Editorial: Musicology Australia

Abstract

Music creation, re-discovery, preservation, re-organization and interpretation are themes running through many contributions in this richly diverse volume of Musicology Australia. Janice Stockigt gives an overview of the contents and significance of a recently discovered, eighteenth-century music catalogue; an important document, both ill terms of its archival value and also for its role in helping scholars to recreate liturgical music practices in Saxony and to trace the repertoire's transmission and dissemination. Focusing on more recent repertoire, David Lockett discusses some of the problems and choices with which he was confronted as both editor and performer of Margaret Sutherland's music for solo piano: the role of the editor is also discussed in reviews by Roger Covell, Maria McHale, Jennifer Nevile and David Symons. John Napier examines the powerful rhetoric of tradition and lineage that has shaped the changing role of the harmonium player in North Indian classical music. The importance of language and place in shaping music-making and music interpretation arc taken up in reviews by Craig De Wilde, Peter DunbarHall, Denis Collins, Margaret Gummow, Rosalind Halton and Judy Lochhead and in the feature article by Tony Seeger. In a wide-ranging discussion of changes over the last thirty-five years in audiovisual recording technology and archival practices, Professor Seeger reflects on his role in preserving and shaping important music collections held by Indiana University and the Smithsonian and in disseminating music from those collections. He also relates the crucial role his own research within Suya Indian communities in Brazil has played in those communities' recent claims for land rights and political autonomy.