ABSTRACT
It is surprising therefore that more work in a post-structuralist perspective has not been directed at the area of musicology. In support of this view Durant evidences the historical variability of the key terms in musicology, 'instrumental', 'technique', 'concert' and 'orchestra'. Alan Durant’s The conditions of music often promises to be just such an analysis, a historical account of music comparable to Heath’s account of the history of narrative space and Bryson’s of the gaze. Sensitive, scrupulous, reticent, allusive as well as elusive, The conditions of music sketches such an account in a way which corresponds more to historical materialism than post-structuralism, and this reading will run somewhat against the grain of that text, both in the degree to which the argument is made explicit and in its co-option to a post-structuralist project. Denying the 'naturalistic fallacy' in musicology from Helmholtz onwards Durant emphasises that dissonances have varying functions in music.
