ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how discipline of music history was conceived and organized in eighteenth-century England. One datum that emerges very clearly from reading the literature on eighteenth-century historiography and the musicological literature on Hawkins's and Burney's histories of music is the total absence of dialogue between the two literatures. In addressing their particular targets, historians of musical historiography should not sidestep the general historiographic context. This hypothesis is confirmed, fortunately, by Charles Burney himself in the preface to the General History of Music. As we know, he was initially reluctant to include the music of the Ancients in his treatment and had thought of starting with Guido d'Arezzo. It is interesting to note that, in seeking to justify his discussion of the music of the Ancients, Burney asserts that it 'has now become the business of an Antiquary more than a Musician'. A historian will arrange the material in a chronological order, an antiquarian in a largely systematic order.
