Empirical Musicology Review: Volume 1, Number 1 (2006)

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https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/21899

Empirical Musicology Review Vol. 1, No. 1, 2006

Issue DOI: https://doi.org/10.18061/1811/21899

Editor's Note
Butler, David p. 1
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On the Growing Role of Observation, Formalization and Experimental Method in Musicology
Honing, Henkjan pp. 2-6
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Border Crossings: A Commentary on Henkjan Honing's "On the Growing Role of Observation, Formalization and Experimental Method in Musicology"
Cook, Nicholas pp. 7-11
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Varieties of Musicological Empiricism
Huovinen, Erkki pp. 12-27
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Commentary on Huovinen's "Varieties of Musical Empiricism"
Clarke, Eric F. pp. 28-32
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A Cognitive Approach to Medieval Mode: Evidence for an Historical Antecedent to the Major/Minor System
Huron, David; Veltman, Joshua pp. 33-55
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Comment on Huron and Veltman: Does a Cognitive Approach to Medieval Mode Make Sense?
Wiering, Frans pp. 56-60
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Comment on Huron and Veltman: Does a Cognitive Approach to Medieval Mode Make Sense?
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2006-01) Wiering, Frans
This commentary examines Huron and Veltman’s article from the perspective of historical musicology. The following issues are discussed: • The authors regard modes as conceptual categories of the medieval listener, which seems unlikely on historical and theoretical grounds. • Pitch class profiles are not a good way of capturing the melodic nature of the modes. • The diatonic rather than the chromatic scale should be employed as the reference pitch system for the modes. • The tentative explanation of the transition from modality to tonality ignores the fundamental differences between modes and keys, and the role of polyphony in this supposed transition. The article’s methodology, to apply quantitative methods to problems of historical musicology, is fundamentally sound, and suggestions are made in this commentary as to how its shortcomings can be amended by reformulating research questions and redesigning methods.
A Cognitive Approach to Medieval Mode: Evidence for an Historical Antecedent to the Major/Minor System
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2006-01) Huron, David; Veltman, Joshua
A random sample of 98 Gregorian chants was used to assemble “mode profiles”—pitch-class distributions for each of eight medieval modes in the manner of Krumhansl’s and Kessler’s (1982) key profiles. These profiles are shown to be useful in predicting the conventional modal designation for individual chants. An analysis of the eight mode profiles suggests that modes 3, 5 and 8 (Phrygian, Lydian and Hy-pomixolydian) are highly similar and can be distinguished from a more heterogeneous group consisting of the remaining modes. A cluster analysis of profiles for individual chants gives further evidence that these three modes form a supramodal category. The results are shown to be consistent with a theory of mode offered by the 11th-century writer, Johannes Cotto, who proposed that the tenor pitch is important in classifying modes. It is suggested that an observed polarization of the eight modes into two broad groups may have provided a cognitive kernel that facilitated the emergence of the major/minor system in the 17th century.
Varieties of Musicological Empiricism
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2006-01) Huovinen, Erkki
Empiricism should not be seen to provide an overarching criterion of meaningfulness for musicological concepts nor a single comprehensive methodology for music research. Understood as methodological concern with observation (perception, experience, etc.), it is rather a possible orientation that may receive various degrees of emphasis. Empiricism is not opposed to theoretical systematization, but it can rather be seen as an inclination towards theories which are capable of empirical adequacy. The empirical, or observational component of research may nevertheless be understood in slightly different ways, depending on whether there is only one observer (or many), and depending on whether the observations are treated as falling within a single category (or not). It is argued that either the observer or the observational category has to be assumed constant in order that the research may be called truly empirical. It is also argued that such decisions concerning empirical methodology naturally correspond to distinctions between subdisciplines of empirical musicology, each of them associated with different research interests. Three such orientations are discussed: historico-analytical empiricism, psychological empiricism, and systematic empiricism.
Border Crossings: A Commentary on Henkjan Honing's "On the Growing Role of Observation, Formalization and Experimental Method in Musicology"
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2006-01) Cook, Nicholas
In the early twentieth century systematic musicology, which was based on the comparative method, played a prominent role in the discipline: however it was appropriated by the Nazis and fell out of favour after the war. It was replaced by ethnomusicology and structuralist music theory, both of which emphasized the individual context (cultural or structural) and eschewed comparison between contexts. Both also developed an epistemology based on the generation of meaning through the act of "experiencing and understanding music" (Titon 1997: 87): this epistemology, characteristic of cultural musicology and theory (CMT) in general, is quite distinct from that of the cognitive sciences of music (CSM). The otherwise confusing variety of musicological practices subsumed under the category "systematic musicology", as set out in Honing's article on which this is a commentary, can be usefully seen in terms of two distinct dimensions, those of method and of epistemology. It follows from this that empirical methods are as consistent with, and as potentially valuable to, CMT as they are to CSM, and that EMR has the potential to reach both constituencies.
Commentary on Huovinen's "Varieties of Musical Empiricism"
(2006-01) Clarke, Eric F.
Erkki Huovinen’s “Varieties of Musicological Empiricism” provides a valuable analysis of some of the theoretical predicaments raised by pursuing an empirical musicology. But in this commentary, I argue for a less programmatic, and more pragmatic, approach to the term than he does. Empirical approaches in musicology have been around in one form or another for a long time, and the purpose of the label is less to identify a new ‘brand’ of musicology than to bring together a diversity of approaches that in different ways capitalise on the opportunities that data collection (in the broadest sense of the term) may provide. If programme is set aside in favour of pragmatism, and a looser relationship between theory and observation accepted, then empirical musicology can be a productive way to rub ideas up against a stimulatingly resistant world.
On the Growing Role of Observation, Formalization and Experimental Method in Musicology
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2006-01) Honing, Henkjan
In the last two decades an important shift has occurred in music research, that is, from music as an art (or art object) to music as a process in which the performer, the listener, and music as sound play a central role. This transformation is most notable in the field of systematic musicology, which developed from “a mere extension of musicology” into a “complete reorientation of the discipline to fundamental questions which are non-historical in nature, [encompassing] research into the nature and properties of music as an acoustical, psychological and cognitive phenomenon” (Duckles & Pasler, 2001). Three recent strands of music research will be briefly discussed, namely empirical, computational, and cognitive musicology. They will be interpreted in the context of the “cognitive revolution” in the humanities and the sciences.
Editor's Note
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2006-01) Butler, David

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