UKRAINIAN MUSIC BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH: ON THE PROBLEM OF CHOICE OF METHODOLOGICAL COORDINATES

Abstract

The issue of music biographical research in modern humanities, which has been actualized in contemporary research, is considered. Both international and Ukrainian scholars note the need to update the methodological coordinates for writing scientific biographies based on an interdisciplinary approach. Musical biography also needs to be updated in line with modern demands for scientific biography; its theoretical and methodological issues are actively discussed in contemporary musicological discourse. In addition to musical biography, Ukrainian musicology extensively employs the concept of oeuvre biography and life’s journey, but there is a necessity to actively use and introduce into musicological discourse the relevant experience of global musicology, which emphasizes the importance to apply hermeneutics, study the political role of music, mythmaking, reception history, gender issues, implement modern visual techniques, etc. It is substantiated the use of the scientific genre of intellectual biography to study the life and academic career of a musicologist in a broad historical-cultural and artistic context, which is a priority trend in global historiography and has gained considerable popularity in Western biography. The figure of a musicologist is a valuable object, worthy of a personal intellectual history as a special genre of scientific research. It is argued that Ukrainian musicology should include music biography studies in the scope of its theoretical-methodological and strategic interests and resort to innovative approaches which find practical application in the world musicological space.