ABSTRACT

It is our misfortune today that both the predominantly historical study of the professional, elegant or fine art of European music that we know as “musicology” and the predominantly systematic study of the total music of the world that we know, perforce, as “ethnomusicology” have both been developed mainly as descriptive sciences. Neither has had a comparably organized critique. Neither has taken any cognizance of general value theory. Yet both have been bound by assumptive value judgments which, though quite different, are the more dominating for lack of explicit statement. These judgments hold apart the two branches of what eventually must be a single study and provide an almost impassable barrier to the integration of either with the rest of the humanities.