Musicology is a systematic study of music in all of its forms of appearance. Musicology exists as an academic discipline that studies primarily composed and notated music, and is taught in universities across the world.
Musicology, as a discrete field of study, has its origins in an article by Guido Adler published in 1883 in Germany. It set out a manifesto for the systematic and analytic study of music, and many of the points and methods outlined by him continue to be the modus operandi for musicologists worldwide.
One prominent discipline which grew out of traditional musicology is ethnomusicology, or the study of music as culture. Whereas musicology tends to study works of music that are notated on scores, the individuals and history that created such works, ethnomusicology studies the music of the world, as an act of cultural expression.
Another offshoot discipline is popular music studies, which takes conventional musicology methods and applies them to modern popular music. Popular music studies also borrows methods from other academic disciplines such as critical theory, feminist discourses, and gender and media studies.
Please only submit English language sites that pertain to the academic discipline of Musicology. Non-English sites must be published in the World/ hierarchy.
Private music homepages (i.e., bands, promoters, clubs, fan clubs) should not be submitted to Arts/Music/Musicology.
Sites of academic departments, schools and teachers of musicology.
Ethnomusicology is the study of music as culture. As an academic discipline, it is an outgrowth of systematic musicology, which combined methods of Cultural Anthropology with those of Western Musicology. What denotes Ethnomusicology is less the type of music studied, but the focus on the relation of music to its cultural and social aspects.
Ethnomusicologists study concepts including:
- Musical instruments of the world
- History and development of specific music traditions
- Demographic analysis of people who belong to a musical tradition
- Archiving and recording of traditional musics
- Cross-cultural musical developments, and changes in performance practice, musical venues, and cultural context.
Though ethnomusicology began as a splinter group from the American Musicological Society in the early 1950s, it currently is practiced in many forms worldwide.
Please only submit sites that pertain to the academic study of Ethnomusicology. Sites about specific world music traditions (i.e., Turkish music pages) should be submitted either in the appropriate subcategory of
Arts/Music/Styles/Regional_and_Ethnic.
Online and print publications about or by the musicology world.
Personal sites for professional musicologists. Also, sites pertaining to the work of individual musicologists.
This category is for sites or pages about associations, societies, and organizations whose primary purpose is to promote musicological study.
A discipline that grew out of cultural and ethnic studies, mass communications, musicology, and ethnomusicology, popular music studies strives to understand our perception of what makes music popular and unpopular. Originally a forum for studying the neglected practices of rock 'n' roll and pop, it grew to include substantial research on heavy metal, hip hop, urban dance music, and popular music in diverse locations such as Bollywood, the Caribbean, and Thailand.
Please only submit sites that pertain to the academic study of popular musics - popular music scholars, university degree programs, peer-reviewed journals, and professional organizations.