A musicologist is someone who studies music (see

musicology Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some m ...

). A historical musicologist studies music from a historical perspective. An ethnomusicologist studies music in its cultural and social contexts (see

ethnomusicology Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...

). A systematic musicologist asks general questions about music from the perspective of relevant disciplines (psychology, sociology, acoustics, philosophy, physiology, computer science) (see

systematic musicology Systematic musicology is an umbrella term, used mainly in Central Europe, for several subdisciplines and paradigms of musicology. "Systematic musicology has traditionally been conceived of as an interdisciplinary science, whose aim it is to explo ...

). Systematic musicologists often identify more strongly with their non-musical discipline than with musicology.

Historical musicologists

Carolyn Abbate Carolyn Abbate (born November 20, 1956) is an American musicologist, described by the '' Harvard Gazette'' as "one of the world’s most accomplished and admired music historians". She is currently Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Profess ...

* Byron Adams * Guido Adler *

Miguel Álvarez-Fernández Miguel Álvarez-Fernández (born 1979 in Madrid, Spain) is a sound artist, composer, filmmaker, theorist and curator working between Madrid and Berlin, where he has taught at the Electronic Music Studio of the Technical University of Berlin. ...

August Wilhelm Ambros August Wilhelm Ambros (17 November 181628 June 1876) Blom, Eric (2005) ''Everyman's Dictionary of Music'', Kessinger Publishing. p. 15. . was an Austrian composer and music historian of Czech descent. Life He was born in Mýto, Rokycany Dist ...

Willi Apel Willi Apel (10 October 1893 – 14 March 1988) was a German-American musicologist and noted author of a number of books devoted to music. Among his most important publications are the 1944 edition of ''The Harvard Dictionary of Music'' and ''Fre ...

* Denis Arnold * Philippe A. Autexier *

Eva Badura-Skoda Eva Badura-Skoda (née Halfar; 15 January 1929 – 8 January 2021) was a German-born Austrian musicologist. Biography Born in Munich, Eva Halfar studied at the Vienna Conservatory and took courses in musicology, philosophy, and art history a ...

Margaret Bent Margaret Bent CBE , (born Margaret Hilda Bassington; 23 December 1940) is an English musicologist who specializes in music of the late medieval and Renaissance eras. In particular, she has written extensively on the Old Hall Manuscript, English ...

Heinrich Besseler Heinrich Besseler (April 2, 1900 – July 25, 1969) was a German musicologist born in Hörde. He is particularly known for his colossal work, ''Die Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance'' (1931), which provided a new perspective on historical ...

Peter Bloom Peter Bloom is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He obtained his BA in music at Swarthmore College, his Ph.D. in musicology at the University of Pennsylvania, and studi ...

Philip Brett Philip Brett (October 17, 1937 – October 16, 2002) was a British-born American musicologist, musician and conductor. He was particularly known for his scholarly studies on Benjamin Britten and William Byrd and for his contributions to the de ...

* Rae Linda Brown *

Howard Mayer Brown Howard Mayer Brown (April 13, 1930 – February 20, 1993) was an American musicologist. Brown obtained his BA from Harvard in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1959, studying under Walter Piston and Otto Gombosi among others. He conducted and performed o ...

* Charles Faulkner Bryan * Michael J. Budds *

J. Peter Burkholder J. Peter Burkholder (born June 17, 1954) 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 artic ...

Dimitrije Bužarovski Dimitrije Bužarovski Ph.D. ( mk, Димитрије Бужаровски) (born 8 August 1952 in Skopje, SFR Yugoslavia) is a Macedonian composer, versatile artist and a scholar with interests in different fields: composition, musicology, comp ...

Manfred Bukofzer Manfred Fritz Bukofzer (27 March 1910 – 7 December 1955) was a German-born American musicologist. Life and career He studied at Heidelberg University and the Stern conservatory in Berlin, but left Germany in 1933 for Switzerland, where he ob ...

* Roberto Carnevale *

Peter Case Peter Case (born April 5, 1954) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His career is wide-ranging, from rock n' roll and blues, to folk rock and solo acoustic performance. Biography Early career Case was born in Buffalo, New York, B ...

Federico Celestini Federico Celestini (born 5 December 1964) is an Italian musicologist. Since 2011 he has been professor of musicology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Life Federico Celestini was born in Rome. He studied violin at the Musikhochschule Giuli ...

