Critical Review #7

Critical Review #7

Nettl Reading

Ethnomusicology has been deemed the study of comparing our culture’s music to that of others’ and finding their differences and similarities, seeing where they overlap and dissipate.  Bruno Nettl’s discussion of students at music conservatories and their views on music is interesting to take into account when finding different perspectives on outside cultures’ music. Students who study in a music conservatory have fixed notions of music based on the education they receive, which is purely music based. Nettl says of this:

 “…the average member of music school society, asked to describe the great composers – Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Schubert… It makes sense to think of the music school, therefore, as a society ruled by deities with sacred texts, rituals, ceremonial numbers, and a priesthood.”

However, doesn’t this seem a little far removed from how the ethnomusicologist should look at music? Yes, we learn that the four composers mentioned above are the “master” composers of our history, for this is something that has been embedded within us via textbooks and lectures. However, we need to get out of this bubble of preconceived information, and allow experience and that which we witness to drive our original notions of a culture’s music. Nettl sees the music conservatory as “a melting pot,” a place where students “retain their separate identities.” As a result, this easily parallels the inability for one culture to interact with another, the enclosed student unable to see passed the textbook.

How can we, as ethnomusicologists, take that which has been taught to us in class and meld it with the live music we experience in our own cultures and in others as well?