The Philosophical Dimensions of Composition: Challenging Musicology’s Epistemic Boundaries

This paper examines the philosophical and historical marginalization of musical composition as a valid form of academic inquiry. Composition has historically been confined to the realm of artistic activity, distinct from the intellectual discipline of musicology; this separation is demonstrated to be grounded in colonial epistemologies, Enlightenment rationality, and the Humboldtian framework of the modern university. The paper contends that composition, when combined with reflective analysis, constitutes a rigorous intellectual pursuit, drawing on worldwide case studies from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. It juxtaposes African communal and oral-aural compositional traditions with Western individualistic approaches, elucidating composition’s ability to generate cultural, philosophical, and methodological discoveries. The paper challenges institutional and evaluative biases that marginalize practice-based approaches from academic legitimacy and provides practical solutions for revising musicological norms. These encompass the adoption of practice-as-research frameworks, the acknowledgment of reflective commentary as scholarly output, and the reform of journal and institutional norms. The study advocates for the integration of composition into academic discourse as an essential and transformational mode of inquiry that contests prevailing textual paradigms, enhances methodological inclusivity, and reasserts the epistemic authority of creative activity in music studies.