1st Edition

The Routledge Companion to Autoethnography and Self-Reflexivity in Music Studies

Edited By Peter Gouzouasis, Christopher Wiley Copyright 2025
    448 Pages 67 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The Routledge Companion to Autoethnography and Self-Reflexivity in Music Studies represents a substantial contribution to the field of writing self-reflexively about an individual’s practice within music studies. In six sections, 34 original chapters by a diverse set of contributors consider writing about personal activities from the points of view of performance, composition, musicology, and pedagogy, drawing on a range of traditions from Western art-music to popular music to ethnomusicology. A robust critical framework is presented, with coverage of: • Historical and critical perspectives • different methodologies and their ascendancy within the academy • leading debates, issues and approaches • future directions. The Companion cultivates new modes of engagement in music research, enabling scholars and practitioners at all levels to identify and articulate their relationship to the wider sociocultural contexts in which they operate.

    INTRODUCTION

     

    1.     Music, autoethnography, and reflexivity: An introductory conversation
    Peter Gouzouasis and Christopher Wiley

     

    PART 1: INSTRUMENTAL PERFORMANCE

     

    2.     Experiencing the Karnatic Violin: Knowing in the hands
    Alice Barron

     

    3.     Performing intercultural music for flute and electronics: Reflections on heterotopian (s)p(l)ace
    Jean Penny

     

    4.     A conductor’s autoethnography of interpretive process
    Bede Williams

     

    PART TWO: VOCAL PERFORMANCE

     

    5.     An autoethnographic approach to understanding early vocal recordings and late nineteenth-century singing treatises
    Barbara Gentili

     

    6.     An autoethnography of performance in the vocal booth
    Rod Davies

     

    7.     Semi-staging Written On Skin: An experiment in the “doubleness” of lived experience and unfolding performative invention
    Benjamin Davis

     

    8.     A cautionary tale of the health and well-being of college music students
    Matthew Yanko

     

    PART 3: COMPOSITION AND CREATIVE PRACTICE

     

    9.     Notes to self: How composers write about their music
    Christopher Leedham and Martin Scheuregger

     

    10.  The “self” particle: A time traveller’s account of how one doctorate in music composition would have benefitted from a better awareness of autoethnography
    Bartosz Szafranski

     

    11.  A performative autoethnography of the oratorios I Believe and Nostos: Composing music, words, and worlds

    Zane Zalis

     

    PART 4: PEDAGOGY

     

    12.  How did we learn to create this performance? A tutor models student reflective practice
    Monica Esslin-Peard

     

    13.  An autoethnography of designing an undergraduate music module on Adele’s 25 album
    Christopher Wiley

     

    14.  “Mind the gaps”: Exploring models for positioning the researcher in doctorates in music performance
    Sarah Callis and Neil Heyde

     

    15.  A piano mismatch: Passion, dreams, and being a “good boy”

    David Lines

     

    PART 5: CULTURAL AND CONTEXTUAL MUSIC STUDIES

     

    16.  Jammin’ “under one groove”: An autoethnographic steelband love story
    Charissa Granger

     

    17.  Thumbprints on the paintwork: On autoethnography and fandom in the music of Mark E. Smith and The Fall
    Iain Findlay-Walsh

     

    18.  1000 days project: An a/r/tographic inquiry of hospital music-making
    Rosalind Hawley

     

     

     

     

     

    PART 6: ART AS AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

     

    19.  Advocating a folkloristic disposition in the context of music pedagogy
    Simon E. Poole

     

    20.  Twilight

    Benjamin Bolden

     

    PART 7: CODA—FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS

     

    21.  Autoethnography: A reflexive research process
    Peter Gouzouasis

     

    Biography

    Christopher Wiley is a senior lecturer in music at the University of Surrey, UK.

    Peter Gouzouasis is a Professor of Music Education and Deputy Head of the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at The University of British Columbia, Canada.