Introduction to the Special Issue on Global Musical Modernisms

Abstract

Global Musical Modernisms – the formulation heralds expansion into new arenas of music research. 1 For while certain pairings of the component terms are familiar enough, the concatenation of all three is novel. In music studies, the most notable trend is the flurry of activity around global music history, with study groups in two societies historically focused on Western musics, and one focused on ethnomusicology. 2 Global music history derives strength and in turn strengthens movement towards disciplinary convergence, or at least greater interaction – an important precondition for the study of global musical modernisms. 3 There has also been renewed interest in musical modernism, though not so much, at least at first glance, in the direction of the global, and with less interdisciplinary synergy. By contrast, the global figures very prominently in what has been termed the ‘new modernist studies’, a field that coalesced in the late 1990s. 4 As one indication, its global turn had gathered enough momentum for Oxford University Press to publish a handbook on ‘Global Modernisms’ in 2013, just three years after its handbook on ‘Modernisms’. 5 Despite aspirations to coverage of modernism in all its forms, the field is populated predominantly by literary scholars, with minimal attention to music.