Guido Adler - A Pioneer of Musicology

A Pioneer of Musicology

In 1883 Adler became lecturer in musicology at University of Vienna, on which occasion he wrote Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Harmonie (An Essay on the History of Harmony), published in the "Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse der Wiener Academie der Wissenschaften", 1881.

In 1884 he founded (with Friedrich Chrysander and Philipp Spitta) the Vierteljahresschrift für Musikwissenschaft (Musicology Quarterly). Adler provided the first article of the first issue, "Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft" ("The Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology", 1885), which not only constitutes the first attempt at a comprehensive description of the study of music, but also famously divides the discipline into two subdisciplines, historische Musikwissenschaft (historical musicology) and systematische Musikwissenschaft ("systematic musicology"). In Adler's article, systematic musicology included Musikologie or vergleichende Musikwissenschaft (comparative musicology), which later became an independent discipline (cf. ethnomusicology). Although these subfields do not exactly line up with current practice, they are roughly maintained in modern European musicology and roughly correspond to the North American the division of musicology into music history (often called "musicology"), music theory, and ethnomusicology.

In 1885 he was called to the newly established German University of Prague, Bohemia, as ordinary professor of the history and theory of music, and in 1898, in the same capacity, to the University of Vienna, where he succeeded Eduard Hanslick. His students at the Musikwissenschaftliches Institut included Anton Webern and composer Karel Navrátil.

In 1886 he published Die Wiederholung und Nachahmung in der Mehrstimmigkeit; in 1888, Ein Satz eines Unbekannten Beethovenischen Klavierkoncerts. In 1892-93 he edited a selection of musical compositions of the Emperors Ferdinand III, Leopold I, and Joseph I (two vols.). Between 1894 and 1938 he was editor of Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, a seminal publication in music history.