Musical Biography: Towards New Paradigms

Musical biography has rarely been an object of theoretical and methodological reflection. Our present-day perception of the lives of prominent composers and performers of the past has been largely formed by cultural and political assumptions of nineteenth-century biographers and their twentieth-century followers. While older biographies are being scrutinized for veracity and 'updated' with new evidence, their historiographical premisses and narrative techniques remain largely unchallenged. ...