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Presented at V Jornadas de Musicología y Jóvenes Musicólogos : Desafíos de la investigación musical del siglo XXI Madrid, Spain, 13-16 March 2012
In light of James Porter’s argument in Bartok and Janacek: Ideological Convergence and Critical Value that our reflection about interpreting historical facts can be problematic, when facts are overshadowed by “accepted conventions of critical value”, it follows that historiography is a field plagued by conceptual or ideological bias. Especially in dealing with matters outside of chronology or periodization, it is common to evaluate a work of art heavily guided by already existing conventions, and “objectively” categorizing the work without considering other perspectives. Although there is a shift towards a research approach that evaluates the work of art taking into account more facts rather than solely dealing with the object itself, accepted conventions of critical value can still cloud historical research.
Particularly when analyzing the relationship between composers, and more specifically the influence one has upon the other, it is common for the methodological approach to subsume under conventional interpretative perspectives of categorization. Through an analysis of the (ideological and structural) influence of Richard Wagner on the Greek 20th century composer Manolis Kalomiris (one of the most significant figures of the Greek National School of music, being the founding father of the Greek National School), I will discuss the approaches used to study influences between composers and will suggest an alternative view on the matter. The paper aims to explore the issue of influence, making clear that it should not be perceived merely as repetition of patterns, and thus when studying influence – musical or ideological – one should think of it in terms of insemination (paraphrasing Mark Poster). My analysis of ideological and structural parallelism between Wagner and Kalomiris will raise questions regarding when we can refer to influence between composers, the extent to which influence is exerted and how these influences can be perceived.