Why does music matter?

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