On The New Trend Of Historiography Of West Music Studies-An Analysis Of A History Of Western Music Seventh Edition

The studies on historiography of music are always the major problem in western music field. Many of the scholars focus on a pair of ambivalent points: "facts of history" and "facts of music". From "Positivism" to "stylistic criticism", and then "Culture", "Social"," Ethnomusicology" and "New musicology", scholars in different time has used their different ways to resolve the key problem.A History of Western Music first published in the year of 1960. It is deemed to an authoritative western music history book around the world. During forty years, from first edition to the sevenths, it witnessed the transformation of music historiography.This article starts with an introduction and analysis on the seven editions of A History of Western Music and the seventh edition is what it focusing on. The seven editions are spited into four parts in order to contrast and analysis different ideas and ways of music historiography in different periods: Grout's period, Palisca's first experiment, Palisca's period and Burkholder's period. And it extracts own opinion of new trend on historiography of western music studies based on such expatiation.This article attempts from a new visual angle, it starts with a classic western music history book instead of the traditional way (composing analysis or introduction of macro- theory system). It based on the introduction of the book's seven editions, summarized the main method and theory of western music history studies. In another word that this article tried to answer the question about the pair of ambivalent points: "facts of history" and "facts of music". In the same time, it brings forward its own idea on the new trend of western music historiography.