Why We Got into Analysis and What to Get Out of It

Abstract

There are multiple perspectives from which to view or review Joseph Kerman1 s Contemplating Music, Kerman 's thoughts and observations, although primarily limited to musical thought in the American and British university systems during the decades that span the course of his own career, range from the scholarly-critical to the autobiographical, from assessments of colleagues to surveys of the academic disciplines associated by a common interest or dissociated by conflicting interests in the study of music. The present review will be undertaken from the vantage of a practicing music theorist. Although I hope to avoid an excessively restricted overview, I will focus primarily on the issues that directly touch the field of music theory.