Welcome New Readers!

If you’ve just found the site, this post will give you a brief tour:

The Taruskin Challenge is meant to foster conversation about music history, the discipline of musicology, and many related topics that are engendered from reading our way through Richard Taruskin’s Oxford History of Western Music. You’ll find mini-essays on composers, styles, and especially on theories and practice of historiography (try here, here, here, or here to start). You’ll also find frequent musical and video examples, and we make weekly reviews of the readings. Make sure to take a look at our about our project page. Also, we have begun compiling a list of “Musicology Must-Reads,” an un-scientific gathering of exemplary musicological books (read the explanation here and find the page itself here). The must-reads list is meant for interested students just getting into musicology, for grad students to round out their reading lists, or just to see what your colleagues are reading. Take a look around, and we hope you feel welcome enough to join in the discussion.