I entered into the world of musicology at the tender age of 21, after realising my hobby-like interest in music history could be put to better use. It started with my final year dissertation of my bachelor’s degree in music. It was an ambitious, lengthy piece on Shostakovich and his six concerti, and was undoubtedly both a project of passion and a chance to showcase my knowledge about my favourite composer. I wanted to display the genius of his work, as I understood it.
I was so enamoured with the research about a subject I was so interested in that I opted to go straight into a Masters’ degree in Musicology as soon as I left my undergraduate course. I told myself that if something inspired a real passion in me, and I felt capable of doing it well, then it was worth pursuing. However, I quickly began to feel that my passion was not enough.
On the first day of my Master’s course, in September 2016, I distinctly remember the topic of discussion. “What is musicology.” As I understood it, it was the academic study of music and its impact on culture and society. At least, this was what I had gleaned from it – and this was the reason I had opted to study it, after all. Having said this, I do not recall exactly what my professor said was the ‘true’ definition of musicology. As far as I can remember, he spoke in vague terms about its ever-changing meaning, truly leaving me more confused than when I had started.
However, I am not writing this short piece to complain about the puzzling nature of academic language. Indeed, I loved much of my course material, even that which I had not studied previously – including music and philosophy, music for screen, and music and pop culture. I was more than willing to accept that I should not expect to be immediately proficient at a subject I had just begun to study. I wanted to be challenged; I wanted to learn how to enter this fascinating area of study and contribute effectively to it. My final dissertation – an essay about Shostakovich, musical anti-Semitism, and musical stereotypes – afforded me the chance to write as passionately as I did for my undergraduate dissertation. After the year of study, I was able to write far more coherently, to present a more solid and consistent argument, to utilise my research in a more nuanced way – all of which I was able to do because of the study of academic musicology.
Undeniably, those seeking to write with authority on a musicological subject must be able to write academically – it emphasizes the need for proper citation, a clear frame of reference, an understanding of your subject matter, and, crucially, an understanding of why your work is important. All of these things are vital to the production of unbiased, high quality, and well-sourced material.
I expected to contend with these concepts of musicology when I started my academic study in September 2016. What I found instead was (what felt like) an endless maze of unwritten rules about what is ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ in musicological writing. I found that the subject was treated more like a science, with exact formulae for good results, rather than a creative outlet. My work had to be completely original, yet sufficiently backed-up by research from pre-existing projects – developing on the musings of others without injecting my own emotion or opinion.
For much of the time, it felt like an impossible task. I would leave some seminars with a sense of real, tangible “imposter syndrome”, wondering why I had put myself into this situation in which I felt truly out of place. Was it possible to express an opinion in writing without coming across as biased? If your work centres on one argument, should it not be your priority to uphold that opinion in your writing?
I left academia in 2017 with mixed feelings. I truly do love academic musicology, and I intend to continue pursuing it in the near future. Writing academic work about a subject I love is immensely gratifying, and the pursuit of new knowledge and insight is often rewarding. However, I have found myself intimidated by the prospect of writing nowadays. It is not the writing itself that deters me; it is the feeling that somehow my work will be ‘wrong’. It is for that reason that I have decided to start this blog – to provide a new, more relaxed outlet for aspiring academics like myself, to trial pieces of writing and enjoy undertaking new research.