Systematic musicology
Encyclopedia
Systematic musicology is an umbrella term
, used mainly in Central Europe
, for several subdisciplines and paradigms of musicology
. These subdisciplines and paradigms tend to address questions about music
in general, rather than specific manifestations of music.
In the European tripartite model of musicology, musicology is regarded as a combination of three broad subdisciplines: ethnomusicology
, historical musicology and systematic musicology. Ethnomusicology and historical musicology are primarily concerned with specific manifestations of music such as performances, works, traditions, genres, and the people who produce and engage with them (musicians, composers, social groups). Systematic musicology is different in that it tends not to put these specific manifestations in the foreground, although it of course refers to them. Instead, more general questions are asked about music. These questions tend to be answered either by analysing empirical data (based on observation) or by developing theory - or better, by a combination of both. The 19th-century positivist dream of discovering "laws" of music (by analogy to "laws" in other disciplines such as physics; cf. Adler, 1885), and of defining the discipline of systematic musicology in terms of such laws, slowly evaporated. Ideological trends stemming from modernism
and later post-structuralism
fundamentally altered the nature of the project.
Since systematic musicology brings together several parent disciplines, it is often regarded as being intrinsically interdisciplinary, or as a system of interacting subdisciplines (hence the alternative name "systematic"). However, most systematic musicologists focus on just one or a select few of the many subdisciplines. Founded on the paradigms of the humanities, systematic musicologists often make reference to fields such as aesthetics
, sociology
, semiotics
, hermeneutics and music criticism
, as well as media
, cultural
and gender studies
. A complementary set of methodologies from sciences is often employed. This is primarily empirical and data-oriented, often being influenced by approaches taken from disciplines such as empirical psychology
and sociology
; acoustics
and psychoacoustics
; physiology
and cognitive science
.
More recently emerged areas of research which at least partially are in the scope of systematic musicology comprise cognitive musicology
, neuromusicology, biomusicology
, music cognition
and embodied music cognition
, music technology
, music information retrieval
, and musical robotics.
Systematic musicology is less unified than its sister disciplines historical musicology and ethnomusicology. Its contents and methods are more diverse and tend to be more closely related to parent disciplines, both academic and practical, outside of musicology. The diversity of systematic musicology is to some extent compensated for by interdisciplinary interactions within the system of subdisciplines that make it up.
The origins of systematic musicology in Europe can be traced to ancient Greece. Historical musicology and ethnomusicology are much younger disciplines, and the relative importance of the three has fluctuated considerably during the past few centuries. Today, musicology's three broad subdisciplines are of approximately equal size in terms of the volume of research activity.
Umbrella term
An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of concepts that all fall under a single common category. Umbrella term is also called a hypernym. For example, cryptology is an umbrella term that encompasses cryptography and cryptanalysis, among other fields...
, used mainly in Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
, for several subdisciplines and paradigms of musicology
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
. These subdisciplines and paradigms tend to address questions about music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
in general, rather than specific manifestations of music.
In the European tripartite model of musicology, musicology is regarded as a combination of three broad subdisciplines: ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
, historical musicology and systematic musicology. Ethnomusicology and historical musicology are primarily concerned with specific manifestations of music such as performances, works, traditions, genres, and the people who produce and engage with them (musicians, composers, social groups). Systematic musicology is different in that it tends not to put these specific manifestations in the foreground, although it of course refers to them. Instead, more general questions are asked about music. These questions tend to be answered either by analysing empirical data (based on observation) or by developing theory - or better, by a combination of both. The 19th-century positivist dream of discovering "laws" of music (by analogy to "laws" in other disciplines such as physics; cf. Adler, 1885), and of defining the discipline of systematic musicology in terms of such laws, slowly evaporated. Ideological trends stemming from modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
and later post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
fundamentally altered the nature of the project.
Since systematic musicology brings together several parent disciplines, it is often regarded as being intrinsically interdisciplinary, or as a system of interacting subdisciplines (hence the alternative name "systematic"). However, most systematic musicologists focus on just one or a select few of the many subdisciplines. Founded on the paradigms of the humanities, systematic musicologists often make reference to fields such as aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
, hermeneutics and music criticism
Music criticism
See also Music journalism for reporting on classical and popular music in the media.The Oxford Companion to Music defines music criticism as 'the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres'. In this...
, as well as media
Media studies
Media studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass...
, cultural
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
and gender studies
Gender studies
Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyses race, ethnicity, sexuality and location.Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one"...
. A complementary set of methodologies from sciences is often employed. This is primarily empirical and data-oriented, often being influenced by approaches taken from disciplines such as empirical psychology
Music psychology
Music psychology,or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of psychology or a branch of musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behavior and musical experience...
and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
; acoustics
Acoustics
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
and psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound...
; physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
and cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
.
