Can American Music Studies Develop a Method?

cologist replied that, typically, there were music theory courses on the one hand and musicology and ethnomusicology on the other. Then he added that he understood that things were different in the United States-that there were courses in theory, musicology, ethnomusicology, and, additionally, American Music! I must admit to some mirthful surprise at his notion that the study of American music was somehow generically different from courses in musicology or ethnomusicology, for I had always considered courses in American music to be musicology courses devoted to American topics.... Or, on second thought, that they were ethnomusicology courses devoted to American topics.... Or, upon further reflection ... So I started to see the point. In fact, it seems to me now that American music as it is being studied and taught today is not really musicology, nor is it ethnomusicology. And as I have thought more on this issue and observed the developing state of research in American music, I have come to wonder if a new musical scholarship, with its own excitingly prob-