1 What is musicology?

Put simply, musicology is the study of music and can therefore relate to anything that might be labelled as music. Music is, however, notoriously difficult to define, so it is not surprising that the study of music encompasses various approaches and perspectives. In the last one hundred years, Western musicology has moved from being dominated by a focused study of musical works and their composers to embrace a wide range of musical styles and activities, as well as adopting theoretical and methodological approaches from a broad range of disciplines. Musicology is not just focused on musical texts (i.e. notated music) but includes all the practices, ideas and cultural contexts surrounding music and its production and reception.

In this course, you will find the term ‘musicology’ used to refer to all aspects of music studies, studying all kinds of music. Musicology thus defined is distinct from other aspects of studying or practising music, such as performance or composition, but encompasses all types of music and musical practices from all cultures and historical periods. The course uses the term ‘musical practices’ because musicological study isn’t restricted to studying pieces of music and their structures and meanings, but can include the ways music is discussed or written about, related elements such as the economics and production of music, and scientific approaches such as the psychology or acoustics of music and sound. Although this sounds inclusive of everything, all the authors of this course work within the context of a British university (though we come from a range of national, social and academic backgrounds). This means that the perspectives you will meet in this course are largely those of contemporary Western musicology.

It is worth noting that ‘musicology’ can be a contentious term, because it carries the baggage of its narrow tradition. Some scholars who work on research in music do not wish to be known as musicologists. It also has specific meanings in different cultures. In the United Kingdom, musicology is often used as an umbrella term as described above. In North American writings about music, you will often find a distinction made between historical musicology (the history of music and musical practices), music theory (the study of how music is constructed) and ethnomusicology (the study of music cultures). You may also encounter the term ‘systematic musicology’, frequently used in central Europe, which refers to a range of subdisciplines including music psychology, acoustics, music theory, and the philosophy of music. Complicating matters further, the word ‘musicology’ is often used as a shortened form of ‘historical musicology’. You may find it useful, as you work through the course, to think about the differences between the approaches taken, and where your own disciplinary identity might lie.

Western music scholarship has been and remains susceptible to development, change and fashion. The concerns, methods and culture of music scholarship have undergone an important expansion and transformation since the nineteenth century, and debates have taken place about the nature, methods and scope of musicology. Some of these changes have been influenced by shifts in other areas of scholarship; from the mid-twentieth century, for example, the development of social, cultural and economic history led to the introduction of these perspectives on music history, while the incorporation of anthropological methods into the study of music helped to consolidate ethnomusicology as a distinct subdiscipline. As you will see as you work your way through this course, debates over the direction and scope of musicology continue to challenge the discipline, often in response to areas of inclusion and exclusion, and changes in priorities and perspectives.