When ethnography becomes hagiography: Uncritical musical perspectives

Abstract

This chapter applies some of the critiques developed in my earlier chapter to case studies, in the form of articles and monographs and other outputs by Amanda Bayley and Michael Clarke on performance of the music of Michael Finnissy by the Kreutzer Quartet, Stephen Cottrell on professional music-making in London, and Pirkko Moisala on the music of Kaija Saariaho, all of which belong within the second phase of ethnographic study of Western art music as delineated earlier. Each of these features a large number of quotations or other directly reproduced data, as had earlier been advocated by James Clifford as a means to allow subjects to ‘speak up for themselves’; I argue that where a critical perspective towards these is absent on the part of the ethnographer, the result is often a form of hagiography. In a post-colonial context, in which there is a clear imbalance of power and privilege between ethnographer and subjects, I suggest that such an outcome may be inevitable, but that this is much more problematic when the same methods and attitudes are transplanted into a non-colonial context. I find in Bayley and Clarke’s work an almost total eschewal of any other existing literature on Finnissy, leading to already well-established knowledge being presented as if an original contribution, while overall this work is notable more for collection than processing of data. Cottrell’s study is more of a critical ethnography, but similarly fails to engage with other relevant literature, or for that matter with the aural dimension of the work of the musicians in question, other than through anecdotal evidence. I argue that the findings, while more significant than those of Kay Kaufman Shelemay, for example, are relatively modest considering the exalted claims for the methodology. I also identify limitations through the lack of historical or economic perspectives on the area in question, leading to a form of reification as identified elsewhere by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and falling foul of Stephen Steinberg’s ethnographic fallacy, while I also provide a range of information in order to falsify some of the polemical claims made by Cottrell about ‘traditional musicology’. I interrogate Moisala’s claims for the originality of her methods, employing quotations of favourable journalistic coverage (and pathologisation of the writers of all other types), interviews with the composer and others, and very basic description of rehearsals and performances, and argue that the result is actually very similar to an old-fashioned ‘life and works’. As observed in the earlier chapter in the work of Georgina Born, I argue that Moisala’s work is also constrained by limited knowledge of wider European new music, leading to unconvincing claims for the innovatory nature of certain elements. I conclude that Bayley and Clarke, and Moisala, would be vulnerable to Mitchell Duneier’s ethnographic trial, though because they do not present a ‘rendering of the social world’, might not be considered ethnographic in the sense defined by Harry F. Wolcott. Cottrell is the only one of the three whose work embodies some degree of theoretical description, and while relying upon dichotomies, these are less rigid than in the work of some others. Nonetheless, he like the others generally employs material from fieldwork to illustrate a point, rather than evaluating it in more detail. All the studies stand up reasonably well against a series of tests created by Steven Lubet, though mostly because of their nature. Nonetheless, I argue that all except that of Cottrell can be considered hagiographic. In my conclusion, I make clear that I do not wish to dismiss the value of ethnographic approaches, but am sceptical about exclusive use of participant observation and sectarian constructions of ethnography in opposition to almost all other approaches, and maintain that a more internally critical approach is needed in this field.