opportunities for students to perform a wide variety of other non-Western musics. Seeger's approach was universal: instead of separate historical and ethnomusicological studies, he advocated one musicology, although his work was of primary importance to ethnomusicologists. During the 1960s Seeger was research musicologist at the UCLA Institute of Ethnomusicology (until 1970). Graduate courses in ethnomusicology are offered in universities throughout the USA; among the most active programmes, in addition to those mentioned above, are those at Wesleyan University and the universities of Michigan and Illinois. Courses in non-Western musics have also been added to the curricula for undergraduates at many institutions.
Before 1945 colleges and universities paid little attention to art music in the USA, and virtually none to American psalmody, folktunes, African American music, jazz and popular entertainment music. From the 1960s, however, these genres became increasingly important to scholars teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. In 1961 Gilbert Chase founded the Inter-American Institute for Musical Research at Tulane University, and a decade later H. Wiley Hitchcock established the Institute for Studies in American Music at Brooklyn College. Richard Crawford, at the University of Michigan, has been an important influence on research and teaching in the field. Most institutions now offer courses in American music, and universities with ethnomusicological programmes have taken the lead in research in a variety of American musics.
Jazz entered the curricula of North American colleges and universities as an area of applied study. In 1947 North Texas State Teacher's college (now the University of North Texas) at Denton became the first institution in the USA to offer a programme in jazz performance; Indiana University followed shortly thereafter. Virtually every college and university that teaches applied music now has at least one jazz band, and courses in jazz improvisation are offered at many institutions. This trend, coupled with the increased interest in ethnomusicology and American studies, led to the introduction of undergraduate and graduate courses in jazz history, and to the writing of dissertations on jazz (viewed today as a ‘classical’ music). The Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University is among several important centres fostering the study of jazz.
Since the 1970s the study of the music of African Americans has become increasingly prominent. A major impetus for research in this field was the Black Music Center at Indiana University, founded in 1970 by Dominique-René de Lerma. This centre, which continued into the 1980s, served as a clearing-house, depository and research-reference site for the documentation of African American music history. Also in 1970 Indiana University established a Department of Afro-American Studies, in which students may concentrate on music while also taking courses in the School of Music. The department is one of the two most important locations for teaching and research in this field, the other being the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago, founded in 1983 by Samuel A. Floyd jr.
Among the more recent developments in the academic study of music in North American colleges and universities are those associated with ‘the new musicology’ (See Musicology, §III, 8). These include a variety of approaches modelled on trends in literary criticism, studies of women in music, gay and lesbian issues in music, the criticism of music in terms of gender, and music in relation to politics and various ideologies. Of these approaches, the subject of women in music appears to have had the greatest influence on curricula. The advent of the computer has also had a wide-ranging impact on music teaching and research (see Computers and music, §VII). Since the 1980s computers have been used to assist in teaching undergraduate theory and music appreciation courses. In the 1990s interactive music programs on CD-ROM began to be used in teaching undergraduate music history and appreciation. At the graduate level, the teaching of bibliography and the practice of research have been transformed by the availability of on-line bibliographic databases. The computer has become an indispensable tool for music students at every level.
Universities, §III: After 1945
Although British universities have granted music degrees as a professional qualification since the 15th century (and were, indeed, the first in Europe to do so), it was not until after World War II that music was accepted as a subject suitable for full-time study. Undergraduate music degrees were instituted at Cambridge in 1945 and at Oxford in 1950. In both these institutions the link with the cathedral tradition has been an essential ingredient, since individual colleges have maintained their own choral establishments, which have attained the highest standards over several centuries. In the postwar years, chairs in music and full-scale music departments were also established at many of the new ‘red-brick’ universities. Although there have always been opportunities for performance, the main purpose of these programmes was to provide a general education in music with an emphasis on scholarship and research; these remain the primary basis of most higher degrees. University curricula in this period included imitative composition, usually in styles from the 16th century to the early 19th; music history and literature; and skills such as fugal composition, critical commentary, ear training and keyboard tests. Free composition or performance was an option for a student's final year, and individual dissertations were admitted later.
This traditional curriculum has been maintained in the oldest British universities. Musical scholarship since World War II, largely through these institutions, has opened up a wider historical repertory through the work of figures such as Gerald Abraham, Denis Arnold, Frank Ll. Harrison and J.A. Westrup. The series Musica Britannica was founded in 1952 with Anthony Lewis as general editor and Thurston Dart as secretary. Dart started the department at King’s College, London, in 1964, and his legacy of scholarship applied to the performance and recording of early music was carried forward in the careers of such practitioners as David Munrow, John Eliot Gardiner and Christopher Hogwood. The presence in universities of immigrant scholars such as Hans Redlich, Egon Wellesz and, in the 1990s, Reinhard Strohm, has expanded British horizons. In 1964 Wilfrid Mellers started the Music Department at York with a staff of composers and a teaching programme reflecting all aspects of contemporary music as well as connections with the study of literature and music education. This use of composers, although completely independent, had parallels with the ‘Literature and Materials’ programme at the Juilliard School of Music, New York, established a decade earlier.
