2022/09/18 by Patrick E. Savage · 1 voice · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Diverse Musicological Studies #Musicology and Musical Analysis #Music History and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.31234/osf.io/b36fm
What is music, and why did it evolve? How can we understand the unity and diversity found throughout the world’s music? Scientific attempts to answer these questions through cross-cultural comparison stalled during the 20th century and have only recently begun to make a resurgence. In this book, a leader in this resurgence synthesizes recent advances to outline theoretical and methodological frameworks to understand and compare all of the world’s music. Taking advantage of new scientific theories and methods – particularly from psychology, anthropology, computer science, and cultural evolution – he applies comparative musicology to longstanding debates about universal aspects of human music, language, and animal song and their coevolution, as well as to contemporary applications including music copyright law, UNESCO policy, social bonding, and cross-cultural understanding. In doing so, he argues for an inclusive, multidisciplinary field that uplifts traditionally marginalised voices and combines the qualitative methods traditionally employed by musicologists and cultural anthropologists with quantitative methods from the natural sciences. The chapters are designed to be readable/teachable on their own, and the book a includes a simplified tutorial (Ch. 2) and historical overview (Ch. 3) so that it can be appreciated by anyone from undergraduate students to senior professors, without requiring any specialised background knowledge (e.g., previous knowledge of music notation, ethnomusicology, statistics, biology, etc. are not required).