By Gavin Lee
This is a translation and expansion of my Chinese article published in Shanghai Conservatory’s Taruskin series on Oct 12, 2022. I aimed to be polemical, criticizing the near exclusive Chinese focus on Taruskin as an occlusion of other New Musicologists as well as new decolonial and posthumanist research. I am grateful to Xu Lufan, Liu Peng, He Xian, and Hong Ding for discussing Taruskin and Chinese musicology with me.
When Boulez announced that Schoenberg is dead, it was entirely in keeping with the modernist ideology of innovation that perhaps ameliorated any perception of disrespect. Now in 2022, just months after Taruskin’s death, the title of this article might also, in the same way, be received as a call for innovation that is after all the hallmark of academia. Because the “death” we are referring to here is not Taruskin’s biological death, but to his oeuvre of scholarship, the announcement that Taruskin is to be superceded is above all a recognition of his decisive influence in musicology. There is, in this sense, no higher praise than to announce that Taruskin is dead. I hope can only hope that someone announces that “Gavin Lee is dead” when the time comes.
Taruskin's influence in China has largely to do with his monumental Oxford History of Western Music, as opposed to his research on Russian music, nationalism, early music etc. Although the Oxford history is a work of history (rather than historiography), it contains significant considerations of methodology and summarizes others's musicological research, and has become a source from which Chinese scholars deduce historical methods. While Taruskin has been known in China for some time, more attention was paid to him around 2017, especially his Oxford History, which led to the publication of an edited volume from Yang Yandi and Liang Qing, entitled Taruskin: What Is the Essence of Music History? (2019). This contained essays explaining Taruskin's historical method, with his Oxford History being a central reference point; in a sense, what we have is Chinese scholars interpreting Taruskin's interpretation of Western music and history. We might understand the recent attention on Taruskin in China as a reflection of the longer-term project scrutinizing the writing of Western music history, led in particular by Yang.
Bearing in mind that the Oxford History is currently absorbing a significant amount of attention from Chinese musicology, I provide in this article an extremely brief but timely assessment of its 6 volumes as well as Taruskin’s entire oeuvre. I pay attention in particular to Taruskin’s relation with New Musicology, and the possibility for new thinking through his transculturation in China. To do that, I need to first lay out arguments for why Taruskin is dead. Again, I see this as the highest recognition of Taruskin’s achievements. In ancient Chinese martial arts stories, it is the always the most formidable swordsman who protagonists want to challenge. Taruskin is one of the intellectual giants of musicology.
Taruskin is dead because:
1) For those of us thoroughly familiar with Taruskin’s overall research, it can be curiously difficult to pinpoint his achievements: What is Taruskin’s innovation? The reason, I think, is because his once novel ideas have become so influential that they are simply part of mainstream musicological thinking. You wouldn’t even think twice about critiquing “authenticity” in early music because it’s so obvious that authenticity is merely a construct, and that history cannot really be recovered in 2022. Because we have already learnt Taruskin’s lesson by heart, it is perhaps time for us to move on from him.
2) For those of us familiar with his monumental Oxford History, it is not that easy to pinpoint his achievements, because, as Susan McClary pointed out, much of the 6-volume work is a distillation of multiple authors of New Musicology. Thus Taruskins’s views on Schubert or the Cold War, as embodied in the Oxford history, are not really his views, but the views of others. It is perhaps time for us to move forward from him to those other authors.
3) For those of us who are familiar with Taruskin’s work on Stravinsky and Russian music, it is not that easy to pinpoint his influence among Chinese scholars of Russian music, because Chinese scholars have generally turned to primary and secondary materials in the Russian language directly, rather than receiving Russian music through Taruskin’s English language writings. This is a reminder that there is such a thing as “global musicology” (to use Daniel Chua phrase), which refers to an enlarged conception of musicology beyond that in Europe and North America.
