This essay reviews recent works on the cultural history of music. Arguing that there are not one but several discrete interdisciplinary interfaces at which such work is undertaken, it explores work that analyses musical culture as a site at which ideological politics cohere; studies that examine the place of music in social and cultural practices that served to mark and cross different kinds of space; and work that explores how musical life either articulates the presence of, or serves to constitute, different kinds of community. It emphasises that while the disciplinary dynamics of musicology are such that a greater interest in the contexts of emergence, production and consumption of music is reasonable, historians approach the same problem space from the opposite direction and still need to engage more with problems centred on the musical material than they usually do.

中文翻译：

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为什么音乐很重要？

这篇文章回顾了最近关于音乐文化史的作品。认为进行此类工作的不是一个而是几个离散的跨学科接口，它探索了将音乐文化分析为意识形态政治凝聚点的工作；研究音乐在社会和文化实践中的地位，这些实践有助于标记和跨越不同类型的空间；以及探索音乐生活如何表达或服务于构成不同类型社区的工作。它强调，虽然音乐学的学科动态如此，但对音乐的出现、生产和消费背景的更大兴趣是合理的，