Event Host: School of Music
Daniel Shanahan, Ohio State School of Music, presents "Distant Reading as Process: On the Use (and Misuse)of Corpus Studies."
Although corpus studies are becoming increasingly common in musicology and music theory, an implicit divide still exists between the questions that we address with distant readings, and those thought to require a close reading. This paper argues that corpus studies—and, to some extent, the digital humanities as a whole—should more actively attempt to break down this unspoken dichotomy. Specifically, Shanahan examines two questions in which corpus studies might be employed to address seemingly ineffable aspects of musical style and interpretation: the notion of authenticity in analyses of disputed authorship, and the expression of what Puri (2004) refers to as a Proustian moment bienheureux. While Shanahan hopes to illustrate that such questions can be partially addressed with corpus studies, he will also discuss the explanatory limits of such methodologies, arguing that, while corpus-based approaches should aid in questions too often confined to close readings, they should not entirely supplant them.
Lectures in Musicology is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries. For more information click here.