Samuel Charters Samuel Barclay Charters IV (August 1, 1929 – March 18, 2015) was an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He was a widely published author on the subjects of blues and jazz. He also wrote fiction. Overview Cha ...

Richard Charteris The Hon. Richard Charteris (25 July 1822 – 16 March 1874) was a Scottish first-class cricketer and British Army officer. Life The son of Francis Wemyss-Charteris, 9th Earl of Wemyss, he was born in July 1822 at Aberlady, East Lothian. He e ...

Friedrich Chrysander Karl Franz Friedrich Chrysander (8 July 1826 – 3 September 1901) was a German music historian, critic and publisher, whose edition of the works of George Frideric Handel and authoritative writings on many other composers established him as a ...

* Edward T. Cone * Charles-Edmond-Henri de Coussemaker *

Ry Cooder Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder (born March 15, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, a ...

Ludwig Czaczkes Ludwig Czaczkes (12 September 1898 – 4 August 1992) was an Austrian composer, musicology, musicologist and pianist. He is known for his studies on the music of J. S. Bach. Ludwig Czaczkes was born and raised in Vienna. He studied music at the Un ...

Carl Dahlhaus Carl Dahlhaus (10 June 1928 – 13 March 1989) was a German musicologist who was among the leading postwar musicologists of the mid to late 20th-century. A prolific scholar, he had broad interests though his research focused on 19th- and 20th ...

Thurston Dart Robert Thurston ("Bob") Dart (3 September 1921 – 6 March 1971), was an English musicologist, conductor and keyboard player. Along with Nigel Fortune, Oliver Neighbour and Stanley Sadie he was one of Britain's leading musicologists of the post ...

John Daverio John Joseph Daverio (October 19, 1954 – March 16, 2003) was a violinist, scholar, teacher and author, best known for his writings on the music of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. His research interests centered around Austro-German compo ...

* Dalibor Davidović * Joshua F. Drake * S. A. K. Durga *

Alfred Einstein Alfred Einstein (December 30, 1880February 13, 1952) was a German-American musicologist and music editor. He was born in Munich and fled Nazi Germany after Hitler's ''Machtergreifung'', arriving in the United States by 1939. He is best known fo ...

Alexander John Ellis Alexander John Ellis, (14 June 1814 – 28 October 1890), was an English mathematician, philologist and early phonetician who also influenced the field of musicology. He changed his name from his father's name, Sharpe, to his mother's maiden n ...

Séamus Ennis Séamus Ennis ( ga, Séamas Mac Aonghusa; 5 May 1919 – 5 October 1982) was an Irish musician, singer and Irish music collector. He was most noted for his uilleann pipe playing and was partly responsible for the revival of the instrument duri ...

* Robert Fink *

François-Joseph Fétis François-Joseph Fétis (; 25 March 1784 – 26 March 1871) was a Belgian musicologist, composer, teacher, and one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century. His enormous compilation of biographical data in the ''Biographie univer ...

Paul Gambaccini Paul Matthew Gambaccini (born April 2, 1949) is an American-British radio and television presenter and author in the United Kingdom. He has dual United States and British nationality, having become a British citizen in 2005. Known as "The Grea ...

Karl Geiringer Karl Geiringer (April 26, 1899 – January 10, 1989)Will Crutchfield, January 12, 1989 Retrieved 2013-08-10. was an Austrian-American musicologist, educator, and biographer of composers. He was educated in Vienna but at the beginning of the Nazi yea ...

Tula Giannini Prof. Tula Giannini is an American academic with subject expertise in musicology, digital culture, and digital heritage. Tula Giannini holds B.M. and M.M. degrees in Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, an M.L.S. degree in Libra ...

* Roger Mathew Grant *

Robert Greenberg Robert M. Greenberg (born April 18, 1954) is an American composer, pianist, and musicologist who was born in Brooklyn, New York. He has composed more than 50 works for a variety of instruments and voices, and has recorded a number of lecture seri ...

Donald Jay Grout Donald Jay Grout (September 28, 1902 – March 9, 1987) was an American musicologist. He is best known as the author of ''A Short History of Opera,'' first published in 1947. The fourth edition was published by Columbia University Press in 2003. ...

Ursula Günther Ursula Günther (15 June 1927 – 20 or 21 November 2006) was a German musicologist specializing in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and the music of Giuseppe Verdi. She coined the term , to categorize the rhythmically complex music tha ...