In 1962 Peter Maxwell Davies felt he had to go to Princeton to study composition seriously; however, the study of 20th-century music steadily gained ground in the newer music departments. Electronic studios proliferated in the 1960s and 70s, and computers were soon being used for composition, analysis and eventually the delivery of teaching materials. Courses in jazz and popular music were developed with notable contributions to the field from Richard Middleton and the journal Popular Music (1981) as well as such specialists as Stephen Banfield. Musicology itself gradually expanded to include ethnomusicology, pioneered by John Blacking, psychology, acoustics, gender studies and applied aspects such as music education, music therapy and arts administration, which all found a place in university curricula.
This unprecedented diversification within a generation has produced a stimulating crisis of identity for music in tertiary education. Boundaries have been crossed or blurred, and selective specialization based on what George Rochberg called ‘supermarket curricula’ has taken the place of the inherited general culture based on the full range of Western music, usually Austro-German. Degrees are now offered in what used to be regarded at best as fringe areas, such as electro-acoustic composition or commercial music. The balance between performance and academic studies has shifted as well, with universities taking performance more seriously and music colleges embracing contextual and analytical study (see Conservatories, §IV). This interaction has gone a long way towards healing what Mellers in 1973 (MT, cxiv, 245–9) called ‘the breach between making and doing and knowing … epitomised in the division between music colleges (places that do) and universities (places that know)’. Theory and analysis, formerly represented by little more than a kind of critical commentary in the tradition of Tovey, in the postwar period acquired a significant stake in university courses based largely on the ideas of Schoenberg and Schenker. Periodicals such as the American Journal of Music Theory (founded in 1957) and Perspectives of New Music (1962) and the British Music Analysis (1982) provided new forums for analytical discussion, where the work of Arnold Whittall has been seminal. Composition was recognized as a discipline leading to higher degrees, and some influential British composers held positions in university music departments. By the 1950s these included Hadley, Orr, Rubbra, Wellesz, Hoddinott, Mathias and Leighton; a generation later, Goehr at Cambridge, Harvey at Sussex; and – in the 1990s – Casken at Manchester, Birtwistle at King’s College, London, and Lefanu at York.
From the 1960s many British universities became patrons of the arts with an influence in their regions comparable to that of European courts in earlier centuries. Music departments became centres of musical culture inside and outside the institution. Some universities developed their own arts centres, not always linked to music departments, and schemes employing performers and composers in residence evolved on American patterns. These developments have reflected the changing nature of the subject, notions of its public accountability and opportunities for employment in the field. Increased numbers of music students beyond those needed in performance or teaching have been justified by new outlets in the media and administration; these include radio and television, organizations such as the Arts Council and its regional Arts Associations, arts management and the recording industry. Music graduates also take up careers in jazz, pop and music theatre, with more crossovers between categories than in earlier generations.
In this increasingly fragmented musical culture it has become impossible even for relatively large music departments to offer the breadth of expertise normally expected from a full-time teaching staff; small departments have been forced to specialize. This situation has been exacerbated by government assessment of both teaching quality and research output. As a result of the quadrennial Research Assessment Exercises, on which critical state funding for universities largely depends, there has been some growth in the number of university music departments with staff actively engaged in research. (This increase partly reflects government policy in raising the numbers of students participating in higher education in general, and the granting of university status to polytechnic institutions in 1995.) Music colleges became eligible to enter the exercises in 1996 and are assessed on the same basis as universities, with composition and performance regarded as the equivalent of research. The trend towards specialization has profoundly affected undergraduate teaching, which no longer reflects music education as previously understood. Together with funding constraints, it may limit the contribution of university musicians to public life, although in the short term it has undeniably demonstrated the quality and quantity of British music scholarship.
See also Musicology, §III, 3.
