Ruccius Alexis. The History of Musical Iconography and the Influence of Art History: Pictures as Sources and Interpreters of Musical History

The Making of the Humanities. — Volume III: The Modern Humanities, 2014. — p. 403-412.Musical iconography is a prime example of a research field that emerged through the affiliation of two disciplines from the humanities. Over a period of 150 years, musicologists had already turned to art works in search of visual evidence to guide in the reconstruction of musical instruments and historical performance practices. Understood as being fundamentally representational in nature, pictures were used as reliable historical sources, by Julius Rühlmann or Hugo Leichtentritt, for example. In the twentieth century, under the influence of the Warburg School, this field of study expanded into an independent research field known as ‘musical iconography’. Aiming at more that the mere reconstruction of historical instruments, the ideological content of musical representations now came into focus. Pictures were analyzed as artifacts capable of revealing insights into the history of ideas, for instance, a period’s understanding of music. With the introduction of iconography and iconology into the discipline, the connection between musicology and art history became firmly established. The core methods of musical iconography derive both from musicology (musical theory and organology) and from art history (iconography and iconology). Musical iconography is hence founded upon an interdisciplinary relationship between these two humanities subjects.