Metahistories of music Workshop

Metahistories of music Workshop
Metahistories of music Workshop

Principal speaker

Antti-Ville Kärjä — University of Tampere, Finland

In general terms, metahistory refers to a mode of investigation whereby histories are considered as distinct interpretations of the past with their own narrative and poetic features. They also have their implicit purposes, usages and "secret agendas" that are based on the cultural, social and political dynamics and value hierarchies at a given moment of producing historical knowledge. On the basis of this, metahistorical discourse analysis aims at examining various historiographical discursive statements in terms of their underlying power relations and ideological presuppositions. A pivotal part of this approach is constituted by a comparative scrutiny of the historiographic, archival and ethnographic material available. In this task, the goal is to juxtapose the existing historiography with empirical evidence and tease out the tensions. It is furthermore crucial to recognise the importance of non-literary forms of historiography, and thus the question emerges: how to take music in its sonorous and audiovisual form into account when analysing how histories of music have been constructed?
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