Streams, fields and scenes: a Sociomusicological proposal for the classification of Western Music

Abstract

The History of Music has always been represented, in the Western Academic tradition, as a series of great works signed by geniuses.  From this corpus, the necessary cuts were planned and the terminology which will end up configuring the history of the musical styles was provided. Currently this chronology represents an obstacle to add to and contextualize the contemporary creations and it isolates music as an artistic form disconnected from other cultural manifestations. Our theoretical contribution is the result of an interdisciplinary work which conjugates the heritage of Musicology, Sociology and Historiography. The synchronic reflection of these disciplines allows us to articulate a new chronology for Western Music. This proposal establishes as its main cores the historic matrix of the term stream of Philip Ennis, and the concepts of field of Pierre Bourdieu and musical scene of Will Straw. We can, thus, take Music back to its social context and understand its historical process as an uninterrupted flow –a simultaneous combination of four trends and two fields or scenes– and in constant dialogue with the rest of social manifestations.