Methods of analysis in musicology

Ruwet, Nicolas and Everist, Mark (1987) Methods of analysis in musicology. Music Analysis, 6 (1/2), 3-36.

Abstract

Nicolas Ruwet's 'Methods' deserve a broader reception than they have so far been afforded. When they appeared in 1966, they represented the first coherent attempt to articulate a music-analytical system which drew on the distributional and taxonomic procedures of anthropology, linguistics and ethnomusicology; they also form a large part of a system which has generated much critical comment, especially in the French and French-Canadian musico-semiotic worlds,1* in its twenty years' existence; furthermore, they constitute one of the few sets of analytical methodologies which initially address repertories other than those of the 'common practice' era. The concentration in 'Methods' on monodies from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries makes their exclusion from contemporary discussions of the 'analysis of early music', with its all-too- often duplicative obsession with voice-leading procedures,2 all the more regrettable.

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