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MusicologyMusicology "is 'the scientific study of music'" (Greek: musike = music and logos = word).
As "it 'must include every conceivable discussion of musical topics'," musicologists may study quite a wide range of subjects. Some, for instance, may specialise in English Tudor church music, others in the history of musical notation and others in the development of the flute. What is music? Quid est musica? What is music? is the first and historical question of musicology. Through it, we can find the three sub disciplines of present musicology. 1. What is music? What structures of sound can we call music? How have the ideas and practices of music developed in different cultures and ages? Which pieces and systems of music can we form a body of knowledge from, because they have survived in notated, recorded or remembered form? These questions lead to the study of music history (see also below). 2. What is music? What is possible to know about the internal logic and functioning of this we call music? How shall we describe it? Notate it? Analyze it? What ideas and systems of meaning have been associated with music in different cultures and ages? These questions lead to the study of music theory (see also below). 3. What is music? What is it doing in the human world? How it is used? These questions about the place of music in society, leads to the study of ethnomusicology (see also below). Ethnomusicology Ethnomusicology is the study of music in its cultural context. It can be considered the anthropology of music. Jeff Todd Titon has called it the study of "people making music". It is often thought of as a study of non-Western musics, but may include the study of Western music from an anthropological perspective.
Other theories and disciplines The new musicologyThe New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of work produced by many musicologists who consider themselves neither new nor New. Often based on the work of Theodor Adorno and feminist, gender studies, or postcolonial hypotheses, the New Musicology is the cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music. As Susan McClary says, "musicology fastidiously declares issues of musical signification off-limits to those engaged in legitimate scholarship Biomusicology and zoomusicologyBiomusicology is the study of music from a biological point of view. Zoomusicology is a field of musicology and zoology or more specifically, zoosemiotics. Zoomusicology is the study of the music of animals, or rather the musical aspects of sound or communication produced and received by animals. Criticism Musicology, "with a few exceptions (mostly recent)" has not studied popular music. "As a general rule works of musicology, theoretical or historical, act as though popular music did not exist." Musicologists who are "both contemptuous and condescending are looking for types of production, musical form, and listening which they associate with a different kind of music...'classical music'...and they generally find popular music lacking" (Middleton 1990, p.103).
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