MusicologyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Musicology (from Greek (mousik), meaning "music", and - (-logia), meaning "study of-")is the scholarly analysis and research-focused study of music, a part of humanities. A person who studiesmusic is a musicologist.[1] For broad treatments, see the entry on "musicology" in Grove's dictionary, theentry on "Musikwissenschaft" in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and the classic approach of Adler(1885).[2]

In the broad definition, the parent disciplines of musicology include history; cultural studies; philosophy,aesthetics and semiotics; ethnology and cultural anthropology; archeology and prehistory; psychology andsociology; physiology and neuroscience; acoustics and psychoacoustics; and computer/informationsciences and mathematics. Musicology also has two central, practically oriented subdisciplines with noparent discipline: performance practice and research (sometimes viewed as a form of artistic research), andthe theory, analysis and composition of music. The disciplinary neighbors of musicology address otherforms of art, performance, ritual and communication, including the history and theory of the visual andplastic arts and of architecture; linguistics, literature and theater; religion and theology; and sport. Musicalknowledge and know-how are applied in medicine, education and music therapy, which may be regardedas the parent disciplines of applied musicology.

Traditionally, historical musicology has been the most prominent subdiscipline of musicology. Today,historical musicology is one of several large subdisciplines. Historical musicology, ethnomusicology, andsystematic musicology are approximately equal in size - if numbers of active participants at internationalconferences is any guide. Systematic musicology includes music acoustics, the science and technology ofacoustical musical instruments, physiology, psychology, sociology, philosophy and computing. Cognitivemusicology is the set of phenomena surrounding the computational modeling of music.

Contents1 Subdisciplines

1.1 Historical musicology1.2 Cultural musicology or ethnomusicology1.3 Popular music studies1.4 Music theory, analysis and composition1.5 Music psychology1.6 Performance practice and research

2 See also3 References4 Further reading5 External links

SubdisciplinesHistorical musicologyMusic history or historical musicology studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism ofmusic over time. Historical studies of music are for example concerned with a composer's life and works,

the developments of styles and genres (e. g. baroque concertos), the social function of music for aparticular group of people (e. g. court music), or modes of performance at a particular place and time (e. g.Johann Sebastian Bach's choir in Leipzig). Like the comparable field of art history, different branches andschools of historical musicology emphasize different types of musical works and different approaches tomusic. There are also national differences in the definition of historical musicology. In theory, "musichistory" could refer to the study of the history of any type or genre of music (e.g., the history of Indianmusic or the history of rock). In practice, these research topics are more often considered withinethnomusicology (see below) and "historical musicology" is assumed to imply Western Art music.

The methods of historical musicology include source studies (esp. manuscript studies), paleography,philology (especially textual criticism), style criticism, historiography (the choice of historical method),musical analysis (the analysis of music in order to find "inner coherence"),[3] and iconography. Theapplication of musical analysis to further these goals is often a part of music history, though pure analysisor the development of new tools of music analysis is more likely to be seen in the field of music theory.Music historians create a number of written products, ranging from journal articles describing their currentresearch, new editions of musical works, biography of composers and other musicians, or book-lengthstudies. Music historians may examine issues in a close focus, as in the case of scholars who examine therelationship between words and music for a given composer. On the other hand, some scholars take abroader view, and assess the place of a given type of music in society using techniques drawn from otherfields, such as economics, sociology, or philosophy.

New musicology is a term applied since the late 1980s to a wide body of work emphasizing cultural study,analysis, and criticism of music. Such work may be based on feminist, gender studies, queer theory, orpostcolonial theory, or the work of Theodor Adorno. Although New Musicology emerged from withinhistorical musicology, the emphasis on cultural study within the Western art music tradition places NewMusicology at the junction between historical, ethnological and sociological research in music.

