Matthew Lynch - St Hughs College, Oxford 01/11/2008

What is Musicology? A Review-Article of J.P.E. Harper-Scott and Jim Samson, eds., An Introduction to Music Studies. Musicology is a field of study which can be looked at from many different angles. It can be studied in a variety of different ways, as an arts subject, a humanity or a social science, or even as a mathematical or scientific discipline. Opinion over what type of discipline musicology is even differs within the academic community, with scholars sometimes criticising the approaches of other researchers. However, most consider their particular area of specialism to be just a small part of a vast field of study, which can appear to have no concrete boundaries.

J.P.E Harper-Scott and Jim Samsons (eds.) book An Introduction to Music Studies (2008) presents musicology from a vast array of different scholarly positions linking it to other disciplines such as sociology, literary theory, mathematics and economics, and drawing all these approaches together creating a picture of musicology as an interdisciplinary field which cannot be separated from the other subject areas that affect it. Elizabeth Eva Leach and Henry Stobart, in their chapters on popular music and world music respectively, even discuss how these non-traditional areas of musicological research were in fact not studied by musicologists at first, with musical research in these areas being left to sociologists and anthropologists until well into the twentieth century, demonstrating how music can be studied as a pure social science, divorced from analysis and the concept of studying music on its own terms.

Matthew Lynch - St Hughs College, Oxford 01/11/2008

As a general introduction to musicology An Introduction to Music Studies functions rather like a series of specialised versions of Nicholas Cooks Music: A Very Short Introduction. Rather than giving the reader the tools with which to commence musical study and research, it presents each area as a discipline, pointing out the issues which arise whilst studying it, the other disciplines that must be understood in order to study it, and how it links in with the other fields of musicology. For example, in her chapter on Music theory and analysis, Rachel Beckles Willson mentions how theory and analysis link into historical study, for the categorisation of styles and historical periods depend on analysis of different works and subsequent generalisations about their analyses.

The view presented by Harper-Scott and Samsons book is in fact almost identical to that presented by Cook in his earlier work, if put across in a less revolutionary fashion. While Cook shows musicology as a discipline which has not caught up with the advances of society, Harper-Scott and Samson present it a constantly evolving field of study with an immense history of research and scholarship, a similar, if not identical, view put across in differing ways. Cook clearly sees his book corrective to the tunnel vision of...university research (Thomson, 1998), although the apparent neglect of the music itself during his presentation of musicology risks losing its message in over-abstraction, like discussing an art exhibition without referring to the art.

Matthew Lynch - St Hughs College, Oxford 01/11/2008

Even within An Introduction to Music Studies there is a level of tension between the individual chapters. While all scholars clearly have a great deal of knowledge of the book as a whole, they do have slightly differing ideas about how their area fits into the bigger picture, and what extra-musical disciplines fit into musicology, even about what areas are parts of musicology itself. One such tension can be found between most chapters of part 2 and the opening chapters. In his chapter on Concert Music, Erik Levi talks about the function of patrons within the history of western concert music, thus inextricably linking the development of the music to the socio-political climate at the time of composition. Andrew Bowie similarly links Jazz to its social and political history and Elizabeth Eva Leach discusses how popular music has been studied as an aspect of the society of which it is a part. Despite all this linking of music and culture Jim Samson takes a seemingly contrary view in the opening chapter, seemingly divorcing the stylistic and social aspects of the historical study of music: Stylistic histories and social histories tend in opposing directions, the former towards an affirmation of the cannon and the latter towards its deconstruction. While not representing contrary view points there is clearly a level of tension between linking the stylistic with the sociological and keeping them in separate, if complimentary, camps.

Matthew Lynch - St Hughs College, Oxford 01/11/2008

Another tension in the book is the view of what is being studied. Music is always difficult to define, but in his chapter on Music History Jim Samson talks about musicology as the study of a performing art, an idea that seems to have been lost in certain areas of musicology today. Although all chapters of the book refer to performance on some level they seem to do so for differing reasons. While Rachel Beckles Willson clearly sees analysis as a means of aiding performance, and enlightening the listener, Katherine Ellis and John Rink see the social structures and psychology of modern performance practices as areas of study. Stephen Rose, in his chapter on Early Music, recognises the dual role of scholarship within performance, to both inform and criticise.

Overall it would appear that most camps are putting forward the view that musicology is some sort of humanity or social science. It is studied in relation to the people that produce, perform and consume it. However, the large area of musical analysis and theory doesnt appear to fit into this musicological framework with a great deal of ease. It is a far more mathematical and scientific area of study, which attempts to look at music in a purely subjective manner, leaving the objective arguments to other areas of the discipline. How then does this relate to music as a form of social study? In the preface to Introducing Music (1965) Ott Krolyi said that the uninformed listener is like the tourist who goes abroad for his holiday, enjoys the landscape, the gesticulations of the natives, and the sound of their voices, but cant understand a word they say. He feels, but he cannot understand. When viewed from this angle even the seemingly mathematical study of musical theory and analysis can be seen as a sociological study, providing a technical understanding of what makes music matter, what gives it meaning, and why it is so emotionally loaded.

Matthew Lynch - St Hughs College, Oxford 01/11/2008

It would be easy to conclude that there is no common thread of opinion as to what musicology is. However, Nicholas Cooks assertion that when we study music, we arent just studying something separate from us, something out there: there is a sense in which we are studying ourselves too really draws the many elements together. As J.P.E. HarperScott says in his introduction to his book, music will encourage you to make interdisciplinary connections and cross references between these many different approaches. Seen like this musicology is essentially a form of specialised sociology. While it is a truly interdisciplinary field we cannot fully consider music without a great deal of specialist knowledge, both musical and extra-musical. When we study music we are primarily studying its cultural role within society, past and present, why it has come to occupy that role and how it has developed.

Matthew Lynch - St Hughs College, Oxford 01/11/2008

Bibliography Cook, Nicholas. Music: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 1998

Harper-Scott, J.P.E An Introduction to Music Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge and Samson, Jim (eds.)University Press, 2008. Hensen, Karen Review of Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook. Music and Letters 80, No. 2, May 1999: 271-274 Any Old Music. Review of Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook. The Musical Times 138, No. 1851, 1997: 36 - 37 Musicology in Grove online

Thomson, Andrew