Editorial

Today, Musicology can be found in the libraries of many prominent institutes abroad. An aim of the periodical – in its current mature phase – is to expand collaboration with contributors working in other fields (such as ethnomusicology and musical pedagogics, for example) in order to broaden the epistemological discussion, to encourage collaboration with musicologists from other countries and to extend its contribution to international research. It is our hope that as a result of these processes and with the help of the new musicological potentialities that appears in our country (graduates and doctors from the Departments of Musical Studies become more and more) journals on every major musicological field will be created in future and fundamental dialogue among different methodological approaches will be encouraged.

On the opening of this new period Musicology feels obliged to emphasize on the creative contribution of the new potentialities that worked and keep working very conscientiously and with forceful plans that refresh the context of the periodical and provide the conditions for its continuation. We would like to remind also that the publication of a periodical like Musicology became possible thanks to the contribution of the younger musicologists of the time and of several important persons in the musical life that encouraged this attempt by supporting it with their texts and their authority. The initiative group of Musicology consists of (in alphabetical order): Markos Dragoumis, Byron Fidetzis, Nikos Hristodoulou, Antonis Kontogeorgiou, Apostolos Kostios, George Leotsakos, Oly Psychopedis-Frangou, Katy Romanou, Haris Xanthoudakis, Dimitris Yannou, George Zervos and Ion Zottos.

We are very delighted to announce the new “Musicological Research Series” – a special series of Musicology publications by “Nea Synora” – Livanis publishing organization. The first volume of this series will be Aesthetics of Music by G. W. F. Hegel – a text referred in lectures on the aesthetics of music held in departments and music academies all over the world – translated by Markos Tsetsos, who also prepared an extended conclusion.

Aim of the “Musicological Research Series” is to provide valid translations in Greek of major or minor important musicological works and to publish monographs written by Greek musicologists in order to create a basis of specialized literature in our language. Other works, planned for the same series, are Adorno’s Philosophie der neuen Musik (Philosophy of Modern Music), Moments musicaux and Impromptu, the Grundriss der Musikpädagogik (Introduction to Musical Pedagogics) by S. Abel-Struth – a text that might fill a major gap in the poor epistemological discussion on this field in Greece, Musik als Botschaft (Music as a Message) by Constantin Floros, Die Musik und das Schöne (Music and the Beautiful) by Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, Vom Musikalisch Schönen (On the Musically Beautiful) by E. Hanslick, Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik (The Rational and Sociological Foundations of Music) by Max Weber, the monograph Baroque Church Music by Ion Zottos, the Introduction to Musicology and the Introduction to the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music (readers) by Oly Psychopedis-Frangou etc.

Issue 14 of Musicology (Musicología) includes papers on musical pedagogics and aesthetics of interpretation, on philosophical aesthetics, sociology of music and analysis of works.

With the extended paper The Evolution of Interpretative Aesthetics in the 20th Century Through Piano Pedagogy. Essay on the Dissemination of Knowledge of Musical Interpretation by Nikolas Lagoumitzis, Musicology for the first time publishes an original text on applied aesthetics, in which an attempt is made to link the theory of musical pedagogics with the problem about the relation between rational and irrational elements of interpretation and its didactics.

In order to trace the prerequisites for an “applied” Theory of Aesthetics, in the paper by Oly Psychopedis-Frangou philosophical-aesthetic concepts are compared with concepts that derive from morphological analytic approaches and from the results of the analysis of the sonata form in Beethoven’s work. Adorno’s text on the fetish-character in music, based on observations made by the author in the United States, represents an answer to the classic text Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischer Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) by Walter Benjamin. This text tried to “save” (Adorno) the industry of culture based – of course – on different ideological and methodological principles. Both these classical texts of the sociology of art have caused discussion and research for decades. The translation of Adorno’s text from English to Greek by George Fitsioris “tones down” the author’s style, yet it remains true to the original meaning and reproduces its brightness.

The “4th Symphony” of Dmitri Shostakovich: Attempt of Interpretation of an Obscure Work by Markos Tsetsos represents an original contribution to the contemporary relevant research. As a standard for the aesthetic application of several sociological prerequisites that are analyzed in the texts by Adorno and Benjamin – mentioned above and referred in the paper – this work and its analysis by the author provide an occasion for further research on the critical attitude of art concerning certain elements of contemporary culture (like tragedy and “irony” in their interrelation). The results of recent musicological research that “discovers” today this aspect of modernism are also discussed in this paper.

Nikos Maliaras in his paper Brahms’ “Intermezzi”, op. 117. Observations and Thoughts on Certain Fundamental Musical Issues follows Brahms’ line of interpretation as a progressive trend in compositional technique.

Finally, Ion Zottos – in his paper Frederick Delius Interpreted by Beecham, Barbirolli and Collins – approaches the problem of perception as a problem of various interpretations related to the character of the works.

The first book review included in this issue concerns one of the most recent studies on Bach’s Cantatas by Eric Chafe. The study is suggested, reviewed and commented in extend by Katy Romanou, not only because it coincides with the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death, but also because it refers to the attempts made by recent musicology to illuminate the long tradition in which these works are placed by analyzing them. The second review concerns a classic theoretical volume that for a long time past has been published in Greek: Einführung in die musikalische Formenlehre (Introduction to Musical Morphology) by Erwin Ratz (reviewed by George Zervos). The book is invaluable in terms of its importance for the history of morphology as well as for the didactics of morphology.

Musicology introduced the reviews of specialized musicological literature, considering them as an important contribution to the discussion among scholars. We hope that this section will be developed and enhanced.