Musicology

While most normal hearing listeners can distinguish between music genres, such as between pop, rock, and jazz, and most listeners experience certain associations, moods, and emotions when listening to music from (e.g., movie soundtracks), few can explain how and why. In musicology, listening is investigated first by defining how musical sounds are structured along the auditory dimensions of intensity, pitch, timbre, and duration, into structured melodies, tonalities, harmonies, rhythms, meters, and larger musical forms. Based on this, musicology research aims to reveal why listeners assign certain meanings and emotions to specific musical structure. The chapter on musicology introduces current research on music listening from scientific approaches including music psychology, music aesthetics, music enculturation, music neuroscience, as well as computer‐simulated music listening.