New musicology was a reaction against traditional historical musicology, which according to SusanMcClary, "fastidiously declares issues of musical signification off-limits to those engaged in legitimatescholarship." Charles Rosen, however, retorts that McClary, "sets up, like so many of the 'newmusicologists', a straw man to knock down, the dogma that music has no meaning, and no political orsocial significance".[4] Today, many musicologists no longer distinguish between musicology and NewMusicology, since many of the scholarly concerns that used to be associated New Musicology have nowbecome mainstream, and the term "new" clearly no longer applies.

Cultural musicology or ethnomusicologyEthnomusicology, formerly comparative musicology, is the study of music in its cultural context. It isoften considered the anthropology or ethnography of music. Jeff Todd Titon has called it the study of"people making music". Although it is most often concerned with the study of non-Western musics, it alsoincludes the study of Western music from an anthropological or sociological perspective, cultural studiesand sociology as well as other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Though someethnomusicologists primarily conduct historical studies, the majority are involved in long-term participantobservation. Therefore, ethnomusiological work can be characterized as featuring a substantial, intensiveethnographic component. Closely related to ethnomusiology is the emerging branch of sociomusicology.For instance, Ko (2011) proposed the hypothesis of "Biliterate and Trimusical" in Hong Kongsociomusicology.[5]

Popular music studies

Popular music studies, known, "misleadingly,"[6] as popular musicology, emerged in the 1980s as anincreasing number of musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and other varieties of historians of American andEuropean culture began to write about popular musics past and present. The first journal focusing onpopular music studies was Popular Music (http://www.cambridge.org/journals/journal_catalogue.asp?mnemonic=pmu), which began publication in 1981. It was not until 1994 that an academic society solelydevoted to the topic was formed, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music(http://www.iaspm.net/). The Association's founding was partly motivated by the interdisciplinary agenda ofpopular musicology though the group has been characterized by a polarized 'musicological' and'sociological' approach also typical of popular musicology.[7]

Music theory, analysis and compositionMusic theory is a field of study that describes the elements of music and includes the development andapplication of methods for composing and for analyzing music through both notation and, on occasion,musical sound itself. Broadly, theory may include any statement, belief, or conception of or about music(Boretz, 1995). A person who studies or practices music theory is a music theorist.

Some music theorists attempt to explain the techniques composers use by establishing rules and patterns.Others model the experience of listening to or performing music. Though extremely diverse in theirinterests and commitments, many Western music theorists are united in their belief that the acts ofcomposing, performing, and listening to music may be explicated to a high degree of detail (this, asopposed to a conception of musical expression as fundamentally ineffable except in musical sounds).Generally, works of music theory are both descriptive and prescriptive, attempting both to define practiceand to influence later practice. Thus, music theory generally lags behind practice but also points towardsfuture exploration, composition, and performance.

Musicians study music theory in order to be able to understand the structural relationships in the (nearlyalways notated) music, and composers study music theory in order to be able to understand how to produceeffects and to structure their own works. Composers may study music theory in order to guide theirprecompositional and compositional decisions. Broadly speaking, music theory in the Western traditionfocuses on harmony and counterpoint, and then uses these to explain large scale structure and the creationof melody.

Music psychologyMusic psychology applies the content and methods of all subdisciplines of psychology (perception,cognition, motivation, etc.) to understand how music is created, perceived, responded to, and incorporatedinto individuals' and societies' daily lives.[8] Its primary branches include cognitive musicology, whichemphasizes the use of computational models for human musical abilities and cognition, and the cognitiveneuroscience of music, which studies the way that music perception and production manifests in the brainusing the methodologies of cognitive neuroscience. While aspects of the field can be highly theoretical,much of modern music psychology seeks to optimize the practices and professions of music performance,composition, education, and therapy.[9]

Performance practice and researchPerformance practice draws on many of the tools of historical musicology to answer the specific questionof how music was performed in various places at various times in the past. Although previously confined toearly music, recent research in performance practice has embraced questions such as how the early historyof recording affected the use of vibrato in classical music, or instruments in Klezmer.

