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This chapter investigates the psychological processes by which human beings make sense of, respond to, and create music. It starts by defining the term “psychology”; it then surveys the history of music psychology, and describes where and how it is currently practiced. A section on the main methods used by music psychologists follows, with numerous case studies drawn from recent literature. This leads to extended consideration of what the “musical mind” entails and how it functions in relation to the body. Further case-study examples are offered here and in the discussion of how we learn music. The section on musical creativity looks in particular at improvisation, while the final part of the chapter considers musical expression and how we perceive it. Topics addressed in the course of the chapter include the “talent myth,” sight-reading, and the various types of musical memory and skill as well as the means by which skill and expertise are developed. Emphasis is continually placed on the role of experience and acquired knowledge in interpreting the world around us.

Key issues

• What is psychology?

• What is the psychology of music?

• What do music psychologists do?

• How does “the musical mind” work?

• How do we learn music?

• How do we create music?

• What is expressed in music and how do we perceive it?

What is psychology?

Imagine you are in a crowded classroom. Suddenly, a bell starts ringing. Do you:

1. 1) sit up straight?

2. 2) run to the door?

3. 3) roll your eyes?

4. 4) salivate?

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This chapter asks what we mean by music history and why we study it. It considers some of the different kinds of history that can be, and have been, written, ranging from the stylistic history of musical works to the social history of how those works came to be written. It looks at the different strategies demanded by the study of music in different periods, in different places, and for different audiences. It looks at some of the tools, methods, and sources historians use to learn about musical practices in the past, and it considers some of the conventional categories they employ in order to create an order in history. They often refer to musical “traditions,” for example, and they invoke period terms such as “Baroque” and “Classical.” The chapter also addresses some of the overt and hidden agendas found in different types of historical writing, it queries whether some aspects of music history have been neglected in favor of others at different times, and it asks how much we can learn by considering the reception of music through the centuries. It further considers how the study of music history is supported by, and may in turn illuminate, some of the other categories of musical study discussed in this book.

Key issues

• How can we do historical justice to works of music, given that they are part of our present?

• Is music history shaped primarily by composers and scores, or by the cultural conditions which demanded and/or enabled musical performances?

• […]

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This chapter considers the value of studying composition and looks at how it can be taught and assessed. Concentrating on the idea that composition is a practical, constructive activity, it introduces some possible working methods used by different composers, starting with the very different kinds of first thoughts with which composers begin, from personal experiences to a fascination with technical problems or the relation of music to other art forms. It goes on to consider how one moves from initial ideas to concrete sounds, discussing the role of notation, the value of sketches, and the process of learning from performances. The final section considers the relation of composers, performers, and audiences, discussing the idea of originality and the different expectations of different genres of music and their audiences. The question of style became highly contentious in the twentieth century but, at the same time, fragmented and plural. Does this mean that, today, anything goes? The chapter concludes with the suggestion that composers today have to negotiate a difficult path to ensure that their music will communicate with an audience while at the same time, not restricting the freedom of invention that is the legacy of the art-music tradition.

Key issues

• Composition reminds us that musical works are the result of a process of making that might have turned out quite differently.

• Composition involves the presentation and exploration of clear ideas, no matter what the musical style.

• Notation is neither just a way of “recording” musical ideas nor of “instructing” performers, but also an invaluable medium for reworking ideas.

• […]

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“Early music” can refer to a particular period (here, repertories before 1750) or a performing approach that revives instruments and styles from the era when a piece was written. This chapter probes the challenges of researching and reviving early music, noting the different approaches taken by scholars and performers; it also outlines the main sacred and secular genres before 1750.

Key issues

• What is “early music”?

• What is “authentic” or “historically informed” performance?

• How far can we recover the sound of early music?

• How did music before 1750 relate to the Christian liturgy?

• Interpreting the notation of early music.

What is early music?

Before the twentieth century, “early music” was defined as music over a certain age. In eighteenth-century London the Academy of Ancient Music defined “ancient music” as being at least 150 years old, although the later Concert of Ancient Music (founded 1776) included works as little as twenty years old.

Since 1950, however, “early music” has increasingly indicated not a particular period but an attitude towards music of the past: namely, the belief that older repertories sound best if performed with instruments and styles of the composer's own era. Often this requires the recovery of lost performing skills (such as Baroque bowing, old keyboard fingerings, and systems of unequal temperament) and the revival of old instruments (such as harpsichord, viola da gamba, and valveless trumpet). With music earlier than 1600, there are also skills required to decipher the notation of the original sources.

