Armchair Philology for the Post-Truth Age
Abstract
In music history classes, interactions with musical notation often take place via printed anthologies including material from many sources with varying editorial principles. Questioning how the music on the page got there likely does not cross students’ minds. They are presented with a polished text, with all the complications removed, that underscores the fixedness of the work concept. This article outlines an exercise that invites students to think like philologists, exploring a familiar and simple piece with a complicated textual situation: the hymntune generally known as ANTIOCH (usually associated with the text “Joy to the Worldâ€) appears widely in hymnbooks and songbooks, but has also been transmitted and varied orally. Using only the written sources, however, students can fairly quickly group sources into families (and outliers), and classify different types of variant readings (substantial, incidental, sporadic). Revealing the complexity beneath the surface instills a healthy skepticism about clean texts.
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