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For album by Prince, see Musicology (album). Prince Rogers Nelson (born June 7 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American musician Musicology is an album by Prince, released on April 20, 2004, which proved to be his most successful in years reaching the top 5 of the

Musicology (Greek: μουσική = "music" and λόγος = "word" or "reason") is the scholarly study of music. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western cultural elites. In the intermediate sense, it includes all relevant humanities and a range of musical forms, styles, genres and traditions. In the broad sense, it includes - at least potentially - all musically relevant disciplines and all manifestations of music in all cultures. The broad meaning corresponds most closely to the word's etymology, the entry on "musicology" in Grove's dictionary, the entry on "Musikwissenschaft" in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and the classic approach of Adler (1885).

In the broad definition, the parent disciplines of musicology include history; cultural studies and gender studies; philosophy, aesthetics and semiotics; ethnology and cultural anthropology; archeology and prehistory; psychology and sociology; physiology and the neurosciences; acoustics and psychoacoustics; and computer/information sciences and mathematics. Aesthetics or esthetics ( also spelled æsthetics) is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values sometimes called Musicology also has two central, practically oriented subdisciplines with no parent discipline: performance practice and research, and the theory, analysis and composition of music. The disciplinary neighbors of musicology address other forms of art, performance, ritual and communication, including the history and theory of the visual and plastic arts and of architecture; linguistics, literature and theater; religion and theology; and sport. Musical knowledge and know-how are applied in medicine, education and therapy, which may be regarded as the parent disciplines of Applied Musicology.

Contents

Types

Historical Musicology

Main article: Music history

Music history or historical musicology is a diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time. This article is about the academic field of music history. For a chronological overview of music see History of music. Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. For other uses see Time (disambiguation Time is a component of a measuring system used to sequence events to compare the durations of 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 a particular 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 and schools of historical musicology emphasize different types of musical works and different approaches to music. Art history is the Academic study of objects of Art in their Historical development and stylistic contexts i There are also national differences in the definition of historical musicology.

In theory, "music history" could refer to the study of the history of any type or genre of music (e. g. , the history of Indian music or the history of rock). Rock music is a genre of Popular music often though not necessarily employing Electric guitar, Bass guitar, and Drums. In practice, these research topics are more often considered within ethnomusicology (see below). This article is about the concept For the society and academic journal see Society for Ethnomusicology.

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, and iconography. A manuscript is any Document that is Written by hand as opposed to being printed or reproduced in some other way Palaeography, palæography ( British) or paleography ( American) (from the Greek grc παλαιός palaiós, See Comparative linguistics for the narrower field of "comparative philology" Textual criticism (or lower criticism) is a branch of Literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of Transcription errors in The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which Historians use Primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history Iconography is the branch of Art history which studies the identification description and the interpretation of the content of images The application of musical analysis to further these goals is often a part of music history, though pure analysis or the development of new tools of music analysis is more likely to be seen in the field of music theory. Music theory is the field of study that deals with the Mechanics of music and how Music works

The intellectual products of music historians include editions of musical works, biography of composers and other musicians, studies of the relationship between words and music, and the reflections upon the place of music in society. A biography (from the Greek words bíos (βίος meaning "life" and gráphein (γράφειν meaning "to write" is an account A word is a unit of Language that carries meaning and consists of one or more Morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together and has a Phonetic A society is a Population of Humans characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive Culture and Institutions

Ethnomusicology

Main article: Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology, formerly comparative musicology, is the study of music in its cultural context. This article is about the concept For the society and academic journal see Society for Ethnomusicology. This article is about the concept For the society and academic journal see Society for Ethnomusicology. Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic It is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music. Anthropology (/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/ from Greek grc ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos, "human" -λογία -logia) is the study of Ethnography ( Greek ethnos = people and graphein = writing is a genre of writing that uses Fieldwork to provide a descriptive Jeff Todd Titon has called it the study of "people making music". Jeff Todd Titon is a professor of music at Brown University. His published books include Early Downhome Blues A Musical and Cultural Analysis (University of Although it is most often concerned with the study of non-Western musics, it also includes the study of Western music from an anthropological or sociological perspective. The term Western world, the West or the Occident ( Latin: occidens -sunset -west as distinct from the Orient) can have multiple meanings

