Title: 不協和音的解放?加拿大音樂學論述中的第一民族和新移民
Emancipation of the Dissonance? the First Nation and the Newcomers in Canadian Musicological Discourse
Authors: 金立群
KAM Lap-Kwan
國立交通大學音樂研究所
Keywords: 音樂史學;音樂辭書學;加拿大身分認同;音樂學者作為知識份子;Music historiography;music lexicography;Canadian identity;musicologist
as intellectual
Issue Date: 2012
Abstract: “The emancipation of the dissonance,” according to Schoenberg, “has placed the tonal
center of gravity in jeopardy” (Style and Idea, 258). Could it be the anxiety of
decentering, to read Schoenberg’s metaphor into the context of musical scholarship,
which drives those with institutional power to cling to the mainstream and suppress the
inharmonious? In recent research on the historiographies of Austria and Taiwan (for
example, 2004, 2009), this author indicated a similar trajectory of identification away
from a shared and harmonious culture with their mightier neighbors, that is, German
and Han Chinese respectively, and toward their rather dissonant self in its own time
and space. However, these studies also indicated that this emancipating deed of the
scholars involved seems to be more a product of political correctness than a genuine
demonstration of academic integrity. In any case, music scholars tended to sacrifice
harmony through fairness and justice to harmony through suppression. This paper aims
to continue this transnational study of musical scholarship with Canada. At first sight,
it seems absurd to compare apples with oranges, for Canada is obviously much open
and multicultural then the other two countries examined. But Canada also began as “a
child of nations, giant limbed” (Charles Robert, Canada, 1885), and has to construct an
identity independent of its former French and British colonizers, and a powerful
neighbor, the US. The sources included for this study will be the comprehensive music
history books by Helmut Kallmann (1960), Clifford Ford (1982), and Timothy McGee
(1985). To complete the picture, the two editions of Encyclopedia of Music in Canada
(1981, 1992) and its online version (2001) are also examined. Besides several book
reviews, there are only a few reflective and critical studies; in this regards, the
anthology Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity (1994) is a pioneering
work that examines the political and power structure underneath musical knowledge.
Nevertheless, the question of not only what is written, but also of who wrote what and
why, is not yet fully scrutinized. Set in the postmodern/postcolonial discourse, this
study will concentrate on the issue of representation of the First Nation and the
newcomers, that is, the native and the naturalized, the two marginalized poles around
the center. Exactly here is the scholar challenged to reflect on his/her role as mere
chronologist and lexicographer of the harmonious center, and to listen to the dissonant
periphery, and to give voice to the voiceless. The musicologist as an intellectual should
be both the emancipated and the emancipator.
Gov't Doc #: NSC101-2410-H009-035
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11536/98404
https://www.grb.gov.tw/search/planDetail?id=2580922&docId=388586
Appears in Collections:Research Plans