Abstract

Influenced by methodological trends in contemporary cultural history, recent writings in music history now share a common and very basic concern: to reconcile the desire to treat musical works as purely musical entities with value and significance of their own with the desire to account for the fact that such works are conditioned by the historical, social, and psychological contexts in which they are produced. This essay places these modern reconciliations within a broader discussion of the uneasy relations that hold between the domains of the musical and the extra-musical. It shows how both the logic and the history of this relationship has reflected the need to establish borders of the musical domain, and, following upon that, criteria of relevance for determining what is and what is not to be included in the writing of music history