Музикалният Запад на Ричард Тарускин
Western Music according to Richard Taruskin

Summary/Abstract: Richard Taruskin’s six-volume History of Western Music (2005) has already been internationally recognized as a contribution to the field, largely due to the author’s view on history as part of its social, political and intellectual environment. What makes this contribution challenging and controversial at the same time is Taruskin’s analytical approach. Insomuch as it breaks with the aesthetic concept of absolute music, this approach actually breaks with the basis of the romantic model both of writing a history of music (as a “linear” and goal-directed historic development) and of musical works’ reception/evaluation, in particular in modern historiography. The author argues his social-contextual position by relying on methods from beyond traditional (musical) historiography and by drawing particularly strong support from music theory and the Bakhtinian dialogue. Also, with its story-like construction and corresponding narrative style that simultaneously carries more than one thread throughout the volumes, the book seems far from conventional. This proves that simultaneity is the adequate underlying principle for embodying insights on history that avoid totality and tend to conceptualize the object from the opposite perspective. Taruskin’s music history is a processcontainer for historic, political, intellectual, biographical, and creative events and artifacts, as well as for equally skillfully reconstructed reflections on these events and artifacts from different points of view and critical discourses. The present paper does not attempt to present the book in all its thematic abundance, rather it focuses selectively on issues considered here the most representative of both the author’s concept and its controversial nature. As far as the concept is concerned, this paper underlines its basis: what Taruskin calls the “signal features” of Western music, namely, the Western tradition in musical literacy and the “generic” variety of genres that have developed throughout the centuries by the medium of writing. Insofar as the literary tradition has a “coherent” and “completed shape” (Taruskin), one may also presume that “Western” music exists as long as its own medium of writing does - from the first written documents of Roman liturgical song to its presumable end. If this end of the literate tradition does come, it should be taking place now and in the form of new beginnings, intensively emerging in the musical practice of present times (volume V). Part of his attempt to write a history “as it was” is the author’s critical reconsideration of the romantic myth-making historicism. The paper presents it in terms of the deconstruction of the romantic ideal and outlines the framework of this deconstruction. The territory of the musical West is marked by cultural plurality. At the same time this aspect reveals the controversial side of the author’s view: While being open and dynamic in the sense of constantly expanding its impact, there are still blank...

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