The Impact of Cultural Studies on Musicology Within the Context of Word and Music Studies: Questions and Answers

This text discusses different perspectives dealing with the impact of cultural studies on musicology within the context of word and music studies. The question under scrutiny is how the field’s foundation in word and music studies has been reconfigured by existing or changing academic structures. The text contends that the increasing emphasis on cultural studies in literary studies and musicology opens up broader perspectives on the field of word and music studies, while favoring a revised version of formal over hermeneutic engagement with music and text. This means, however, that we must agree on how to interpret the “cultural” in cultural studies. Understanding culture as signifying practice—i.e. that meaning requires human interpretative activity to establish links from a given text—without abandoning formal and structural analysis allows for the integration of word and music studies into musicology. This will also facilitate the further development of word and music studies as a whole.