Within the rubric of musicology, performance practice tends to emphasize the collection and synthesis ofevidence about how music should be performed. The important other side, learning how to singauthentically or perform a historical instrument is usually part of conservatory or other performancetraining. However, many top researchers in performance practice are also excellent musicians.

Music performance research (or music performance science) is strongly associated with music psychology.It aims to document and explain the psychological, physiological, sociological and cultural details of howmusic is actually performed (rather than how it should be performed). The approach to research tends to besystematic and empirical, and to involve the collection and analysis of both quantitative and qualitativedata. The findings of music performance research can often be applied in music education.

See alsoAppropriation (music)ChoreomusicologyComputational musicologyList of musicologistsList of musicology topicsMusic and emotionMusic and mathematicsMusic educationMusical scaleMusical temperamentMusical tuningOrganologyPrehistoric musicPsychoanalysis and musicSet theory (music)SociomusicologyTonalityWorld musicVirtual Library of Musicology

References1. John Haines, Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvres: The Changing Identity of Medieval Music

(Cambridge, 2004), '55.2. Adler, Guido (1885). Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft. Vierteljahresschrift fr

Musikwissenschaft, 1, 5-20.3. Beard, David; Kenneth Gloag (2005). Musicology: the key concepts. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-31692-7.4. Rosen, Charles (2001). "The New Musicology". Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (Harvard University

Press). p. 264. ISBN 978-0-674-00684-3. Missing or empty |title= (help) "(I doubt that anyone, except perhapsthe nineteenth-century critic Hanslick, has ever really believed that, although some musicians have been goadedinto proclaiming it by the sillier interpretations of music with which we are often assailed.)"

5. Ko, C. K. S. (2011). An analysis of sociomusicology, its issues; and the music and society in Hong Kong. HongKong: Ko Ka Shing. ISBN 978-9-881-58021-4. This book has been selected for inclusion in the Association forChinese Music Research Bibliography in 2012, see [1] (http://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10524/23174).

6. Moore, Allan, ed. (2003). Analyzing Popular Music, p. 2. ISBN 978-0-521-77120-7. p. 2n2 reads: "'Popularmusicology' should be read as the musicological investigation of popular music, rather than the accessibleinvestigation of music!"

7. Moore 2003, p. 4.8. Tan, Siu-Lan; Pfordresher, Peter; Harr, Rom (2010). Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance. New

York: Psychology Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-84169-868-7.

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9. Ockelford, Adam (2009). "Beyond music psychology". In Hallam, Susan; Cross, Ian; Thaut, Michael. The OxfordHandbook of Music Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 539. ISBN 978-0-19-929845-7.

Further readingAllen, Warren Dwight (1962). Philosophies of Music History: a Study of General Histories of Music,1600-1960. New ... ed. New York: Dover Publications. N.B.: First published in 1939; expanded andupdated for republication in 1962.Babich, Babette (2003) "Postmodern Musicology (http://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich/35/)" inVictor E. Taylor and Charles Winquist, eds., Routledge Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, London:Routledge, 2003. pp. 153159. ISBN 978-0-415-30886-1.Brackett, David (1995). Interpreting Popular Music. ISBN 0-520-22541-4.Everett, Walter, ed. (2000). Expression in Pop-Rock Music. ISBN 0-8153-3160-6.Honing, Henkjan (2006). "On the growing role of observation, formalization and experimentalmethod in musicology. (https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/21901/1/EMR000002a-honing.pdf)" Empirical Musicology Review.Kerman, Joseph (1985). Musicology. London: Fontana. ISBN 0-00-197170-0.McClary, Susan, and Robert Walser (1988). "Start Making Sense! Musicology Wrestles with Rock"in On Record ed. by Frith and Goodwin (1990), pp. 277292. ISBN 0-394-56475-8.McClary, Susan (1991). Feminine Endings. Music, Gender, and Sexuality. University of MinnesotaPress. ISBN 0-8166-1899-2 (pbk).McClary, Susan (2000). "Women and Music on the Verge of the New Millennium (Special Issue:Feminists at a Millennium)", Signs 25/4 (Summer): 1283-1286.Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press.ISBN 0-335-15275-9.Moore, A.F. (2001). Rock: The Primary Text, 2nd edn., ISBN 0-7546-0298-2.Parncutt, Richard. (2007). "Systematic musicology and the history and future of Western musicalscholarship (http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/publications/Pa07_SystematicMusicology.pdf)", Journal of InterdisciplinaryMusic Studies, 1, 1-32.Pruett, James W., and Thomas P. Slavens (1985). Research guide to musicology. Chicago: AmericanLibrary Association. ISBN 0-8389-0331-2.Randel, Don Michael, ed. (4th ed. 2003). Harvard Dictionary of Music, pp. 452454. The BelknapPress of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01163-5.Tagg, Philip (1979, ed. 2000). Kojak - 50 Seconds of Television Music: Toward the Analysis of Affectin Popular Music, pp. 3845. The Mass Media Music Scholar's Press. ISBN 0-9701684-0-3.Tagg, Philip (1982). "Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Method and Practice", Popular Music, Vol.2, Theory and Method, pp. 3767.van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth CenturyPopular Music. ISBN 0-19-816305-3 (1992).Winkler, Peter (1978). "Toward a theory of pop harmony", In Theory Only, 4, pp. 326., cited inMoore (2003), p. 9.