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All music is shaped by economic circumstances, even the “pure” music of the Western classical tradition. This chapter traces the economic development of Western music since around 1800, including the successive transformations of the music business: on the one hand, from the production of commodities to the management of rights, and on the other, from sheet-music publication to the recording industry to part of the global communications and media industry. Aspects covered include the development and chronic problems of the music profession, copyright and the performing and mechanical rights that arise from it, and the impact of technology on both the social and business practices of music. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the current state of the music business and its prospects for the future.

Key issues

• The relationship between music and economic context.

• The impact of changing technology on music employment.

• The role of copyright in the music business.

• The transition of music publishing from selling commodities to managing rights.

• The future of the record industry in the digital age.

Snapshot of 1825: Beethoven's Ninth and the music business

Key terms

• Production.

• Composition.

• Recording.

• Post-production.

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This chapter is mainly concerned with what music technology is and will look at the various ways in which it is studied in universities and music colleges. As part of this, the various applications of music technology in composition, recording, and production will be discussed in more detail. This chapter will also take a look at the broader impact of technology on music in general. It will introduce you to the basic technical terminology and give you some idea of the various uses and general possibilities of the combination of technology and music. We will also have a short look at some of the careers open to those with skills in this area.

Key issues

• What is music technology?

• How do we study music technology?

• How do we use music technology?

• How can we compose, record, and produce music using technology?

• Making music at home, multimedia, and the World Wide Web.

• Courses and careers.

Introduction: what is music technology?

This subject-area is most often concerned with the use of electronic equipment for the recording and composition of music. The subject name, with all the scientific implications brought by the term “technology,” can sometimes seem disconcerting. In essence, though, the discipline is a thoroughly creative and practical one concerned with the creation and dissemination of music. It is only the tools that are different – sequencers and samplers instead of pencils and paper; sound modules and mixing desks rather than violins and music stands.

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This chapter suggests various ways in which one might approach the vast repertory of concert music, extending from compositions written for the secular courts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to those of the present day. It attempts to explain why such music was written, to which audiences it was targeted, and to what extent the evolution and growing popularity of the concert changed both the practices of the composers and the expectations of the public. Alongside this discussion is an examination of the ways in which the forms and functions of concert music have been transformed over time from its origins in sacred and courtly life to the explosion of activity in the urban centers of Europe during the nineteenth century. Against this background, specific genres were established, some continuing to hold sway up to the present day. At the same time, technological developments during the twentieth century engendered the current crisis where the “museum culture” of classical music leads an uneasy co-existence with the competing claims of contemporary concert repertoire on the one hand and the commercial “culture industry” on the other.

Key issues

• How does music influence the reaction of critics and audiences?

• The “canon” and its formation.

• Nationalism in music.

• The notion of musical style periods.

• Genres of concert music: concerto, symphony, sonata.

• The avant-garde, modernism, and postmodernism.

Introduction

The repertory explored in this chapter encompasses a wide variety of music that has become part and parcel of the concert repertory, extending from the intimate genres of song, piano music, and chamber music through to the more public arenas of concerto, symphony, and oratorio.

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The relationships between music and the people who produce, perform, and use it are central to the sociology of music. This chapter introduces some of the central ideas of the sociology of music and helps you place it in the context of other approaches. Music is not just the sounds it makes. We like and value some musics and not others, as much because of our social and educational backgrounds, and because of the associations that accompany music, as because of musical style itself. We also include music as part of a wider collection of lifestyle choices. For that reason, the sociological study of music tends to explore the human networks around music, rather than the characteristics of musical style. Nevertheless, it covers contemporary and historical culture from several perspectives, and embraces all types of music. It gives priority to people-centered research methods where possible, to explore music's social meanings; social networks and cultural capital; the shape of the music market; exclusivism and subcultural mentalities; and more general questions about the relationship between music and identity.

Key issues

• Sociologies of music: what are the main questions?

• The problem of “high art.”

• Are geniuses constructed, not born?

• “Art worlds” and the music business.

• “Cultural capital,” social status, and identity.

Introduction

Imagine that the music business has gone topsy-turvy. You walk towards a CD shop and the first music you hear is a piece of Western classical music blasting out over its entire ground floor.

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This chapter considers what makes the study of jazz different from the study of other kinds of music. It looks at jazz's mixture of assimilation and rejection of other music, and shows how it relates to important political, social, and economic issues. Problems in writing the history of jazz are examined, and the role of recording and transcription in the reception and teaching of jazz are stressed. The nature of improvisation is considered in relation to composition in classical music, and the tension in jazz between the drive for new forms of expression and the desire to appeal to a wider audience is investigated. The question of whether jazz can still remain a “critical” form of music when it is increasingly being formally taught in schools and universities is raised along with the issue of whether jazz should now be concerned with the preservation of its traditions, or with new musical exploration.