More recently emerged areas of research which at least partially are in the scope of systematic musicology comprise cognitive musicology
Cognitive musicology
Cognitive musicology is a branch of Cognitive Science concerned with computationally modeling musical knowledge with the goal of understanding both music and cognition. More broadly, it can be considered the set of all phenomena surrounding computational modeling of musical thought and action...
, neuromusicology, biomusicology
Biomusicology
Biomusicology is the study of music from a biological point of view. The term was coined by Nils L. Wallin in 1991. Music is an aspect of the behaviour of the human and possibly other species...
, music cognition
Music cognition
Music cognition is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mental processes that support musical behaviors, including perception, comprehension, memory, attention, and performance...
and embodied music cognition
Embodied music cognition
Embodied music cognition is a direction within systematic musicology interested in studying the role of the human body in relation to all musical activities....
, music technology
Music technology
Music technology is a term that refers to all forms of technology involved with the musical arts, particularly the use of electronic devices and computer software to facilitate playback, recording, composition, storage and performance. This subject is taught at many different educational levels,...
, music information retrieval
Music information retrieval
Music information retrieval is the interdisciplinary science of retrieving information from music. MIR is a small but growing field of research with many real-world applications...
, and musical robotics.
Systematic musicology is less unified than its sister disciplines historical musicology and ethnomusicology. Its contents and methods are more diverse and tend to be more closely related to parent disciplines, both academic and practical, outside of musicology. The diversity of systematic musicology is to some extent compensated for by interdisciplinary interactions within the system of subdisciplines that make it up.
The origins of systematic musicology in Europe can be traced to ancient Greece. Historical musicology and ethnomusicology are much younger disciplines, and the relative importance of the three has fluctuated considerably during the past few centuries. Today, musicology's three broad subdisciplines are of approximately equal size in terms of the volume of research activity.
Further Reading
- Clarke, Eric, & Cook, Nicholas (Eds.) (2004). Empirical musicology: Aims, methods, prospects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Dahlhaus, Carl (1997). Musikwissenschaft und Systematische Musikwissenschaft. In C. Dahlhaus & H. de la Motte-Haber (Eds.), Systematische Musikwissenschaft. Laaber, Germany: Laaber-Verlag.
- Elschek, Oskar (1993). Systematische Musikwissenschaft und Persönlichkeitsgeschichte. Systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1/2, 309-338.
- Fricke, Jobst Peter (2003). Systemische Musikwissenschaft. In K. W. Niemöller & B. Gätjen (Eds.), Perspektiven und Methoden einer Systemischen Musikwissenschaft (pp. 13-23). Frankfurt: Lang.
- Honing, Henkjan (2004). The comeback of systematic musicology: New empiricism and the cognitive revolution. Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie [Dutch Journal of Music Theory], 9(3), 241-244. http://www.nici.kun.nl/mmm/papers/honing-2004f.pdf
- Honing, Henkjan (2006). On the growing role of observation, formalization and experimental method in musicology. Empirical Musicology Review, 1 (1). https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/21901/1/EMR000002a-honing.pdf
- Huron, David (1999). The new empiricism: Systematic musicology in a postmodern age. Lecture 3 from the 1999 Ernest Bloch Lectures. http://musiccog.ohio-state.edu/Music220/Bloch.lectures/3.Methodology.html
- Jiranek, Jaroslav (1993). Innerdisziplinäre Beziehungen der Musikwissenschaft. Systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1/2, 128-130.
- Leman, Marc, & Schneider, Albrecht (1997). Systematic, cognitive and historical approaches in musicology. In M. Leman (Ed.), Music, Gestalt, and computing (pp. 13-29). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
- Leman, M. (2008). Systematic musicology at the crossroads of modern music research. In A. Schneider (Ed.), Systematic and Comparative Musicology: Concepts, Methods, Findings (pp. 89-115). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. http://cf.hum.uva.nl/mmm/debat/leman.pdf
- Motte-Haber, Helga de la (1997). Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Systematischen Musikwissenschaft. In C. Dahlhaus & H. de la Motte-Haber (Eds.), Systematische Musikwissenschaft (pp. 1-24). Laaber, Germany: Laaber-Verlag.
- Parncutt, R. (2007). Systematic musicology and the history and future of Western musical scholarship. Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, 1, 1-32. http://www.musicstudies.org/first%20issue/FULL/Systematic_Musicology_PARNCUTT(1-32).pdf
- Schneider, Albrecht (1993). Systematische Musikwissenschaft: Traditionen, Ansätze, Aufgaben. Systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1/2, 145-180.
- Schumacher, R. (2003). "Systematische Musikwissenschaft": Eine Stellungnahme aus der Perspektive der Musikethnologie. In K. W. Niemöller & B. Gätjen (Eds.), Perspektiven und Methoden einer Systemischen Musikwissenschaft (pp. 41-48). Frankfurt: Lang.