Handbook

Subject Area: Music

Any musicological investigation requires a sound understanding of sources and methods, and this course will provide you with that understanding. Since the course is core to the Musicology Stream, inquiry itself is the primary focus. The course therefore begins with questions: how do musicologists conceive of the music they listen to? how are those conceptions communicated to others? how do ideas about music change historically? what methods have been developed to hone musical ideas? The aim of musicology is always to persuade others of how you hear music, whether your approach to music is through biographical study, manuscript study (paleography, editions, publication history and considerations, marked scores), primary source study, analysis, organology, iconography, criticism, aesthetics, hermeneutics, reception history, performance studies, transcription, music psychology, or ethnography. To better understand hearing, we will study how others have listened to music, and how that listening has formed both musicological writing and newly created music.