Ethnomusicologists often apply theories and methods from cultural anthropology, cultural studies and sociology as well as other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Cultural anthropology is one of four fields of Anthropology (the holistic study of humanity) as it developed in the United States. Cultural studies is an academic discipline which combines Political economy, Communication, Sociology, Social theory, Literary theory Sociology (from Latin: socius "companion" and the suffix -ology "the study of" from Greek λόγος lógos "knowledge" Though some ethnomusicologists primarily conduct historical studies, the majority are involved in long-term participant observation. Therefore, ethnomusicological work can be characterized as featuring a substantial, intensive ethnographic component.

Closely related to ethnomusicology is the emerging branch of sociomusicology. Sociomusicology refers to both an academic subfield of Sociology that is concerned with Music (often in combination with other arts as well as a subfield

Intersections of Historical Musicology and Ethnomusicology

Several forms of musical inquiry combine the two larger fields of musicology. Some draw upon the tools or methodologies of ethnomusicology to analyze the main repertories of historical musicology. Others explore popular music primarily from a cultural perspective, yet also employ tools of Western tonal theory to make analytic observations.

New Musicology

Main article: New musicology

New musicology is a term applied since the late 1980s to a wide body of work emphasizing cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music. The New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of Musicology with increased focus upon the cultural study, analysis and criticism of music with influences from The New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of Musicology with increased focus upon the cultural study, analysis and criticism of music with influences from Cultural studies is an academic discipline which combines Political economy, Communication, Sociology, Social theory, Literary theory Such work may be based on feminist, gender studies, queer theory, or postcolonial theory, or the work of Theodor Adorno. Feminism is a discourse that involves various movements theories, and Philosophies which are concerned with the issue of Gender difference, advocate Gender studies is a field of Interdisciplinary study which analyzes the phenomenon of Gender. Queer theory is a field of Gender Studies that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of gay and Lesbian studies and feminist studies Postcolonialism ( postcolonial theory, post-colonial theory) is an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theories found among the texts and Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno ( September 11, 1903 &ndash August 6, 1969) was a German -born international sociologist Although New Musicology emerged from within historical musicology, the emphasis on cultural study within the Western art music tradition places New Musicology at the junction between historical, ethnological and sociological research in music.

New musicology was a reaction against traditional historical musicology, which according to Susan McClary, "fastidiously declares issues of musical signification off-limits to those engaged in legitimate scholarship. Susan McClary (born 2 October 1946) is a Musicologist considered to be a significant figure in the " New Musicology " " Today, many musicologists no longer distinguish between musicology and New Musicology, since many of the scholarly concerns that used to be associated New Musicology have now become mainstream, and the term "new" clearly no longer applies.

Popular Music Studies

Popular music studies emerged in the 1980s as an increasing number of musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and other varieties of historians of American and European culture began to write about popular musics past and present. The first journal focusing on popular music studies was Popular Music, which began publication in 1981. It was not until 1994 that an academic society solely devoted to the topic was formed, the IASPM (the International Association for the Study of Popular Music).