Key issues

• Can we define jazz, and does it matter whether we can?

• How does the study of jazz differ from the study of other kinds of music?

• Does jazz present a challenge to the assumptions and procedures of conventional musicology?

• Is there “progress” in jazz?

• How does jazz relate to history, society, and politics?

• What is jazz's status in relation to other developments in modern music?

• How does technology affect jazz?

• Is jazz now becoming as “academic” as other forms of “serious” music?

Chapter preview

Music is an essential part of film and television, and yet it always competes for its place in the “soundtrack” with other sonic elements. What many would describe as the “soundtrack” in television and film therefore makes a slippery object of musicological study. Should we think of the music as functioning separately from sound effects and dialogue? If so, is this really justified by our twenty-first-century understanding of music? How does the sound element of sound cinema or screen-based multimedia fit into the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music? This chapter traces some of the issues that film and television present to musicologists.

Key issues

• What is music's role in film and television?

• Has it changed over the history of sound cinema and other screen forms?

• Does the relationship depend on the moving image practice involved?

• What approaches to the study of music in film and television have been adopted?

Case study

Let us start with a short sequence about an hour into Blade Runner: Director's Cut (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, with music by Vangelis.

It is Los Angeles in 2019; former “blade runner” (policeman/assassin) Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) has been re-engaged to retire outlaw replicants (androids). Cut to Deckard's dark and dreary apartment: Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young) are present. Deckard's near-musical “roomtone” is established as a faint, low hum with a detectable pitch – a trilling motion from B to C. When Rachael reveals that she is herself a replicant, this is a cue for music – that is, “pit,” or nondiegetic music (Box 12.1).

This book, written entirely by academic staff at Royal Holloway, University of London, is designed as a companion for music students, and aims to answer the questions “how and why do we study music?” It is targeted at first-year university and college students, non-majors who are considering going on to a music major, and first-year music majors, but is also useful for “A”-level and high-school students who are preparing for a music course and need an overview of the field. It explains the basic concepts and issues involved in the academic study of music, provides an introduction to the principal areas of study, discusses approaches to a wide range of repertoire, and considers important aspects of the practice of music today. In particular, through its cross-references, it draws attention to vital connections across the field. The book is thus designed to be used as a background text and to encourage critical thinking over a broad range of music-related issues.

The editors would like to thank Vicki Cooper and Rebecca Jones at Cambridge University Press for their encouragement of this project and their patience as it was brought together. They are also grateful to Matthew Pritchard for preparing the index.

Nicholas Cook would like to thank David Patmore for his comments on a draft of chapter 16. John Rink would like to thank Eric Clarke and Aaron Williamson for helpful suggestions.

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This chapter introduces music theory as a practice that has been undertaken in Europe and Asia for many centuries, and defines it as a set of generalizations about musical sound, works, and (occasionally) composition or performance practice. The focus of the chapter is on the theories that have been applied to Western classical music in the twentieth century and beyond, and the way in which they interact with methods of analysis. It shows that a theory may provide a secure framework for analysis, but also that analysis may also be used to test (and ultimately disprove) a theory. This process may lead to the creation of a new theory, and new analytical methods. Both analysis and theory are subject to change, then, and each is further influenced by the purposes for which it is designed. The chapter places theory and analysis within the triangle of composer, performer, and listener, in order to illuminate their flexible practical existence in a range of different contexts.

Key issues

What is analysis for?

• Analysis and the composer.

• Analysis and the performer.

• Analysis and the listener.

What is theory for?

• Theory for analysis.

• Analysis to test theory.

• New theory and new analysis.

Introduction

Music theory tries to tell us what music is by providing a generalized representation of it. But there are a lot of musics, so there are a lot of theories.

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This chapter examines definitions of popular music and the ways in which popular music has been studied. The various meanings of the adjective “popular” show that particular meanings of both the term and the music it characterizes depend on social and historical factors. Popular music has been studied by academics from a number of different disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, cultural studies, history, media studies, and musicology. These different disciplinary emphases affect the attitude to the material, and they focus variously on the production, reception, and text of popular songs.

Key issues

• What is popular music?

• What is the popular music “text”?

• How do we study popular music?

• What are the relations between its production and reception?

• How has the study of popular music been affected by, and in turn affected, the rest of musicology?

What is popular music?

If someone asked you “what kind of music do you like?” and you were to reply “opera,” they might follow up by asking “no, I meant what kind of pop music do you like?” In ordinary usage – the everyday conversations that take place orally, outside the classroom or lecture theater – the term “popular music” is often abbreviated, as in this hypothetical question, to “pop” or simply “music.” In trying to define what is meant by “popular music,” it seems easier to say what popular music is not.