A Score of Change: Twenty Years of Critical Musicology and Victorian Literature

Abstract

Abstract Over the last 20 years, the impact of critical musicology (or new musicology) has given rise to fresh areas of exploration (e.g., performance practices, reception histories, affect, listening) and new methods and sites of investigation, including Victorian novels and poems. Influenced by cultural criticism, critical musicologists study musical practices as interactive with a wide range of human activities and beliefs. Simultaneously, literary scholars and historians have played a prominent early role in promoting the study of music in 19th‐century Britain and in establishing its aims and methods. To these researchers and to contextually minded musicologists, it was obvious that music embodied and expressed ideological and political meanings, and that fictional, non‐fictional, and verse works elucidated and helped to construct these perceptions. Music and Victorian literature is thus a truly interdisciplinary field because it speaks to individuals whose home training is in either literature or music, while also influencing scholars in a range of other disciplines including social and cultural history, art history, women’s studies, gender studies, and queer studies. Introducing the field of music and Victorian literature to a literary audience therefore means first tracing developments in the discipline of music and then highlighting a major disciplinary difference (composer intentionality versus the death of the author). Outlining the latter will, I hope, suggest opportunities for critical musicologists as well as for people interested specifically in word–music connections. In particular, the issue of subjectivity is ripe for further development as can be seen by work on 19th‐century poetry and music that is a part of new lyric studies. The final sections of the article outline the latter, indicate the interdisciplinary beginnings of the study of music in 19th‐century Britain, provide a list of resources, and map out other recent trends and possible future directions in scholarship on music and Victorian literature.

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