Iris ter Schiphorst
Musicology as a Ghosts-Science, or: The promise of SOUND 1995
Lecture at the 9th International Congress on Women in Music, MS, 1995
My aim in this lecture is, on the one hand, to 'oversee' the field of 'Western music' - and thus to 'shift' certain views that have determined music historiography and its scholarship for around 200 years and have led to this scholarship still being centred primarily around the 'artwork of composition' (which, according to popular opinion, women are incapable of creating).
On the other hand, I wanted to outline possible procedures for the 'deconstruction' of this musicology, as well as to consider a different ('female?') way of writing music history. Because I find that a large part of the feminist discourse adopts the manner of the prevailing music historiography and its scholarship 'just like that': e.g. the centring around the artwork of composition - as if this were the highest (and only) value in Western music as a matter of course.
In a feminist context in particular, I believe it is necessary to no longer see music historiography primarily as a 'history of artworks' and to dig more or less exclusively for works by silenced female composers, but also and finally to give the stories of female musicians, singers, performers, private music teachers, piano players, etc., etc., an equal place. ... see further