4) For those of us familiar with Taruskin’s polemical diatribes against New Musicologists, it can be surprisingly difficult to discern the continued relevance of this debate. Arguably, after 30 years of construction and deconstruction, New Musicology might, in a way, actually be dead. The hallmark of New Musicology was its interdisciplinary hermeneutic interpretation of musical works through literature, art, philosophy, and various critical, postcolonial, feminist, and queer theories. By the 2020s, the musicological world of the West has shifted. Today, emancipatory music studies proceed not by hermeneutic interpretation of Western musical works, but by statistics and old-fashioned history. For example, Philip Ewell points out that almost 100% of the music examples in music theory textbooks are by white composers—where are the black, Chinese, Egyptian, Brazilian, Japanese, Indonesian and other composers? Tamara Levitz has studied the early history of the American Musicological Society in 1930s, revealing how its then leaders deliberately excluded world musics from their society. In posthumanist studies, writers like Rachel Mundy, Holly Watkins, and Robin James are interpreting music in terms of plants and robots. New Musicology is dead, and so is Taruskin’s annoyance with it.
5) Since New Musicology is dead, I think it’s a good time for those of us working in China and who identify as Chinese to think about what a Chinese, Sinophone, East Asian, or global musicology might look like. We live in a multi-polar world where there can be multiple viewpoints. Maybe what I’m really trying to say is that Western musicology is dead, in so far as it has diminished importance for Chinese thinkers with our own points of view.
In discussing Taruskin with students in my graduate seminar recently, I had assigned the topic of “New Musicology in China,” intending to refer to the application of US/UK new musicological methods by Chinese scholars such as Xu Lufan (postcolonial theory) and He Xian (feminist and queer theory). Students commented that it was rather difficult to find such research, as most related Chinese writings focus on explicating particular US New Musicologists’s writings, rather than bringing, say, Taruskin’s methods to bear in one’s own areas of musicological inquiry. What struck me in particular was one student’s impassioned query about why we are focusing on the application of Western scholars’s methods in China. Why can’t New Musicology in China be about home-grown methods? What exactly does “new” mean for China?
Those of us in academia know from our earliest pursuit of scholarship that it is innovation that determines whether we sink or swim in this profession. In a sense, what is new is simply that which different from and supersedes the established. According to Michael North (in Novelty: A History of the New), however, nothing is 100% new, for old components are necessarily incorporated in the new product—how can something arise out of nothing? A perception of the new, then, arises only in two ways: recombination of old, or recurrence of old. In scholarship, what is recombined or recurs is old ideas. Following this line of argument, there can’t be anything absolutely new in either new music or New Musicology.
The other thing about the new is that it is always relative. A new idea ceases to be so once it is mainstreamed. This has been the case with scholars who once proposed novel ideas in the 90s, but whose work have been mainstreamed to such a degree that they are no longer new. We wouldn’t think twice about deconstructing authenticity in early music, nationalism or gender norms because of Taruskin’s and McClary’s achievements. In its earlier days, what was new about New Musicology was its interdisciplinary borrowings from queer, feminist, postcolonial, and other theories. This conforms with North’s idea that the new arises from recombination, in this case, of musicology with other disciplines.
But what does innovation mean when we enlarge the discursive space to include the entire globe? My observation is that, again the rules of relativity and recombination apply. What is new in China, even now, is New Musicology, which is still new, relative to Chinese scholarship. Because of the language barrier, it was only in recent years that New Musicology has become more widely known in China, primarily through Taruskin’s distillation of multiple authors’s thinking in his Oxford History. New Musicology is still relatively (and thus by definition) new in China.
Another source of newness in Chinese musicology is some of the more original recombinations of Chinese scholars’s positionality, on the one hand, and Western methods, on the other. Ye Songrong has applied Chinese philosophy in the hermeneutics of Western music; e.g. he argues that the Chinese philosophy of moderation known as zhong yong zhi dao might shed new light on the pursuit of the new in musical modernism, and I would add, in musicology. In the field of global music history, Zhang Yuexin has explored Beethoven in China, Fang Xueyang has examined the circulation of Chinese instruments in 18th-century Europe, and Cheong Wai Ling, Hong Ding, and Kevin Tam have investigated 12-tone musical circuits between Berlin and Wuhan. Lin Binqing has referred to the presence of Chinese “native” researchers to decenter the primacy of insider/outsider as a central tenet of Western ethnomusicology; Chinese scholars could prioritize other issues such as sustainability.
