IN THE FRONTIERS OF MEANING, A lively inquiry into music aesthetics published last year, Charles Rosen admiringly paraphrased painter Barnett Newman: "Musicology is for musicians what ornithology is for the birds."
It was probably Newman's epigrammatic conciseness that Rosen savored, not any disdain for the discipline to which he has committed so much of his career. Still, the idea conveys a familiar question: Is anything to be gained from description, analysis and criticism of music that cannot be discerned by listening to the music? After all, medical philosophy, however well wrought, cannot save a life. In both disciplines, what matters is...
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