The History of Remembered Innovation: Tradition and Its Role in the Relationship between Musical Works and Their Performances Author(s): José A. Bowen Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring, 1993), pp. 139-173 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/764028 . Accessed: 09/11/2011 15:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Musicology. http://www.jstor.org The History of Remembered Innovation: Tradition and Its Role in the Relationship between Musical Works and Their Performances* JOSE A. BOWEN of the most fundamental assumptions musi- cologists make are that musical works exist and that they are stable. T7o 139 We assume that we can study the same works studied by Schumann and Schenker, and we also assume that these musical works are some- how related to certain basic musical elements which remain the same from performance to performance. (Our primary tool, analysis, deals only with this fixed part of the work.) By looking first at the admit- tedly extreme example of jazz, and then at some more canonic Eu- ropean genres, I want to focus on what differs in a musical work from performance to performance, and thereby to reexamine its ontologi- cal status.