Musical Elaborations

Abstract

In this article I review some of the latest books in what has been called the ‘New Musicology’. I also ask why music therapists and musicologists seem until now to have taken so little notice of each other's work, but suggest that this situation is changing. Developments in critical thinking about music represented by the ‘New Musicology’ may be of particular relevance to music therapists searching for theoretical perspectives on their work. But equally the theorists of the ‘New Musicology’ could learn much from music therapy – which can be seen in many ways as a ‘laboratory’ for new thinking about the nature of music and its place in society.