補助人文及社會科學研究圖書計畫規劃主題---音樂學---歐洲音樂史 (1700-1945)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The cultural historian Carl Schorske has once complained that music is “so easy to love, so hard to grasp.” But even professional musicians, especially for those outside Europe, would confess that it’s one thing to make music, it’s another to make sense of music: philologically, of notation and performance practice, and philosophically, of concept and meaning. Yet practice and concept are not timeless but only historically conditioned, one must study their development and change in the historical sources and the historiography. And it’s a never-ending enterprise: even in the Western world after the call to battle against positivism in Contemplating Music (Joseph Kerman, Harvard UP 1985), there’s a strong directive to Rethinking Music (Nicholas Cook & Mark Everist eds., OUP 1999) already at the turn of the century. For this purpose, this 2-year 9-million library acquisition project will collect major sources and historiography of European music 1700-1945 — covering practically the lion’s share of the Western repertoire from high baroque to modernism — at the disposal of the late but fast growing musicological research community in Taiwan. And to facilitate inter-library loan, this collection does not include audio-visual materials but concentrates on musical and literary sources. Under musical sources are a small amount of high quality facsimiles from Bach’s B-minor Mass to Elgar’s Cello Concerto and 36 multi-volume single-composer complete editions from Couperin to Rachmaninoff. Under literary sources are selected primary (mainly in reprints) and secondary literature on historiography (from Martini to Handschin and beyond) and the closely related fields of lexicography (Walther to Apel etc.), music theory (Rameau to Tovey etc.) and the philosophy of music (Mattheson to Lissa etc.). Keeping the rate of duplicates with other collections in Taiwan under 20%, this addition of ca. 3000 items to the over 7000 related books and scores already available at the National Chiao Tung University Library will gather under one roof a significant repertory of research resources. Together with its new building, modern facilities and wide inter-library loan networks such as the Nationwide Document Delivery Service and University System of Taiwan Library etc., the NCTU Library will provide excellent service to the academic community both locally and nation-wide, and thus greatly enhance the business of making music and making sense of music in Taiwan.