Francois-Joseph Fetis, Correspondance. Compiled and Ed. by Robert Wangermee.
2008; Oxford University Press; Volume: 89; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ml/gcn041
ISSN1477-4631
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Musicological Studies
ResumoJoseph-François Fétis's contribution to the musical world of his time has only relatively recently come to be fully appreciated. In the late nineteenth century and also into the twentieth he had a reputation as a dry, conservative pedant and was also tainted with the stain of dishonesty; not only was he a book thief, but in his massive biographical music dictionary he sometimes made up information if he did not have it to hand. Thanks to a number of scholars, the author of this edition of correspondence himself, Peter Bloom, Katharine Ellis, and others, Fétis's real achievements are now appreciated, and from whatever angle one looks, his accomplishments are nothing short of phenomenal. How many musicologists today could claim to their credit a music appreciation text (La Musique mise à la portée de tout le monde) that was translated into five languages, to have founded and virtually single-authored an influential music journal, put out two editions of a multi-volume biographical dictionary of musicians, and written a multi-volume history of music (five out of eight volumes complete on his death)? Fétis also wrote many other books (including a treatise on harmony), was a renowned authority on organology and on early church music, and is seen by many as the founder of comparative musicology, being one of the first Western musicologists to take seriously the music of other cultures and to establish connections between musicology and anthropology (see Émile Haraszti, ‘Fétis fondateur de la musicologie comparée: Son étude sur un nouveau mode de classification des races humaines d’après leurs systèmes musicaux. Contribution à l’oeuvre de Fétis’, Acta Musicologica, 4 (1932), 97–103).
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