ABSTRACT
In one sense the study of music as performance is part and parcel of the shift within musicology as a whole towards reception history; performance is self-evidently a form of interpretation, in just the same way as are critical or historical writing about music, iconographic representations, or TV and film adaptations. Musical performance studies can in other words be seen as an expression of interest in the social usage of music, and in the meaning that is created in the act of performance. But there are also conceptual barriers to the development of a musicology of performance, and the Mazurkas project is intended to address these too. But in the real world, of course, performers forge their interpretations—and listeners hear them—just as much in response to the interpretations of other performers. It follows from this that a well developed musicology of performance must concern itself as much with the horizontal as with the vertical dimension within which performances signify.
