Musicology

Musicology is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although somemusic research is scientific in focus (psychological, sociological, acoustical, neurological, and computational). Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology, so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musicology research is a musicologist.

Musicology traditionally is divided in three main branches: historical musicology, systematic musicology, and ethnomusicology. Historical musicologists mostly study the history of tge so-called Western classical tradition, though the study of music history need not be limited to that. Ethnomusicologists  draw from anthropology (particularly field research) to understand how and why people make music. Systematic musicology includes music theory, aesthetics, pedagogy, musical acoustics, the science and technology of musical instruments, and the musical implications of physiology, psychology, sociology philosophy, and computing. Cognitive musicology is the set of phenomena surrounding the cognitive modeling of music. When musicologists carry out research using computers, their research often falls under the field of computational musicology. Music therapy is a specialized form of applied musicology which is sometines considered more closely affiliated with health fields, and other times regarded as part of musicology proper.

The 19th century philosophical trends that led to the re-establishment of formal musicology education in German and Austrian universities had combined methods of systematization with evolution. These models were established not only in the field of physical anthropology, but also cultural anthropology. This was influenced by Hegel's ideas on ordering "phenomena" from the simple to complex as the stages of evolution are classified from primitive to developed, and stages of history from ancient to modern. Comparative methods became more widespread in diverse disciplines from anatomy to Indo-European liguistics, and beginning around 1880, also in comparative musicology.

The parent disciplines of musicology include:

• General history
• Cultural studies
• Philosophy (particularly aesthetics and semiotics)
• Ethnology and cultural anthropology
• Archaelogy and prehistory
• Psychology and sociology
• Physiology and neuroscience
• Acoustics and psychoacoustics
• Computer/information sciences and mathematics

Musicology also has two central, practically oriented sub-disciplines with no parent discipline: performance practice and research (sometimes viewed as a form of artistic 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 architecture, linguistics, literature and theatre, religion and theology, and sport. Musical knowledge is applied in medicine, education, and music therapy--which, effectively, are parent disciplines of applied musicology.

x-----x

Picture from Pexels.