Music of Minorities—“The Others from Within”? On terminology and the history of research in Austria

This article looks into the history of the disciplines folk music research and ethnomusicology (comparative musicology) using the Viennese case as a rather representative example for both disciplines. It includes a personal account as the author has been an eye witness of the developments during the last 40 years. It is the research on “music of minorities” that played an important role in this process. The example of Roma music very well demonstrates the changes in the attitudes from around 1900 up to 2014. The topics of terminology as well as of methodology are raised, and by comparing approaches of both disciplines differences and similarities become obvious. Attention is paid to institutional developments as well as political circumstances. The development of the disciplines that is shown in this case study seems to have led to a situation that would meet Svanibor Pettan’s demand for a definition of “modern ethnomusicology”, no matter whether it is called folk music research, comparative musicology, or ethnomusicology