ABSTRACT
The idea that absolute music is a disciplinary construct that shields a sacrosanct aesthetic object from both cultural analysis and social critique marks a decisive turning point in the discourse concerning music’s meaning, value and significance. In contrast to the romantic elevation of art to its own autonomous standpoint, and in opposition to the formalist practice of abstracting works from their sustaining life-contexts, a “new” musicology turned to semiotics, narrative theory, and cultural studies to liberate criticism from traditional musicology’s methodological, political, and ideological constraints.194 A new orthodoxy replaced the formalist and positivistic dogma of modern musicology. Under the banner of postmodern musicology, or sometimes postmodern musicologies (in acknowledgment of the multiple and polyvalent approaches and orientations adopted in response to new interpretive challenges opened in breaching modern musicology’s disciplinary walls), the idea of absolute music fell to its demystifying critique; the chimera of absolute music was the last ideological defense against cultural musicology’s critical interests in music’s social and political meaning and value.