External linksThe American Musicological Society (http://www.ams-net.org/) (Wikipedia entry)Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology Online(http://www.music.indiana.edu/ddm/)AMS: Web sites of interest to Musicologists (http://www.ams-net.org/www-musicology.php)The Society for American Music (http://www.american-music.org/)

Graduate Programs in Musicology (http://www.ams-net.org/gradprog.php)Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/cim/)International Association for the Study of Popular Music (http://www.iaspm.net/)Society for Ethnomusicology (http://webdb.iu.edu/sem/scripts/home.cfm)Outreach Ethnomusicology (http://www.o-em.org/) An Online Ethnomusicology Community andFieldwork ResourceWikiquote - quotes about musicology (http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicology)Rpertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) - database of musical sources from aroundthe world (http://www.rism.info)Musicology in Cuba

On-line journalsAlthough many musicology journals are not available on-line, or are only available through pay-for-accessportals, a sampling of peer reviewed journals in various subfields gives some idea of musicologicalwritings:

JIMS: Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies (http://www.musicstudies.org/)Echo: a music centered journal (http://www.echo.ucla.edu/)Empirical Musicology Review (http://emusicology.org/)Ethnomusicology Review (http://ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/)Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies (http://www.musicstudies.org/)JMM: The Journal of Music and Meaning (http://www.musicandmeaning.net/index.php)Music Theory Online (http://mto.societymusictheory.org/)Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music (http://sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu/jscm/)Ethnomusicology OnLine (http://umbc7.umbc.edu/efhm/eol.html)Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online (http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/mu/ims/Min-ad/)Music and Politics (http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/)Volume ! The French journal of popular music studies (http://volume.revues.org) all articles availablefor free download up to n-2.

The following musicology journals can be accessed on-line through JSTOR (requires subscription for fullaccess). Many of them have their latest issues available on-line via publisher portals (usually requiring afee for access).

19th-Century Music (19772004)Acta Musicologica (19312002) (current organ of the International Musicological Society)American Music (19832005) (Society for American Music)Asian Music (19682002)Black Music Research Journal (19802004) (Center for Black Music Research)British Journal of Ethnomusicology (19922002)Early Music History (19812002)Ethnomusicology (19532003) (Society for Ethnomusicology)Journal of Music Theory (19572002)The Journal of Musicology (19822004)Journal of the American Musicological Society (19482004) (American Musicological Society)Music Educators Journal (19342007)Music Theory Spectrum (19792003) (Society for Music Theory)The Musical Quarterly (19151999)Perspectives of New Music (19622000)Popular Music (19812003)Yearbook for Traditional Music (19812003)

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