Cultural Narratives of Old Age in the Lives, Work, and Reception of Old Musicians

This book conceives of old age as a cultural formation rather than a biomedical condition. Beyond its critique of ageist reception of musicking, it suggests ways of composing, performing, and listening oldly that are shaped by the particularities of the old body and mind.

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Operating largely within the world of European-American classical music, this book discusses the creative work of old musicians—composers, performers, listeners, and scholars—and how those forms of music-making are received and understood. Like everything else about old age, music-making is usually understood as a decline from a former height, a deficiency with respect to a youthful standard. Against this ageist mythology, this book argues that composing oldly, performing oldly, and listening oldly are distinctive and valuable way of making music—a difference, not a deficit; to be celebrated, not ignored or condemned.

Instead of the usual biomedical or gerontological understanding of old age, with its focus on bodily, cognitive, and sensory decline, this book follows Age Studies in seeing old age through a cultural lens, as something created and understood in culture. This book seeks to identify the ways that old musicians (composers, performers, listeners, and scholars) accept, resist, adapt, and transform the cultural scripts for the performance of old age. Musicking oldly (making music in old age) often represents an attempt to rewrite ageist cultural scripts and to find ways of flourishing musically in a largely hostile landscape.