Frédéric Döhl: Mythos Barbershop. Folgen einer Musikgeschichte als Wunschbild*

Barbershop harmony, widely understood today as a historically informed performance practice for four-part a cappella ensemble, is said to have begun in the American South in the late nineteenth century before it was picked up again in the early 1940s with the revivalist conservation movement. Recent research has considerably expanded the hitherto nominal source materials. These newly discovered texts and recordings suggest that what was known as “barber shop” before and after the revival are, from a musical point of view, not at all the same. Since there is no evidence that barbershop harmony existed under a different name before World War I, it would appear that the common view regarding this genre as a historically informed performance practice is no less than a faulty historical construct. In fact, barbershop harmony did not actually come into its own until the revival itself. Using these findings as a point of departure, this essay cites an actual case study to exemplify how music history can be manipulated via reinterpretation and avoidance of sources to serve a specific ideology. Possible motivations leading to this development are discussed, along with other cases that illustrate how sustainable and far-reaching such a manufactured version of music history can be.

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