Abstract

Italian musicologists have hitherto shown scant interest in the music historiography of the nineteenth century. And to date, there has been no global vision of the ways of which history was written during the period in which scientific musicology was born (the late nineteenth century and early twentieth). Also with a view to engaging on a "history of the histories of music" some time in the future, the paper examines the following issues: - the passage from history interpreted philosophically to history written by professional historians; - the foundation of the categories of "monument" and "document" and the relative processes of historicization ('Historisierung') in the field of music; - the rejection of the romantic concept of genius, with a view to introducing the analysis of every type of music and defining the rules of composition (rhythm, melody, harmony) in the various ages through the quantitative technique of studies inspired by positivism; - the historical bilingualism of historiography; in other words, the connection between positivism (seen as a historical method and not as a philosophy) and the interpretation of musical phenomena according to the laws of development and selection as established by evolutionism; - the influence of folk music on art music, through the viewpoint of comparativism, which enabled the Italians to demonstrate the existence of just one national music running from the Renaissance onwards; - the influence on musicology of the methods of literary history.