ABSTRACT
When asked “What is a musicologist?,” the composer Dmitri Shostakovich purportedly said:
I’ll tell you. Our cook, Pasha, prepared the scrambled eggs for us and we are eating them. Now imagine a person who did not cook the eggs and does not eat them, but talks about them – that is a musicologist.
(Fanning 1995: 1) Shostakovich distinguishes musicologists from musicians and composers (who cook the eggs), as well as audiences (who eat the eggs), and, by implication, music teachers (who train the cooks). Of course, one might extend this analogy in a more sympathetic fashion, and note there may be gourmands interested in the history of cuisine (historical musicologists), or food chemistry (music theorists), or cultural traditions of cooking and eating (ethnomusicologists). But Shostakovich’s parable captures a widely held point of view, namely, that true musical understanding is shown by one’s ability to make or perform music, not by one’s ability to talk about it.