Musicology
Definition[edit]
musicology, the scholarly and scientific study of music. The German term Musikwissenschaft (“science of music”) was first employed by F. Chrysander in 1863 in the preface to his Jahrbücher für musikalische Wissenschaft (“Yearbook for Musical Knowledge”), in which he argued that musicology should be accepted as a science and that musical studies should aspire to the rigorous methodological standards of the natural sciences.[1]
History[edit]
Because the Italian Renaissance ushered in newfound innovations for the study of musicology, the subject's history can be easily divided into three periods: pre-Italian Renaissance, during the Italian Renaissance, and post-Italian Renaissance. Pre-Renaissance primarily includes the efforts of the ancients, especially the Greeks, and the works of medievalists in developing the beginnings of written music. The Italian Renaissance saw the development of serious musicology by scholars who wrote long tracts explaining the use of instruments and music as expression. Similarly, after the Renaissance, modern musicology evolved out of previous eras.[2]
Pre-Italian Renaissance Musicology[edit]
Although the Italian Renaissance, the period circa 1400-1600, evolved the study of different musical concepts, the history of musicology dates long before this period. In the ancient world, the Greeks wrote about music as part of philosophy in conveying the deeper truths of man and his desire for beauty and morality. This desire to focus on the more abstract concepts in music generally lasted until the 11th century. During this time, Guido of Arezzo developed musical notation—music as written with notes and symbols to show how a musician should perform the piece. Thus, from about 1000 CE, music became a field in which individuals could write and experiment with music as a technical skill.[3]
Italian Renaissance Musicology[edit]
During the Renaissance, scholars began writing books to explain the finer points of musical performance and theory. For example, Sebastian Virdung wrote Musica Getutscht, documenting instruments. Similar sources to Virdung also described the uses of instruments in creating different types of music for various occasions.
Other sources continued to focus on the societal ramifications of music. For example, Baldesar Castiglione's Book of the Courtier described the function of music in the life of the Italian courtier, both male and female. Music was a vital force for socializing and allowing the wealthy to patronize musicians and thus affect musical trends of the day. Works like Castiglione's served as handbooks for the nobility to know the uses of music.[3]
Two decades ago, Wallin et al. (1999) opened a new page in the quest for the origins of music by integrating the methodologies and data coming from numerous disciplines:
- physical anthropology
- Paleo neurobiology
- ethology
- biocultural evolution
- systematic musicology
- semiotics
- historical linguistics
- developmental psychology
This volume updates this multi-disciplinary approach by further advancing the fields defined by Wallin et al. and by introducing and specifying new fields of inquiry:
- organology
- musicological analysis
- Geo musicology
- demography
- information theory
- statistic modeling
- (paleo)aesthetics
- (paleo)phonology
- biological motion
In addition, this volume addresses a number of interdisciplinary problems that were identified by the contributing authors. The latter issue has recently become critical: the very idea of the multidisciplinary study of music has been questioned. There is a growing conviction amongst Western scholars of ethnomusicological background that humanities and sciences are fundamentally split, and the scientific approach somehow introduces an “anti-humanitarian” bias (Parncutt, 2017). According to this view, specialists in sciences should adjust their methodologies to comply with the conventions of political correctness currently adopted by many Western specialists in musicology and social sciences. This view exploits the argument that the public trust in science supports the “scientific hegemony” in an ongoing cultural “warfare” between disciplines of art and science, thereby precluding the advance in human knowledge (Cohen, 2001). This argument was introduced half a century ago in a popular book by Snow (1964). Despite being convincingly debunked by Wilson (1998) and Gould (2003), it resurfaced again in the ideology of “new mysterianism,” propagated by Chomsky (2016) and McGinn (2015). Their intellectual weight has made the call for “humanizing” science more appealing to scientists.[3]
Ways of studying the music[edit]
Musicology embraces the many different ways of studying music:
- as part of history (analogous to art history), organized by
- chronological era or period ("the Renaissance")
- nation or region (American music, South Asian music)
- musical style ("art music," "popular music")
- the people involved (composers, performers, audiences)
- The performance forces involved (symphony orchestra, soloists)
- as part of society (sociology or anthropology of music)
- with respect to its structure (music theory, music analysis)
- with respect to how it functions as art (music aesthetics, philosophy of music)
- with respect to how it is perceived (music perception and cognition)
- with respect to the means of performance (the study of musical instruments, acoustics, physiology of voice)[4]
