For American musicology to become retrospective in its
present youthful stage may seem premature. Yet, in spite of
its short life--less than a half-century--and the fact that
many of its outstanding practitioners both were trained and
formerly worked abroad, American scholarship in music has
acquired a mode of operation, a style of presentation, and
patterns of education setting it apart from that of countries
boasting older traditions. To describe these characteristics and
to trace the emergence of American musicology, as well as
to note some of its achievements, is the purpose of this essay.

Musical scholarship, one might say, is a disciplined study
of music. A "disciplined study of music," however, may be
undertaken as a means to many different ends: to perform a
recital, to conduct an orchestra, to become acquainted with
the art of composition, to ascertain music's physical or psy-
chological nature, or to measure its aesthetic, recreational, or
entertainment value. Any of these kinds of musical study
would probably occur to the average man--if not to the
reader of this book--before the one that we are concerned
with here.

This diffuseness of the field of music as a subject of serious
study requires that boundaries be carefully drawn. The study
of music was pursued in our conservatories and universities
for many years before anything that deserves to be called
musical scholarship emerged. First, a consciousness of the
necessity and possibility of a scholarly approach to music had
to be awakened. This consciousness may be summed up in
the word musicology, which, like the spirit behind it, was an

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