[…] Continuation of: II. Five Different Classics […]
Writing a diverse HoT will require an embrace of the limits of what one person can do as a teacher. In conventional HoTs, the standard languages German, French, Italian, Latin, and ancient Greek can be expected; they would—ideally—be needed to follow my old syllabus. It’s remarkable that for a number of the texts we look at—despite their much-invoked centrality to the field—there are no published English translations.[1] For practical purposes, I let my students work on translations as a group. There is usually at least one person with decent French and another with good German, occasionally someone with Latin or Greek, and among all of them, they can figure out most of the texts in the original language. Sometimes we work through originals in parallel with translations to tease out nuances wherever possible.
Would something equivalent even be possible for our diverse syllabus? Realistically speaking, we have to kiss goodbye to the expectation of comprehensive language skills.[2] Of course, my syllabus is still pretty moderate and focused on themes that resonate well with some central themes of European discourses.[3] What if we were to add, say, Sanskrit, Zulu, Russian, Nahuatl, Japanese, Omahan, Turkish, Javanese, and Tuvan? (Phil Ewell’s blog has much more to say on language skills.)
Some might argue that good historical work cannot be done without thorough language skills. These ambitions are understandable, but if we want to be serious about the global demands of music theory, or rather its diversity tasks—the two are not quite the same thing—then we have to be realistic. As historian Jürgen Osterhammel, a leading authority in global history and the author of several monumental volumes on world history, argues at length, it is simply not possible to do close-reading work with primary sources in multiple languages at the same time. Reliance on dependable translations is a precondition of a more diverse HoT. A global and/or diverse approach must have the courage to let go of the old language requirements. It doesn’t mean that the work is inferior. It just means that we place our priorities elsewhere.
Languages aside, I’d be deluding myself if I pretended that a diverse syllabus can be taught in the same way as the old syllabus. We know far less about Ptolemais than we do about Boethius; material about Johanna Kinkel is much harder to find than material about Helmholtz. Zhu Zaiyu and Al-Fārābī have amassed considerable secondary scholarship, but mostly within their own language groups. (There are no translations of Zhu Zaiyu or Al-Fārābī available at the moment, though Alison Laywine has been working on a translation of al-Kitāb.) Teaching these figures would require a lot more groundwork, a lot more contextual work, a lot more reliance on the existing secondary literature (some of which is, how to put it, less than up-to-date), and frankly, a lot more informed speculation. In all likelihood, it will require a certain amount of pedagogical finesse, as the students will have to synthesize a vast amount of material. It will also require putting my cards on the table and explaining that I am not in full control of the material, and rely—as the students do—on whatever material is available to me. We will, quite literally, all be learning this material together.[4]
In fact, this teaching model might well provide an alternative to Osterhammel’s individual synthesis of vast amounts of (secondary) material. His model, which retains the individual authorship of traditional humanistic scholarship, runs the risk of solipsism. The alternative is to harness the many diverse specialisms of scholarly collectives, each bringing their own thoughts to bear on a project.[5] Publications might well come to resemble seminar discussions.
[…]Continuation: IV. Pros and cons […]
[1] While I’m at it: Calvin Bower’s translation of Boethius has been out of print for a long time, and goes for about $500 on the second-hand market. Yale University Press, if you read this, please consider reissuing this book, perhaps as print on demand.
[2] Lest I be misunderstood: what I am talking about here is specifically a teaching scenario (or even more specifically, the qualifier “comprehensive”). In fact, this situation makes the need for published translations of the highest scholarly caliber even greater. In parallel, I hope we will usher in a new golden age of scholarly translations of music-theoretical texts, as we saw in the 1990s.
[3] One aspect of its moderation is the extent to which notions such as “History,” “Theory,” or “Music” are left unchallenged.
[4] In 2012, I offered a class that was structurally similar, which explored the Enlightenment reception of Chinese music and culminated in a group exhibition—in this I was as much a student as the graduates, in that before the start of the semester I didn’t know where exactly we would end up. It was a valuable experience for all involved.
[5] I thank Lester Hu for pushing me further along in this direction. There is plenty more to say here. Our current academic institutions, for instance, are typically geared toward incentivizing and rewarding individual scholarly contributions over group work.