In the light of North’s deconstruction of the “new,” I began to wonder what really is the point of scholarship, if it is not a race for novelty. One answer of course lies in the emancipatory impetus of feminist, queer, and decolonial theories. But I also tried to think about what musicology is like for folks who aren’t engaged in these specific fields. As a reference, I turned to the winners of the AMS Kinkeldey prize over the past decade and saw publications on Stravinsky, Wagner, and Mozart by familiar names, Tamara Levitz (who has engaged with decolonial theory in recent years), Scott Burnham, and Karol Berger. Their hermeneutic and historical re-interpretations of canonic composers embody the mainstreaming of New Musicology that, using North’s criterion of “relatively new,” is finally old (and perhaps even “dead”).
Chinese musicology is still processing Taruskin his tribute to New Musicology, the Oxford History, both relatively new in China. But after we have heeded Taruskin’s lessons, it may be that the best thing he can do for us is to light a blazing path for us like a phoenix, so that a new kind of Chinese New Musicology may be born in his place.
Works Cited
Berger, Karol. Beyond Reason: Wagner contra Nietzsche. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2016.
Blazekovic, Zdravko and Xueyang Fang. “Chinese Instruments and Performers in 18th-Century Europe.” Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music 2019, issue 4. 兹德拉夫科·布拉兹科维奇，方雪扬，18世纪欧洲的中国乐器及乐器演奏家，中央音乐学院学报，2019年第2期：11-27。
Burnham, Scott. Mozart’s Grace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.
Cheong, Wai-Ling, Ding Hong, and Yi-Ching Kevin Tam. "From Berlin to Wuhan: Twelve-Tone Composition and the Pedagogical Legacies of Kohoutek, Krenek, and Smith Brindle in China." Acta Musicologica 94.1 (2022): 48-67.
He, Xian. What is Fatal? The Femme Fatale and Consumerism in Lady Gaga’s Telephone.” Journal of the Central Conservatory of Music 2022, issue 3. 何弦， 何以致命？：Lady Gaga音乐录影带《电话》中的“致命女人”与“消费主义”，中央音乐学院学报，2022年第3期。
Levitz, Tamara. Modernist Mysteries: Persephone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Lin, Bingqing. “Way Out of the Myth of Western Ethnomusicology Theory.” New Voices of the Music Office, Yuefu xinsheng 2011, no. 3: 104-108. 林冰清，走出西方民族音乐学理论的迷思，乐府新声 2011年第3期：104-108。
McClary, Susan. “The World According to Taruskin.” Music & Letters 87.3 (2006): 408-415
