For the album by Prince, see Musicology (album).

Musicology "is 'the scientific study of music.'"

the whole body of systematized knowledge about music which results from the application of a scientific method of investigation or research, or of philosophical speculation and rational systematization to the facts, the processes and the development of musical art, and to the relation of man in general...to that art (Harvard Dictionary of Music).

As "it 'must include every conceivable discussion of musical topics'", musicologists may study quite a wide range of subjects. Some, for instance, may specialise in English Tudor church music, others in the history of musical notation and others in the development of the flute.

Contents

1 Ethnomusicology 2 The new musicology 3 Biomusicology and zoomusicology 4 Others 5 Criticism 6 Source 7 External links

Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology is the study of music in its cultural context. It can be considered the anthropology of music. Jeff Todd Titon has called it the study of "people making music". It is often thought of as a study of non-Western musics, but may include the study of Western music from an anthropological perspective.

The new musicology

The New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of work produced by many musicologists who consider themselves neither new nor New. Often based on the work of Theodor Adorno and feminist, gender studies, or postcolonial hypotheses, the New Musicology is the cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music. As Susan McClary says, "musicology fastidiously declares issues of musical signification off-limits to those engaged in legitimate scholarship."

Biomusicology and zoomusicology

Biomusicology is the study of music from a biological point of view. Zoomusicology is a field of musicology and zoology or more specifically, zoosemiotics. Zoomusicology is the study of the music of animals, or rather the musical aspects of sound or communication produced and received by animals.

Others

• Music history
• Organology
• Musical theory
  • Musical set theory
  • Tonal theory
• Psychoacoustics

Criticism

Musicology, "with a few exceptions (mostly recent)" has not studied popular music. "As a general rule works of musicology, theoretical or historical, act as though popular music did not exist." 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 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. "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).

Source

• Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
• Tagg, Philip (1979).

External links

• Wikiquote - quotes about musicology http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicology
• a commercial site, but a unique online catalog with pictures and descriptions of instruments, run by an ethnomusicologist http://www.larkinam.com/
• Nicholas Cook: What is musicology? http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ncook/what.html
• Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology Online http://www.music.indiana.edu/ddm/
• German Military Music http://www.german-military-music.com
• Web sites of interest to Musicologists http://www.sas.upenn.edu/music/ams/musicology_www.html