Bartol Gyurgieuvits Bartol Gyurgieuvits (also Bartol Jurjevic or Gjurgjevic) (1506–1566) was a Croatian musicologist and Lexicography, lexicographer born in Turopolje near Zagreb. As a musicologist Gyurgieuvits was captured by the Ottoman Empire, Ottomans in the Ba ...

Harry Halbreich Harry Halbreich (Berlin, 9 February 1931 – Brussels, 27 June 2016) was a Belgian musicologist.Dust jacket biography of Harry Halbreich from #Halbreich2007, Halbreich (2007).Patrick Szersnovicz. Harry Halbreich (obituary). ''Diapason (magazine), ...

Roger Lee Hall Roger Lee Hall (born 1942) is an American composer and musicologist. Personal life Hall was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey He grew up in Bloomfield, New Jersey and spent several years in the 1950s attending Eastern Military Academy at Oheka Cas ...

Mickey Hart Mickey Hart (born Michael Steven Hartman, September 11, 1943) is an American percussionist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 until February 19 ...

Daniel Heartz Daniel Heartz (1928–2019) was an American musicologist and professor emeritus of music at the University of California, Berkeley. Heartz studied at Harvard University. He lived in Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern ...

* Seppo Heikinheimo * Sam Henry * Willy Hess *

Ernst Hilmar Ernst Hilmar (20 September 1938 – 23 November 2016) was an Austrian librarian, editor, and musicologist. Biography Hilmar was born in Graz and studied musicology at the University of Graz and the University of Music and Performing Arts i ...

H. Wiley Hitchcock Hugh Wiley Hitchcock (September 28, 1923 in Detroit, Michigan – December 5, 2007 in New York, New York) was an American musicologist. He is best known for founding the Institute for Studies in American Music at Brooklyn College of the City Uni ...

Hans-Jørgen Holman Hans-Jörgen Holman (20 February 1925 – 6 August 1986) (also Hans-Jörgen Holmen-Guttormsen) was a Norwegian-American pianist/ harpsichordist and professor of music at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. Holman specialized in Medieval ...

Richard Hoppin Richard Hallowell Hoppin (February 22, 1913 – November 1, 1991) was an American musicologist. Hoppin received his BA from Carleton College in 1936 after spending two years at the Paris ''Ecole Normale de Musique''. He studied at Harvard Univ ...

George Pullen Jackson George Pullen Jackson (1874–1953) was an American educator and musicologist. He was a pioneer in the field of Southern (U.S.) hymnody. He was responsible for popularizing the term "white spirituals" to describe the "fasola" singing. Early l ...

Simon P. Keefe Simon Patrick Keefe (born 24 December 1968) is a musicologist, author, and Mozart expert. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, Boston University and Columbia University. After being awarded his PhD in 1997, he was appointed to a lectur ...

Joseph Kerman Joseph Wilfred Kerman (3 April 1924 – 17 March 2014) was an American musicologist and music critic. Among the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book ''Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology'' (published in the UK as ''Mus ...

Otto Kinkeldey Otto Kinkeldey (November 27, 1878 – September 19, 1966) 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.Cornell ...

Jerome Kohl Jerome Joseph Kohl (November 27, 1946 – August 4, 2020) was an American musicologist, academic journal editor, and recorder teacher. A music theorist at the University of Washington, he became recognized internationally as an authority on the ...

* Lawrence Kramer *

Paul-Gilbert Langevin Paul-Gilbert Langevin ( Boulogne-Billancourt, 5 July 1933 – Paris, 4 July 1986) was a French musicologist, who was a specialist on Anton Bruckner, Franz Schubert and 19th-century classical music. History Paul-Gilbert Langevin was the son of ...

* Kendra Preston Leonard * Robert Lissauer *

Lewis Lockwood Lewis H. Lockwood (born December 16, 1930) is an American musicologist whose main fields are the music of the Italian Renaissance and the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Joseph Kerman described him as "a leading musical scholar of the postw ...

Alan Lomax Alan Lomax (; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, sch ...

John Lomax John Avery Lomax (September 23, 1867 – January 26, 1948) was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist, and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music. He was the father of Alan Lomax, John Lomax Jr. and Bess Lo ...

Edward Lowinsky Edward Elias Lowinsky (January 12, 1908 – October 11, 1985) was an American musicologist. Lowinsky was one of the most prominent and influential musicologists in post-World War II America. His 1946 work on the "secret chromatic art" of Renaissan ...

