Musicology: Musicology as a Research Discipline

What is research? And what does it mean to do research in musicology – be it in popular music studies, sound studies, historical musicology or musical anthropology?

During this course we will discuss general, epistemological questions, various research practices, as well as the very practical tasks required to conduct research on music and sound at the current state of musicology.

We will therefore explore a wide variety of methods from the areas of musical anthropology, sound studies, and music history.

This journey through a number of highly diverse methods and their achievements allows the students to learn:

- How to detect the particular issues at stake in a given research field.

- How to find an area of research interest in a particular research field.

- How to find a research gap based on the current state of research in this area.

- How to find the appropriate research method and how to work critically with this method.

- How to address and work with the limits each research method has.

- How to present the research result in an adequate form.

We will discuss relevant texts, you will receive basic introductions, we will listen to, watch and discuss selected examples, there will be individual and group work, guest contributors and excursions.