The Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology

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The Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology

• Promoting unity in diversity
• Richard Parncutt
• Department of Musicology, University of Graz

Approaches to Music Research between Practice
and Epistemology Department of Musicology,
University of Ljubljana, 8-9 May 2008
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The Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology

• CIM is a forum for constructive interaction among
  all subdisciplines or paradigms of musicology
• analytical, applied, comparative, cultural,
  empirical, ethnological, historical, popular,
  scientific, systematic, theoretic
• ...and all musically relevant disciplines
• acoustics, aesthetics, anthropology, archeology,
  art history and theory, biology, composition,
  computing, cultural studies, economics,
  education, ethnology, gender studies, history,
  linguistics, literary studies, mathematics,
  medicine, music theory and analysis,
  neurosciences, perception, performance,
  philosophy, physiology, prehistory,
  psychoacoustics, psychology, religious studies,
  semiotics, sociology, statistics, therapy

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The Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology

• CIM promotes interdisciplinary collaboration
  within musicology.
• All contributions have at least two authors. They
  represent at least two of the following three
  groups humanities, sciences, practically
  oriented disciplines.
• CIM focuses on quality rather than quantity.
• Academic standards are promoted by anonymous peer
  review of submitted abstracts by independent
  international experts in relevant (sub-)
  disciplines. The review procedure is transparent,
  and the reviews are impersonal and constructive.
• CIM promotes musicology's unity in diversity.
• CIM promotes all interdisciplinary music research
  and treats all musically relevant disciplines and
  musicological subdisciplines equally.

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Past and future CIMs
Year Theme City Host Director
2004 - Graz University of Graz Parncutt
2005 timbre Montréal Observatoire internationale de la création musicale Traube
2007 singing Tallinn Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Ross
2008 structure Thessa-loniki Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Cambou-ropoulos
2009 instru-ments France Université Pierre et Marie Curie Castellengo
2010 culture Sheffield University of Sheffield Dibben
Themes ? bottom-up unification of musicology
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Why CIM?

• Fragmentation of musicology
• Starkly contrasting epistemologies
• Institutional separation of subdisciplines
• Counterproductive power structures

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Fragmentation of musicologya semiquantitative
history of music research
historical
systematic
ethnological
1600 1700 1800
1900 2000
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Contrasting epistemologies
(historical) Musicology Ethnomusicology
music score part of culture
readership musicologists interdisciplinary
repertory lost disappearing
focus composer, score performance
concepts individual, idiosyncratic history, development musical autonomy formal unity culture, typical tradition, change social function cultural uniqueness
authority scholar informants
Source Jonathan Stock, Current Musicology, 1998
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Institutional separation of musicological
subdisciplines

• in-group (the musicology)
• music history
• music theory/analysis
• cultural studies

• intermediate
• ethnomusicology
• pop/jazz research
• music sociology
• music philosophy
• performance research

• out-group (Others)
• music acoustics
• music psychology
• music physiology
• music computing

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Power structures in musicology

• Ambiguous use of musicology
• broad definition all study of all music
• entries in Grove, MGG
• narrow music history of western cultural elites
• names of conferences journals, societies
• Academic status of humanities
• in universities too little power
• culture is underrated
• in musicology too much power
• sciences are underrated

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CIMs solution Integration

• multidisciplinary balance
• promotion of minority disciplines
• democracy, balance of power
• gender/culture balance
• women researchers
• non-western researchers
• collaboration
• teamwork and collegiality
• intra- and interdisciplinary quality control

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Aims of CIMs integration policies

• Productivity of musicology
• quality
• quantity
• Relevance of musicology
• social, cultural
• academic
• Musicologys unity in diversity
• completeness through inclusion
• musics
• disciplines
• researchers

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Collegiality in interdisciplinary research teams

• common goals
• research question
• excellence
• democracy
• equal value and rights of team members
• mutual respect
• transparency
• clear statement of aims
• openness to evaluation
• quality control
• evaluation within disciplines
• realistic appraisal of strengths, weaknesses
• mutual constructive criticism

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Some definitions

• Discipline
• Interdisciplinarity
• Musicology
• Musicologist

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Discipline Definition

• Content
• theme
• methods
• Experts
• qualifications
• success indicators
• Infrastructure
• conferences
• societies
• journals
• quality control

• Size
• expertise takes 10 years or 10 000 hours
  (Ericsson)
• Category boundaries
• fuzzy
• top-down vs bottom-up
• Interrelationships
• hierarchies
• networks

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Discipline Implications

• Musicology comprises several disciplines
• Their names and boundaries are in flux
• No individual can cover all musicology
• Collaboration is necessary

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Interdisciplinarity Definition

• continuous parameter
• matter of expert opinion
• distance difficulty
• epistemology
• methodology

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Interdisciplinarity Implications

• ID must be directly promoted
• ID infrastructures are necessary

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Musicology Definition

• All study of all music

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Musicology Questions

• Which music?
• aesthetically superior?
• easily studiable?
• own culture?
• Which study?
• music as behavior? experience?
• observables? instructions (scores)?
• historical development? cultural element?

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Musicologist

• specialisation in one subdiscipline
• acquaintance with all subdisciplines
• interdisciplinary collaboration
• Ethnomusicologist both ethnologist and
  musicologist
• Music acoustician both musicologist and
  acoustician

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Role of internal quality control

• Europeans cant evaluate Ghanaian music
• Psychologists cant evaluate historical research
• Musical subculture
• internal aesthetic norms
• procedures to promote good music
• Academic subdiscipline
• internal epistemological/methodological norms
• procedures to promote good research
• Definitions of music, its study, musicology

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Problems of CIM

• definition and use of musicology
• acceptance by different disciplines
• relationship aims ? procedures
• balance humanities, sciences, practice