Psychology and cognition

Main articles: Music psychology and Music cognition

Music psychology applies the content and methods of all subdisciplines of psychology (perception, cognition, motivation, personality and so on) to all aspects of musical behaviour and experience (performance, listening, composition). Music psychology, or the psychology of music may be regarded either as a branch of Psychology or as a branch of Musicology. Music cognition is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mental processes that support musical behaviors including perception comprehension memory attention and performance

Music cognition is the study of music as information, from the viewpoint of cognitive science. Since it primarily addresses the processing of musical information by humans, it may be regarded as a subdiscipline of music psychology. The discipline shares the interdisciplinary nature of fields such as cognitive linguistics. In Linguistics and Cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL refers to the school of linguistics that understands language creation learning and usage

Music theory, analysis and composition

Main article: Music theory

Music theory is a field of study that describes the elements of music and includes the development and application of methods for composing and for analyzing music through both notation and, on occasion, musical sound itself. Music theory is the field of study that deals with the Mechanics of music and how Music works Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. See also Modern musical symbols Music notation or musical notation is any system which represents aurally perceived Music through the use Broadly, theory may include any statement, belief, or conception of or about music (Boretz, 1995). Benjamin Boretz is a twentieth- and twenty-first-century American Composer and music theorist. 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 their interests and commitments, many Western music theorists are united in their belief that the acts of composing, performing, and listening to music may be explicated to a high degree of detail (this, as opposed 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 practice and to influence later practice. Thus, music theory generally lags behind practice in important ways, but also points towards future exploration, composition, and performance.

Musicians study music theory in order to be able to understand the structural relationships in the (nearly always notated) music, and composers study music theory in order to be able to understand how to produce effects and to structure their own works. Composers may study music theory in order to guide their precompositional and compositional decisions. In Music, precompositional decisions are those decisions which a Composer decides upon before or while beginning to create a composition. Broadly speaking, music theory in the Western tradition focuses on harmony and counterpoint, and then uses these to explain large scale structure and the creation of melody. In Western music, harmony is the use of different pitches simultaneously and chords actual or implied in Music. In Music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and Rhythm, and interdependent in Harmony In Music, a melody (from Greek μελῳδία - melōidía, "singing chanting" also tune, voice, or

Performance practice and research

Main article: Authentic performance

Performance practice draws on many of the tools of historical musicology to answer the specific question of how music was performed in various places at various times in the past. The historically informed performance, period performance, or authentic performance movement is an approach by musicians and scholars to research and perform works Although previously confined to early music, recent research in performance practice has embraced questions such as how the early history of recording affected the use of vibrato in classical music, or instruments in Klezmer. Vibrato is a musical effect produced in singing and on musical instruments by a regular pulsating change of pitch, and is used to add expression and vocal-like qualities to See also Secular Jewish music Klezmer (from Yiddish כּלי־זמיר kley - instrument and zemer - song etymologically from

Within the rubric of musicology, performance practice tends to emphasize the collection and synthesis of evidence about how music should be performed. The important other side, learning how to sing authentically or perform an historical instrument is usually part of conservatory or other performance training. A university school of music or college of music, or academy of music or conservatoire ( French, but used in British English) &mdash 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 how music is actually performed (rather than how it should be performed). The approach to research tends to be systematic and empirical, and to involve the collection and analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings of music performance research can often be applied in music education.

Critiques

Arbitrary exclusion of disciplines and musics

In its most narrow definition, musicology is the music history of Western cultural elites. Such a definition arbitrarily excludes disciplines other than history, cultures other than Western, and forms of music other than "classical" ("art", "serious", "high culture") or notated ("artificial") - implying that the omitted disciplines, cultures, and musical styles/genres are somehow inferior. A somewhat broader definition incorporating all musical humanities is still problematic, because it arbitrarily excludes the relevant (natural) sciences (acoustics, psychology, physiology, neurosciences, information and computer sciences, empirical sociology and aesthetics) as well as musical practice.

