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Toward a Materialist Conception of Music History

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Published Aug 2024

Stephan Hammel

Author: Stephan Hammel
This book argues for the relevance, appropriateness, and usefulness of historical materialism to the musicological project. It interrogates the history of encounters between Marxism and music studies — both within and without the Soviet sphere — before staging the missed encounter between classical musicology and Second International Marxism. It concludes with a framework for understanding style history in terms of changes in the forces and relations of musical production.

Biographical Note

Stephan Hammel, Ph.D. (2014), University of Pennsylvania, is Associate Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine.

Readership

This book will be of interest to music scholars and graduate students, as well as Marxist scholars interested in aesthetics and questions of method.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Realist Conception of Art
1 The Realist Conception of Art
2 The Materialist Conception of Music History

2 The Cultural Phase of Industry

3 Disenchantment and Musicological Method
1 Either History or Aesthetic Experience
2 Against Marxism
3 Against Positivism
4 Classical Musicology

4 Democratic Formalism
1 Failed Revolution and Liberalisation
2 Discursivity and the Authority of Musical Norms
3 Against the Rule of Sentiment

5 Style Criticism and Historical Materialism
1 Style and Its Discontents
2 Style and Spirit
3 Style and Technique
4 Style and Historical Materialism

6 Forces and Relations of Musical Production
1 Forces and Relations
2 Primitive Musical Communism
3 Minstrel and Chapel Singer
4 Thoroughbass and the Opera Industry
5 The Musician Entrepreneur
6 Organised Musical Labor
7 After Capitalism

Appendix: The Harmonic Ideology
Bibliography
Index