Music Research : New Directions for a New Century

This book compiles revised versions of a number of the papers originally delivered at the Twenty-Fifth National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, held in Newcastle, New South Wales, between 3 and 6 October 2002.

Aside from the three keynote addresses, all the papers published here have been refereed and peer reviewed.

Our special thanks go to the board of review and its head, Dr Jennifer Shaw (University of Sydney), as well as the national executive of the Musicological Society of Australia and Dr Linda Barwick (University of Sydney) for their very considerable assistance in the selection process.

Like this publication, the conference was entitled "Music Research: new directions for a new century".

Papers were invited under four main themes: Research through Performance, Music and Society, Music and Technology, and Structure and Context. The three keynote speakers addressed the first three of these, Roy Howat and Suzanne Cusick approaching from different perspectives, respectively, the relationship between performance and research, and the relationship of both to music in society, while Rolf Gehlhaar discussed the many ways in which music can now interface with technology.

The papers selected for publication in this volume have been arranged under the four main conference themes, and a keynote speech is placed at the beginning of each of the first three sections.

The selection we have made has a predominant flavour of music making and thinking about music in Australia, including a group of papers on significant facets of indigenous music and interactions with music researchers.

The participation of scholars from the Pacific Rim and the USA, as well as Australia, drew a wide range of topics, including French music of the early nineteenth century, the interpretation and analysis of mediaeval sources and structures, and studies in Italian baroque and vocal music. It is hoped that this selection will give a sense of the various directions in which music research - as practiced both by Australian scholars and our overseas guests - is heading in the early years of the twenty-first century.