ABSTRACT
Elsewhere, 1 I have called attention to the complementarity and interdependence of historical and systematic orientations in musicology. Theoretically peers, as I see them, equally valid and necessary where comprehensiveness and balance are the aims, they must be expected, as a rule, to serve unequally where precision in matters of detail is required. The student may—indeed, must—choose which of the two he will employ, and the connection and sequence in which he will employ them. Broadly speaking, the aggregate of historical studies presents the history of system; that of systematic studies, the system of history. For system, like history, is ultimately concerned with the relationship of structure and function, event and process, products and the traditions in accordance with which production is achieved. Yet the individual musicological work will inevitably be either a historical or a systematic presentation. It is itself a product in a tradition, a structure, that as soon as publicized takes a place in the stream of that tradition and bears a functional relationship to other products or structures of its kind and, so, to the cultural processes in which all have their being. Thus, it would appear that while the two orientations cannot in fact be totally joined, neither can they for long be held entirely separate. And students will inevitably fall into one or the other of two classifications—of historians or of systematizers—according to the emphasis predominating in their work.
