Comparing music, comparing musicology

My aim in this chapter is to offer some observations on the past, present and future of comparison in musicology. These comments concern the necessity of comparison, but also the profound difficulties it presents: understanding both the importance and problems of comparison is an important part of any cultural study of music. In order to introduce and to illustrate these observations, I will make reference to a couple of quite different examples, both of which include an autobiographical element. The first of these will concern a particular performance event, my experience and reaction to it. The second example refers to my own research on the temporal organisation in North Indian classical music, which I published in the book Time in Indian Music (2000). The rationale for introducing such different examples is precisely in order to ask to what extent they may be compared: in fact my concern is not only how can music be compared, but also how far can modes of describing music be compared. I will move from the description and comparison of my own examples to a more general discussion of comparison in musicology, and in particular the legacy of the academic field known between about 1880 and 1950 as ‘comparative musicology’. I will begin my argument with a musical performance as experienced, and a discussion of the relationship between such experiences and musical discourse.