Johann Nicolaus Forkel: The Beginning of Music Historiography

Abstract

H ISTORIOGRAPHY is a term that strikes one as a cumbersome equivalent for the writing of history. But there is a sense in which it adds a new dimension to the time-honored form of intellectual activity that historians engage in. It is history writing that has become conscious of its own ends and purposes. Historiography carries the implication that the historian is not merely delving into the past; he is, at the same time, engaged in fashioning a structure of ideas to support his understanding of that past. It suggests the kind of self-conscious reflection that Collingwood attributes to all philosophical inquiry: