METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF MODERN STUDIES IN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY OF MUSICOLOGY

Abstract

The need for a scientific study focusing on the figure of a musicologist as a creator of a part of cultural context of his epoch is highlighted in the article. In particular, the matter concerns Ukrainian emigrational musicologists whose exploratory studies cannot be but evaluated without taking into account various factors of social, political, scientific and culture-artistic nature. Western historiography comprises a considerable amount of works dedicated to various aspects of scientific activity of musicologists, their autobiographical materials, large scale studies in the intellectual biography genre. Ukrainian musicology in this regard makes its first steps. The main problem consists in the absence of elaborated methodology and scientific criteria of creating similar studies; apart from that, such work is possible only in the field of interdisciplinary investigation with the attraction of the whole range of humanistic sciences. Thus, creation of intellectual biography is impossible without processing of private archival sources, namely, autobiographies, notebooks and correspondence, in other words – personal document literature. Often, it is an epistolary space where intellectual thoughts were discussed, elaborated and tilled, which further was finally embodied in a scientific publication. Epistolary research gives us an opportunity to trace how separate biographical details appeared in the nature of scholar’s thoughts formation, their course and creation of theories. As far as emigrational musicologists are concerned, practically the whole range of correspondence has remained beyond the scientific space; therefore, the use of quotations for the purposes of both confirmation and documentation of the expressed idea and as an important factor, which forms the core of a scientific text, is considered as a significant methodological basis. Intellectual biography creates the possibility of a new reading of the history of our musicological emigration in all its mutual relations and influences applying research strategies of new, postmodern styles of history writing. Hereat, it should become the most promising scientific genre of musical and historical study in Ukrainian musicology.