Within historical musicology, scholars have been reluctant to adopt postmodern and critical approaches that are common elsewhere in the humanities. According to Susan McClary (2000, p. Susan McClary (born 2 October 1946) is a Musicologist considered to be a significant figure in the " New Musicology " 1285) the discipline of "music lags behind the other arts; it picks up ideas from other media just when they have become outmoded. " Only in the 1990s did historical musicologists, preceded by feminist musicologists in the late 80s, begin to address issues such as gender, sexualities, bodies, emotions, and subjectivities which dominated the humanities for twenty years before (ibid, p. 10). In McClary's words (1991, p. 5), "It almost seems that musicology managed miraculously to pass directly from pre- to postfeminism without ever having to change - or even examine - its ways. "

Furthermore, in their discussion on musicology and rock music, Susan McClary and Robert Walser also address a key struggle within the discipline: how musicology has often "dismisse[d] questions of socio-musical interaction out of hand, that part of classical music's greatness is ascribed to its autonomy from society. " (1988, p. 283)

Arbitrary exclusion of popular music

According to Richard Middleton, the strongest criticism of (historical) musicology has been that it by and large ignores popular music. Richard Middleton FBA is Professor of Music at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne. Though musicological study of popular music has vastly increased in quantity recently, Middleton's assertion in 1990-- that most major "works of musicology, theoretical or historical, act as though popular music did not exist" -- holds true. Year 1990 ( MCMXC) was a Common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar) Academic and conservatory training typically only peripherally addresses this broad spectrum of musics, and many (historical) musicologists who are "both contemptuous and condescending are looking for types of production, musical form, and listening which they associate with a different kind of music. . . 'classical music'. . . and they generally find popular music lacking" (Middleton 1990, p. 103).

He cites (p. 104-6) "three main aspects of this problem":

  1. "a terminology slanted by the needs and history of a particular music ('classical music'). "
    1. "on one hand, there is a rich vocabulary for certain areas [harmony, tonality, certain part-writing and forms], important in musicology's typical corpus, and an impoverished vocabulary for others [rhythm, pitch nuance and gradation, and timbre], which are less well developed there"
    2. "on the other hand, terms are ideologically loaded. . . these connotations are ideological because they always involve selective, and often unconsciously formulated, conceptions of what music is. "
  2. "a methodology slanted by the characteristics of notation," 'notational centricity' (Tagg 1979, p. 28-32)
    1. "musicological methods tend to foreground those musical parameters which can be easily notated. . . they tend to neglect or have difficulty with parameters which are not easily notated", such as Fred Lerdahl. Fred Lerdahl (born March 10 1943) is the Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University "notation-centric training induces particular forms of listening, and these then tend to be applied to all sorts of music, appropriately or not. "
    2. Notational centricity also encourages "reification: the score comes to be seen as 'the music', or perhaps the music in an ideal form. "
  3. "an ideology slanted by the origins and development of a particular body of music and its aesthetic. . . It arose at a specific moment, in a specific context - nineteenth-century Europe, especially Germany - and in close association with that movement in the musical practice of the period which was codifying the very repertory then taken by musicology as the centre of its attention. "

These terminological, methodological, and ideological problems affect even works symphathetic to popular music. However, it is not "that musicology cannot understand popular music, or that students of popular music should abandon musicology" (p. 104).

See also

References

External links

On-line Journals

Although many musicology journals are not available on-line, or are only available through pay-for-access portals, a sampling of peer reviewed journals in various subfields gives some idea of musicological writings:

The following musicology journals can be accessed on-line through JSTOR (requires subscription for full access). The American Musicological Society is a membership-based organization founded in 1934 to advance scholarly research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and Peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work research or Ideas to the scrutiny of others who are JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is a United States -based online system for archiving Academic journals founded in 1995 Many of them have their latest issues available on-line via publisher portals (usually requiring a fee for access).

The Society for American Music (SAM was founded in 1975 and was first named the Sonneck Society in honor of Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, early Chief of the Music Division The Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM is with the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM and British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE one of three major The American Musicological Society is a membership-based organization founded in 1934 to advance scholarly research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and The Music Library Association Inc is the main professional organization for music libraries and librarians (including those whose music materials form only part of their responsibilities

Dictionary

musicology

-noun

  1. (music)the scholarly or scientific study of music, as in historical research, musical theory, or the physical nature of sound.
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