SPECIAL PROJECT 

musicology and the musical composition 
part I, the musical composition 

Cheryl Seltzer, editor 

With the present issue, Current Musicology inaugurates a series of special 
projects, the first of which is entitled Musicology and the Musical Composi-
tion. This project has been designed to stimulate discussion on the nature of 
the musical composition in Western culture. It aims to investigate modes of 
musicological description and explanation and to expand our understanding 
of musical works in themselves and in the context of tradition. 

The project is organized as a symposium, consisting of essays and com-
mentaries solicited from individuals representing the field of music and other 
relevant disciplines, and supplemented by communications from our readers. 
Contributors will consider the notion of the musical composition; the script-
sound relation; the musical medium; systems of musical organization; the 
dimensions, levels, elements, and processes of musical structure; the kinds of 
musicological statements appropriate to theories of style. These and other 
pertinent topics will be treated both at specific points of time and in his-
torical development. . 

We begin by presenting two papers which treat the notion of the musical 
composition and the assumptions underlying the changing means of creating 
and experiencing music in the West. Richard Crocker proposes a re-evalua-
tion of the criteria whereby we perceive a piece of music as a conceptual 
entity. Asserting that we tend to impose 19th-century formal concepts on all 
music, he suggests we develop a formal sense capable of responding more 
sensitively to the unique coherence inherent in each instance of the musical 
repertoire. Patricia Carpenter explores the ramifications of 'our Western 
tendency to objectifY music, and the consequent notion of a piece. She is 
concerned with the apprehension of a musical entity and considers such 
factors as distance and spatiality; the organization of time; music as object 
and music as process; the sense of hearing and musical perception; the re-
lation of our linguistic and musical concepts; the relation of the object to 
changing notions of form. 

These essays were submitted to respondents for comment. Six contribu-
tions are included here, and a second group will be presented in the next 
issue. 

Leo Treitler questions the possibility of separating subjective and objective 
aspects of musical perception and, citing medieval music and theory, evalu-
ates Miss Carpenter's postulate of historical development of the concept of 
"piece". The psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, reflecting on the emergence of 
the self-contained work of art-its gradual isolation as object from daily life-

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considers the nature and perception of visual and musical entities. The de-
pendence of accurate musicological formulations on the historical orienta-
tion of our musical hearing is discussed by Ruth Halle Rowen, and Edward 
T. Cone explores the historical meanings, criteria, and conceptual implica-
tions of our basic terms for the musical work. Bernard Stambler, responding 
to Professor Crocker's plea for the development of historically appropriate 
formal senses, deals with 18th-century thought, its character and background, 
and the manner in which it has conditioned our present-day approaches to 
the entire musical repertoire. Problems of successive and simultaneous 
apprehension with regard to Miss Carpenter's notion of the musical object 
are investigated by David Burrows. 

In the forthcoming issue, Saul Novack explores the various criteria for 
the cohesion of multimovement works, and Maria Rika Maniates compares 
composition as "objectified entity" with composition as "continuous pro-
cess" in an ontological and historical framework. Philosopher Arnold. 
Berleant notes, with respect to the problem of musical explanation, a distinc-
tion between auditory and analytical forms of perception. The relationship 
of music to the emotional experiencing of reality, in a historical context, is 
discussed by the philosopher Robert Hall; Kenneth Kaiser, from the 
viewpoint of architectural theory, considers the notion of the "piece of 
architecture". Finally, Miss Carpenter and Professor Crocker will have the 
opportunity of responding to the commentators. 

Since it is the purpose of this project to promote an exchange of ideas, we 
welcome further comments from our readers. 

Richard L. Crocker, Some reflections on the 
shape of music 

In a recent article ("The troping hypothesis", The musical quarterly 
52: 191, 1966) I dropped what I thought was an innocent remark, to the 
effect that one might reflect on what constitutes a piece of (Western) music. 
Now I find myself asked to do the reflecting. Please look for no more than 
that; my intent is merely to begin a line of discussion, not to conclude one. 

The question came up in connection with an introit trope, which seems at 
first glance not to qualify as "a piece of music", because it is interpolated as 
three separate sections in a pre-existing piece, the introit. Why do we hesitate 
to call such a trope a "piece"? Obviously because it seems to be three 
pieces, not one; for we expect a piece to be continuous, or at least not inter-
rupted by some other claim on our attention. But then, each of the three 
pieces into which our trope has fallen is too short to be a piece all by itself; 
for we expect a piece to have a certain minimum substance. Or do our three 
pieces of a trope, along with their introit, rather form one large composite 
piece? But such a piece seems too composite, its elements too diverse; for do 

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