Xu, Lufan. “Entangled Writings: Exoticism in Busoni’s Turandot,” Huang Zhong 2021, issue 4. 徐璐凡，缠绕的书写：析布索尼歌剧图兰朵的异国情调，黄钟，2021年第3期。
Ye, Songrong. "Western People's Music, Chinese Scholarship: Researching Western Music from a Chinese Perspective." Music Research 2013, no. 6: 39-51. 叶松荣，《西方人的音乐 中国人的学术 ——对以中国人的视野研究西方音乐观念与实践问题的理解》，音乐研究 2013年第6期：39-51。
Zhang, Yuexin. Beethoven in China: Research on a Case Study of Issues in the Reception of Western Classical Music. Beijing, China: Central Conservatory of Music Press, 2013. Landmark study of Beethoven reception in China. 张乐心，贝多芬在中国：西方古典音乐接受问题个案研究，北京：中央音乐学院，2013。
以“塔鲁斯金已死”致敬这伟大音乐学家。希望到时，有后人宣告“李勋康已死”
布列兹宣布勋伯格已死当时，完全符合现代主义的创新意识形态，也不一定有任何不尊重的感觉。现在是2022年，就在塔鲁斯金去世几个月后，本文的标题也仍然应该被当作是创新的号召，这毕竟是学术界的标志。这里提到的“死亡”不是塔鲁斯金的生理死亡，而是在宣布塔鲁斯金将被取代，但这不仅不含贬义，反而是对他在音乐学上的决定性影响的认可和最高评价。在武侠小说中，人们只会想要取代称霸武林的大侠，不是那些所谓的虾兵蟹将。 从这个意义上说，没有比宣布塔鲁斯金已死更高的赞扬。我只能希望有后人在时机到来时宣布“李勋康已死”。
古代的中国哲学早已提出，生与死、阴与阳、和空与形色都是相对概念（这是不是建构与解构的前生，后来在20世纪法国哲学家笔下“投胎”？），所以在中国语境中用“已死”解构一下塔鲁斯金的成就可能是最适当的选择。以下列出塔鲁斯金已死的5个说法：
关照塔鲁斯金的总体研究，要确定他的成就有可能不是很直接达到答案的一件事。原因在于他曾经的新思想已经变得如此有影响力，以至于它们是主流音乐学思想的一部分，有一种理所当然的感觉。你不会再三考虑批评早期音乐中的“本真性”，因为很明显，本真性只是一种建构，历史无法在2022年恢复。因为我们已经牢记了塔鲁斯金的教诲，也许是时候离开他了。
关照塔鲁斯金不朽的《牛津西方音乐史》，要确定他的成就也并不容易，因为正如苏珊·麦克拉蕊（Susan McClary）指出，这6卷作品的内容是新音乐学多位作者的升华。在牛津史中塔鲁斯金对舒伯特或冷战的观点，其实不是他原创的观点，而是借鉴其他人的科研。也许我们是时候离开他去看向其他作者了。
关照塔鲁斯金关于斯特拉文斯基和俄罗斯音乐的出版物，要确定他在研究俄罗斯音乐的中国学者中的影响并不容易，因为中国学者通常直接参考俄语的一手和二手资料，而不是通过塔鲁斯金的英文文献接触俄罗斯音乐。这牵连到国际音乐学学会主席Daniel Chua的“全球音乐学”概念，它指的是超越欧洲和北美而包含全世界的音乐学家的大学术范围。
关照塔鲁斯金在牛津史中对其他新音乐学家的强烈批评（美国音乐学学会在他的讣闻中提到他武侠乞丐“pugilistic”的辩论方式），不容易辨别这场辩论在2022年的关键性。可以说，经过30年的建构和解构，新音乐学实际上可能“已死”。新音乐学的特点是它从后殖民和女权主义理论对音乐作品进行诠释。而当今西方的音乐学界已发生变化。有解放意识的音乐学研究不再是通过对西方音乐作品的诠释进行，而是通过统计学和老式的历史。例如，菲利普·尤厄尔（Philip Ewell）指出，音乐理论教科书中几乎100%的音乐例子都来自于白人作曲家的作品——黑人、中国、埃及、巴西、日本、印度尼西亚和其他作曲家在哪里？塔玛拉·莱维茨（Tamara Levitz）研究了20世纪30年代美国音乐学协会的早期历史，揭示了它当时的领导人是如何故意将世界音乐排除在他们的学会之外。在后人类主义的研究中，像雷切尔·芒迪（Rachel Mundy）、霍莉·沃特金斯（Holly Watkins）和罗宾·詹姆斯（Robin James）这些学者用“植物”和“机器人”来解读音乐。新音乐学已死，而塔鲁斯金的烦恼也随着已死。
既然新音乐学已死，对于在中国的学者来说，现在是思考中国、华语语系、东亚或全球音乐学的好时机。我们生活在一个多极的世界，可以有多种观点。甚至可以说，“西方音乐学已死”，意味着西方思想在一个多极世界的重要性必定有与之前相对降低的趋势 。无论是塔鲁斯金、新音乐学或西方音乐学，“已死”这说法意味着它们的主导地位，是最高的认可，但也标志了终止和超越。(《美国音乐学的终止/目的》The End of American Musicology是詹姆斯·柯里James Currie在2019年国际音乐学学会东亚分会会议的主旨演讲标题；“end”是多义词，在他演讲里有双重意思。也许对他而言，美国音乐学“已死”，甚至于“该死”？)
当然，从以上第一点（塔鲁斯金的主流化）就可以看出，其实塔拉斯金“未死”(这也是塔鲁斯金读书会的出发点），只是创新是科研的使命，而生死可能带来不同的思考，算是从事有价值的精神追求的一种概念建设吧！但是学术一味的创新也有可能僵化，成为一种“自律”的固定形式，就是为了创新而创新，和真理的追求脱节。“已死”-“未死”以双重概念考核可以互相克制，可称为中国哲学的“中庸之道”，指的是只有达到平衡才能稳定长久。“塔鲁斯金已死”的真正意义正在其中，即是往前迈一步，也同时把他最核心的贡献传承下去。
