Abstract

In the last two decades an important shift has occurred in music research, that is, from music as an art (or art object) to music as a process in which the performer, the listener, and music as sound play a central role. This transformation is most notable in the field of systematic musicology, which developed from “a mere extension of musicology” into a “complete reorientation of the discipline to fundamental questions which are non-historical in nature, [encompassing] research into the nature and properties of music as an acoustical, psychological and cognitive phenomenon” (Duckles & Pasler, 2001). Three recent strands of music research will be briefly discussed, namely empirical, computational, and cognitive musicology. They will be interpreted in the context of the “cognitive revolution” in the humanities and the sciences.

Abstract

In the early twentieth century systematic musicology, which was based on the comparative method, played a prominent role in the discipline: however it was appropriated by the Nazis and fell out of favour after the war. It was replaced by ethnomusicology and structuralist music theory, both of which emphasized the individual context (cultural or structural) and eschewed comparison between contexts. Both also developed an epistemology based on the generation of meaning through the act of “experiencing and understanding music” (Titon 1997: 87): this epistemology, characteristic of cultural musicology and theory (CMT) in general, is quite distinct from that of the cognitive sciences of music (CSM). The otherwise confusing variety of musicological practices subsumed under the category “systematic musicology”, as set out in Honing's article on which this is a commentary, can be usefully seen in terms of two distinct dimensions, those of method and of epistemology. It follows from this that empirical methods are as consistent with, and as potentially valuable to, CMT as they are to CSM, and that EMR has the potential to reach both constituencies.

Abstract

Empiricism should not be seen to provide an overarching criterion of meaningfulness for musicological concepts nor a single comprehensive methodology for music research. Understood as methodological concern with observation (perception, experience, etc.), it is rather a possible orientation that may receive various degrees of emphasis. Empiricism is not opposed to theoretical systematization, but it can rather be seen as an inclination towards theories which are capable of empirical adequacy. The empirical, or observational component of research may nevertheless be understood in slightly different ways, depending on whether there is only one observer (or many), and depending on whether the observations are treated as falling within a single category (or not). It is argued that either the observer or the observational category has to be assumed constant in order that the research may be called truly empirical. It is also argued that such decisions concerning empirical methodology naturally correspond to distinctions between subdisciplines of empirical musicology, each of them associated with different research interests. Three such orientations are discussed: historico-analytical empiricism, psychological empiricism, and systematic empiricism.

Abstract

Erkki Huovinen's “Varieties of Musicological Empiricism” provides a valuable analysis of some of the theoretical predicaments raised by pursuing an empirical musicology. But in this commentary, I argue for a less programmatic, and more pragmatic, approach to the term than he does. Empirical approaches in musicology have been around in one form or another for a long time, and the purpose of the label is less to identify a new ‘brand’ of musicology than to bring together a diversity of approaches that in different ways capitalise on the opportunities that data collection (in the broadest sense of the term) may provide. If programme is set aside in favour of pragmatism, and a looser relationship between theory and observation accepted, then empirical musicology can be a productive way to rub ideas up against a stimulatingly resistant world.