Autoethnography, Autobiography, and Creative Art as Academic Research in Music Studies: A Fugal Ethnodrama

Abstract

Constructed broadly according to the principles of musical fugue, this piece of creative writing is presented as a performance autoethnography, enacted through a multi-voiced ethnodrama between a fictionalized version of the author and two imaginary doctoral students. In successive episodes, it discusses the difference between autoethnography and autobiography, the value and limitations of single-subject ethnographic study, and the types of materials that constitute valid documentation for the purposes of autoethnography, including creative writing based on music-theoretical devices as well as musical works themselves, in addition to more conventional modes of discourse. These dialogic interludes are articulated by periodic returns to the principal subject of the conversation: the working definition of autoethnography and its potential application to Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER) with specific respect to music studies.