Universities, §III: After 1945
‘L'enseignement de la musicologie dans les universités françaises’, RdM, lvii (1971), 191–221
J. Gribenski: Thèses de doctorat en langue française relatives à la musique: bibliographie commentée (New York, 1979)
D. Pistone and M. Delahaye: Musique et musicologie dans les universités françaises (Paris, 1982)
J. Gribenski and F. Lesure: ‘La recherche musicologique en France depuis 1958’, AcM, lxiii (1991), 211–37
F. Blume: ‘Zur Lage der deutschen Musikforschung’, Mf, v (1952), 97–109
K. Hahn, ed.: Musikstudium in Deutschland: Musik, Musikerziehung, Musikwissenschaft: Studienführer (Mainz, 1960, 10/1992 ed. R. Jakoby and E. Kraus)
C. Dahlhaus and others: ‘Memorandum über die Lage der Musikwissenschaft in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, Mf, xxix (1976), 249–56
K.W. Niemöller and others, eds.: Einheit und Spaltung der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung: zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte im geteilten Deutschland: eine Dokumentation (Kassel, 1993)
R. Dalmonte: ‘Le discipline musicali nella prospettiva della riforma universitaria’, RIM, xiii (1978), 203–11
M. Baroni and others: ‘Progetto di riassetto degli studi musicologici universitarii’, RIM, xiv (1979), 203–22
P. Petrobelli: ‘La musica nelle università’, Didattica della storia della musica: Florence 1985, 109–12
G and T. Gialdroni, eds.: Convegno di studi : 8 settembre 1991: le discipline musicali e l'università (Rimini, 1992)
T. Gialdroni, ed.: Le discipline musicologiche e l'università (Rome, 1994)
G. La Face Bianconi: ‘I dottorati di ricerca in discipline musicali’, Saggiatore musicale, i (1994), 197–207
S. Goldthwaite: ‘The Growth and Influence of Musicology in the United States’, AcM, xxxiii (1961), 72–9
J. LaRue: ‘Codetta: some Details of Musicology in the United States’, AcM, xxxiii (1961), 79–83
F. Harrison, M. Hood and C.V. Palisca: Musicology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963)
A.P. Merriam: The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, IL, 1964)
J. Kerman: ‘A Profile for American Musicology’, JAMS, xviii (1965), 61–9
E.E. Lowinsky: ‘Character and Purposes of American Musicology: a Reply to Joseph Kerman’, JAMS, xviii (1965), 222–34
G.S. McPeek: ‘Musicology in the United States: a Survey of Recent Trends’, Studies in Musicology: Essays in Memory of Glen Haydon, ed. J.W. Pruett (Chapel Hill, 1969/R), 260–75
D.-R. Lerma: ‘Preface: the Black Music Center and its Projects’, Reflections on Afro-American Music (Kent, OH, 1973), 1–12
R. Crawford: American Studies and American Musicology: a Point of View and a Case in Point (Brooklyn, NY, 1975)
B.S. Brook: ‘Musicology and Musicological Training in the United States’, MMA, x (1979), 158–65
D.K. Holoman and C.V. Palisca, eds.: Musicology in the 1980s: Methods, Goals, Opportunities (New York, 1982)
J. Kerman: Musicology (London, 1985)
D. Beach: ‘The Current State of Schenkerian Research’, AcM, lvii (1985), 275–99
L. Porter: ‘Jazz in American Education Today’, College Music Symposium, xxix (1989), 134–9
J. Kerman: ‘American Musicology in the 1990's’, JM, ix (1991), 131–44
B. Nettl: ‘The Dual Nature of Ethnomusicology in North America: the Contributions of Charles Seeger and George Herzog’, Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology, ed. B. Nettl and P.V. Bohlman (Chicago, 1991), 266–74
B. Coeyman: ‘Applications of Feminist Pedagogy to the College Music Major Curriculum: an Introduction to the Issues’, College Music Symposium, xxxvi (1996), 73–90
E.E. Helm: The Canon and the Curricula: a Study of Musicology and Ethnomusicology Programs in America (Stuyvesant, NY, 1994)
C. Wilkinson: ‘Deforming/Reforming the Canon: Challenges of a Multicultural Music History Course’, Black Music Research Journal, xvi (1996), 259–77
L.R. Wyatt: ‘The Inclusion of Concert Music of African-American Composers in Music History Courses’, Black Music Research Journal, xvi (1996), 239–57
D. Joyner: ‘50 Years of Jazz Education at North Texas’, Jazz Educators Journal, xxx (1997), 53–62
S. Flandreau: ‘Black Music in the Academy: the Center for Black Music Research’, Notes, lv (1998–9), 26–36
Grove6 (‘Education in Music’)
F. Howes: Music, 1945–50 (London, 1951), 36–8
N. Long: Music in English Education (London, 1959)
W. Mellers: ‘Connecting it All: from Bach to the Beatles and Back’, Times Educational Supplement (29 January 1964)
P.M. Davies: ‘The Young Composer in America’, Tempo, no.72 (1965), 2–6
‘The Study of Music at University’, MT, cxiv (1973) [articles by P. Evans, 129–31; W. Mellers, 245–9; I. Keys, 369–70; P. Doe, 480–83; A. Goehr, 588–90; L. Lockwood, 783–7; L. Finscher, 887–90; G. Rochberg, 1108–12]
J. Harvey: ‘Composition Teaching at a University’, Composer, no.53 (1974–5), 27–8; no.54 (1975), 31–2
Training Musicians: a Report to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (London, 1978)
D. Fallows, A. Whittall, J. Blacking and N. Fortune: ‘Musicology in Great Britain since 1945’, AcM, lii (1980), 36–68
Report by the National Assocation of University Music Staff to the Music Working-Party of the Arts Sub-Committee of the University Grants Committee (May 1988)
C. Kennett: ‘Criticism and Theory’, The Twentieth Century, ed. S. Banfield (London, 1995), 503–18