bug juice

Introducing yourself as a musicologist at a party is always a bold move. There’s a few seconds of confusion, especially if the person you’re speaking to automatically translates what you said to ‘psychology’¹. All my accountants, lawyers, and (I guess) psychologists out there; what’s it like to go through life just casually mentioning your job description and moving on? Get back to me, I want to know. 

When it finally clicks (yes, that’s correct, mus-ic-ol-o-gy), there’s a few ways it can go. Typically, it sounds something like this;

Them: “Oh- wow! That’s so cool. So you play an instrument? What do you play?”

Me, sighing internally: “Oh well yes, thanks, I play piano.”

Them: “That’s great. I took lessons when I was a kid, but I hated it.”

Me, knowing we’re barreling towards a misunderstanding and unable to correct the course: “Hmmm, shame. Sorry to hear.”

“So do you perform? What kind of music do you play?”

“Oh all kinds, you know, I’m mostly self-taught.”

“Oh…wait. So what did you do in university?”

“Well, it was actually an academic degree, not a performance degree, so, you know…”

Spoiler: they don’t know, and I spend the next few minutes trying to give them the short version of what I did in uni, while their eyes glaze over. 

After we spiral inward in this manner, generally what I end up telling people who make it this far is something like; musicology is the history, theory and science surrounding music. It’s interesting that many people don’t think of music at all like a science; I guess why would you? I sometimes² find that the lovely person at which I’m yelling this information over the chatter, laughter, and general cacophony has never really thought about the deeper processes of how music comes to be. Of course, just like any other thing, once you start wrapping your brain around putting music in this context, you begin to understand the enormity of the subject. If it’s still giving them a hard time, I’ll compare it to a more scientific field and let them make their own associations. It’s practically infinite. 

So what actually is musicology? Google says it’s “the study of music as an academic subject, as distinct from training in performance or composition; scholarly research into music”, which I honestly just found out today, right now, while writing this blog post. That’s pretty good, maybe I should start using that instead of the whole complex cinnamon bun I just described. ‘Scholarly’ is a tough word to sell at a party, but maybe I can make it work. 

Practically, the way that I think about it, it’s picking a topic in the vast world of music, niching down until it’s a fragment of a fragment of the original topic, and then doing a deep dive. For those familiar, this is perhaps describing academia in general. Yeah, musicology is…academia. Only music is so deeply prevalent in our lives that, by its nature, musicology is an incredibly interdisciplinary field, like most of the Humanities. Think about it- even studying ‘just theory’ requires³ an intimate knowledge of the culture and background in which the theory was cultivated. If you study pop music, you may also be studying culture and counterculture- in fact, you definitely are, consciously or circumlocutorily. Even more practical skills like music production, especially mixing and mastering (let alone recording the actual sounds) are a study in physics, acoustics, and history. 

In higher degrees of education, musicology is generally split into three or four tracks or categories; Music History, Music Theory, Ethnomusicology, and Composition. Why it’s still called ethnomusicology in 2023 is a whole ‘nother subject- another blog post for another day⁴. Composition is slightly different than the first three, and does require you to actually write music, as opposed to just reading and writing paper after paper. There are other categories which can be included under ‘musicology’, such as the science of acoustics, music education, music in advertising, music in New Media, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s a developing field of course, and these subjects can be, and are, studied under the aforementioned umbrellas, but this is the current way of fracturing the areas of study. I myself am a historical musicologist, specifically. The overlap is fairly obvious, and if you pursue an MA or a PhD in musicology, you study a bit of everything.

Here are some practical examples of what a musicologist may explore in their research- 

Historical Musicology: anything and everything from studying the great western composers (their lives, music, and how the two intertwine), to delving into ‘war’ or ‘protest’ music (music created in and around conflicts, its uses and influences), to the development of jazz, etc. Most historical musicologists will focus on a specific era or genre. 

Music Theory: the nitty-gritty inner workings of music. This can be musical analysis, acoustic theory, describing the actual forms and patterns of different musics⁵, understanding the mathematics of harmony, tuning systems, rhythm and notation, and so on. 

Ethnomusicology: ethnomusicology kind of used to mean studying music that wasn’t Western- eh, I know. Now, the term generally means studying music ‘in it’s cultural context’ or taking a more global approach, i.e. “encompassing all geographic areas and types of music”⁶. This can include doing fieldwork in a specific community (think Indiana Jones, only hopefully minus the stealing of precious relics), most famously communities without formal documentation of their musical practices (we love writing stuff down in academia, what can I say). Ethnomusicologists may work closely with anthropologists, as you might imagine.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg. I know a very cool person studying the music of TikTok. That means she’s studying a developing musical phenomenon in real time. It’s so cool, I know⁷. A guy at my university was doing a really interesting study on how musicians improvise, using neurological research and equipment to track what goes on in the performer’s brain as they play their instrument. My recent paper was about secondary witness, representation, and aestheticism in Holocaust art music⁸. 

My all-time favorite follow up question is “So what do you do with a PhD in musicology?”⁹ The applications of this kind of research are all over the map. Generally, though, we research, write, and lecture. Does that mean musicology only exists to endlessly self-perpetuate? No.¹⁰ Definitely not.¹¹ Though you don’t need an in-depth knowledge of music theory and music history to actually play music, I am of the strong opinion that learning these kinds of things as a musician greatly enhances your practice and appreciation of the craft. Also, putting aside the ivory-tower-gatekeeping-naval-gazing academic stereotypes for a minute, practical applications of musicological research are many, varied, and relevant in real life situations. Copyright law¹², music therapy, marketing, political campaigns, acoustic engineering, and of course, the entertainment industry; all these fields benefit from musicological findings, and the list goes on. This is all besides for the completely true, verified, unassailable fact that it’s just so goddamn interesting. 

So the next time you put on your favorite song, recognize a famous jingle for a famous product, find yourself dancing at a party¹³, ask yourself some questions. How did this music get like this, and why do I like it? What are they trying to sell me? What is reverb? Why do I feel patriotic when this person gets on the podium? How does my body know to move in 4/4, but maybe not 5/4? That’s musicology. If you want to know more, you can find me on this blog, in the library, or at a cafe somewhere drinking my fifth cup of coffee and trying to explain to some poor, unsuspecting soul the difference between Baroque, Classical and Romantic. See you there. 

footnotes

1.  Happens probably 70% of the time, no cap. return
2. Usually return
3. I mean, maybe ‘requires’ is a strong word. It certainly helps. I guess it’s not required per say, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a student of 4-part writing and harmonic analysis who doesn’t know anything about Bach. return
4. It has a lot to do with a Western-centric philosophy of musicological study which has roots in the methodologies of anthropology born in the previous two centuries- like I said, don’t get me started. return
5. Yep, that is the correct delineation. return
6. https://www.ethnomusicology.org/page/AboutEthnomusicol return
7. Said the huge fucking nerd. return
8. NERDDD return
9. I’m kidding, please don’t ask me this question at a party. return
10.  Well… return
11. Maybe a little. return
12. Can anyone own a piece of music? Discuss. return
13. If you look closely, I’m there in the corner, trying to justify my education. return