#and i mean like there are def young musicologists and interdisciplinary scholars out there saying this already | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

teenagefeeling · 4 days ago

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it really does kill me how at the undergraduate level other disciplines were all like "every system that we use was created by people, so there are flaws and biases built in" and "part of learning is being critical of the work of past scholars" and "new research is always changing the way we think about our field" meanwhile in my music classes they were like "anyway, these three specific dead rich white guys are perfect, practically godlike infallible geniuses who invented modern music as we know it all by themselves and you should never criticize their work or question why you have to learn figured bass"

#honestly very frustrating to me #and i mean like there are def young musicologists and interdisciplinary scholars out there saying this already #it just feels like the broader field is like not really responding to that #and like honestly imo the obsession w romanticization of history in music comes at the cost #of ignoring erasing and/or decontextualizing & whitewashing marginalized voices in the industry #which if we wanna look up some stats we can prove pretty easily #and to be clear im talking about classical music here rn (i.e. western art music)#the level of elitism in the industry is not an accident it's literally baked into the textbooks #and enforced by teachers and scholars who are still so obsessed with being sycophantic about mozart #i really kinda wanna write an essay titled something along the lines of “mozart was not a god”#kinda exploring like. well why mozart was mozart. because anna mozart sure wasn't mozart but she was also a child prodigy so why is that #(it's because she was a woman)#but there's wayyyy more to it than just mozart being male and i think he's a really interesting case study #of how people would sooner credit his talent to literal supernatural forces (yes scholars do this unironically)#than acknowledge his massive amounts of social & financial privilege #or admit he was autistic (tho scholars mostly do acknowledge that one now i think to be fair lol)#i think i once read an article criticizing how heavily bach is revered by music professors im gonna have to try to find that one #anyway this turned into a massive ramble ive just been thinking abt this lately #because after starting grad school and being in another field that is similarly interdisciplinary to music #(and also kiiiiiinda looking into music librarian jobs bc that would be fun imo)#ive just been kinda mentally comparing the two #and i don't wanna say that it's because LIS is female dominated and music is male dominated buuuuut....... if the shoe fits.......#bri babbles

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