L’esthétique musicale dans la Revue de musicologie. Définitions, statuts et enjeux
Résumé
In 1917, the statutes of the Société française de musicologie explicitly mention musical aesthetics as one of the branches of musicobg. However, the importance of aesthetics-at least until the 1980s, when some change began to take effect-remained minimal This article has therefore two purposes. Firstly, it attempts to explain the setting aside of the field of aesthetics and the reasons for the mistrust of the discipline that was admittedly difficult to define. It demonstrates that that difficulty may be explained, first, by the ambiguous position occupied by aesthetics among the related disciplines of philosophy and history, second, by the definition of aesthetics as knowledge of that which is felt, and, finally, by aesthetics'problematical relationship to the other objects and the methods of musicology. Secondly, the article attempts to describe how musical aesthetics have been characterized by writers for the Revue de musicologie over the decades, and the place they assigned aesthetics among the other fields of the larger discipline. The article thus offers a panorama of the articles and reviews appearing in the journal which, directly or indirectly, in full or in part, fall into the category of musical aesthetics.