Musicology is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some music research is scientific in focus. Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist.
Christoph Wolff is a German musicologist. He is best known for his works on the music, life, and period of Johann Sebastian Bach. Christoph Wolff is an emeritus professor of Harvard University, and was part of the faculty since 1976, and former director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig from 2001 to 2014.
Gustave Reese was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications Music in the Middle Ages (1940) and Music in the Renaissance (1954); these two books remain the standard reference works for these two eras, with complete and precise bibliographical material, allowing for almost every piece of music mentioned to be traced back to a primary source.
Charles Louis Seeger Jr. was an American musicologist, composer, teacher, and folklorist. He was the father of the American folk singers Pete Seeger (1919–2014), Peggy Seeger, and Mike Seeger (1933–2009); and brother of the World War I poet Alan Seeger (1888–1916).
Richard Filler Taruskin was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as musical analysis that combines sociological, cultural, and political perspectives, has incited much discussion, debate and controversy. He regularly wrote music criticism for newspapers including The New York Times. He researched a wide variety of topics, but a central topic was the Russian music of the 18th century to present day. Other subjects he engaged with include the theory of performance, 15th-century music, 20th-century classical music, nationalism in music, the theory of modernism, and analysis. He is best known for his monumental survey of Western classical music, the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music. He received several awards, including the first Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society in 1978, and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2017.
Robert Floyd Judd was an American musicologist who served as the executive director of the American Musicological Society from September 1996 until his death on August 24, 2019.
Joseph Wilfred Kerman was an American musicologist and music critic. Among the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field." He was Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Society for Ethnomusicology is, with the International Council for Traditional Music and the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, one of three major international associations for ethnomusicology. Its mission is "to promote the research, study, and performance of music in all historical periods and cultural contexts."
William Oliver Strunk was an American musicologist. Charles Rosen called him one of the most influential American musicologists of the 1930s–1960s. He was known for his anthology Source Readings in Music History (1950) and his work on Byzantine music. He was the son of Elements of Style coauthor William Strunk, Jr. (1869–1946)
Leo Treitler is an American musicologist born in Dortmund, Germany. He is distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Harold Stone Powers was an American musicologist, ethnomusicologist, and music theorist.
Howard Mayer Brown was an American musicologist.
Otto Kinkeldey was an American music librarian and musicologist. He was the first president of the American Musicological Society and held the first chair in musicology at any American university.
Gary Alfred Tomlinson is an American musicologist and the John Hay Whitney Professor of Music and Humanities at Yale University. He was formerly the Annenberg Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Ph.D., in 1979 with thesis titled Rinuccini, Peri, Monteverdi, and the humanist heritage of opera.
Karol Berger is a Polish-American musicologist.
James Haar was an American musicologist and W.R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A specialist in Renaissance music, he was the Editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Musicological Society from 1966 to 1969 and served as the president of American Musicological Society from 1976 to 1978. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987.
Joseph Yasser was a Russian–American organist, music theorist, author, and musicologist. An influential figure who established a handful of musical institutions, Yasser is noted for his 1932 publication, A Theory of Evolving Tonality. He was active until his death at age 88 in 1981. Yasser was married but had no children.
J. Peter Burkholder is an American musicologist and author. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has written numerous monographs, essays, and journal articles on twentieth-century music, Charles Ives, musical borrowing, American music, musical meaning, analysis, and music history pedagogy. He is the principal author of A History of Western Music, 10th Edition, published by W. W. Norton & Company.
Albertus Antonius Smijers, was a Dutch musicologist who served as Professor of Musicology at the University of Utrecht. He was a noted authority on Josquin des Prez—44 volumes of Werken van Josquin des Prez were published in his lifetime, and another 11 after his death.