* Friedrich Ludwig *

Ciarán Mac Mathúna Ciarán Mac Mathúna (26 November 1925 – 11 December 2009) was an Irish broadcaster and music collector. He was a recognised authority on Irish traditional music and lectured extensively on the subject. He travelled around Ireland, England, Sc ...

Eusebius Mandyczewski Eusebius Mandyczewski ( uk, Євсевій Мандичевський, translit=Yevsevii Mandychevskyi, ro, Eusebie Mandicevschi; 18 August 1857, in Molodiia – 13 August 1929, in Vienna) was a Romanian musicologist, composer, conductor, and t ...

* Maria Rika Maniates *

Joseph de Marliave Joseph de Marliave (16 November 1873 – 24 August 1914) was a French musicologist. He is best known for his book on Beethoven's string quartets, which was the most widely read and quoted book on the subject prior to Joseph Kerman's 1966 book ''T ...

Susan McClary Susan Kaye McClary (born October 2, 1946) is an American musicologist associated with " new musicology". Noted for her work combining musicology with feminist music criticism, McClary is professor of musicology at Case Western Reserve University ...

* R. C. Mehta *

Otto Mayer-Serra Otto Mayer-Serra (1904 in Barcelona, Spain – 1968 in Mexico City), was a Spanish-Mexican musicologist known for being one of the first musicologist to write a systematic study of 20th century Mexican music. Life His father was a German ...

Lalmani Misra Lalmani Misra (11 August 1924 – 17 July 1979) was an Indian classical musician. Initiation into music Lalmani learnt ''Dhruvapada (Dhrupad) Dhamar'' in the tradition of Shankar Bhatt and Munshi Bhrigunath Lal. He learnt ''Khayal'' singing w ...

Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny (20 January 1762 – 25 August 1842) was a Belgian/French composer and music-theorist. Life Momigny was born in Philippeville, Belgium. He composed music and wrote books including Momigny, which he printed himself. His ...

Pierre Monichon Pierre Monichon (24 October 1925 – 1 September 2006) was a France, French accordionist, Musicology, musicologist and inventor of the harmoneon (also concert accordion). He published several books on the history of the Accordion, and was a profe ...

* Domenico Morgante *

Jean-Jacques Nattiez Jean-Jacques Nattiez (; born December 30, 1945 in Amiens, France) is a musical semiologist or semiotics, semiotician and professor of musicology at the Université de Montréal. He studied semiology with Georges Mounin and Jean Molino and music ...

Anthony Newcomb Anthony Newcomb (August 6, 1941 - November 18, 2018) was an American musicologist. He was born in New York City and studied at the University of California, Berkeley where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1962. He then studied with Gustav Le ...

Gustav Nottebohm Martin Gustav Nottebohm (12 November 1817, Lüdenscheid, Westphalia – 29 October 1882, Graz) was a pianist, teacher, musical editor and composer who spent most of his career in Vienna. He is particularly celebrated for his studies of Beethoven ...

Michael Nyman Michael Laurence Nyman, Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, libretto, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film soundtrack, scores (many written during his length ...

* Claude V. Palisca *

Dom Joseph Pothier Dom Joseph Pothier, O.S.B. (1835–1923) was a worldwide known French prelate, liturgist and scholar who reconstituted the Gregorian chant. Benedictine life Born in 1835 at Bouzemont, France, Dom Joseph Pothier was ordained a priest in the diocese ...

André Pirro André Gabriel Edmée Pirro (12 February 1869 – 11 November 1943) was a French musicologist and an organist. Born in Saint-Dizier, Pirro learned to play the organ from his father Jean Pirro. In Paris where he became and organist and a choirmas ...

Nino Pirrotta Nino Pirrotta (13 June 1908 in Palermo – 22 January 1998 in Palermo) was an Italian musicologist of international renown who specialized in Italian music from the late medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Life and career In 1931 Pir ...

* Leon B. Plantinga *

Howard Pollack Howard Pollack (born March 17, 1952) is a prominent American pianist and musicologist, known for his biographies of American composers. Biography Pollack was born in Brooklyn and studied piano with Jennie Glickman while attending James Madison H ...

Harold Powers Harold Stone Powers (August 5, 1928 – March 15, 2007) was an American musicologist, ethnomusicologist, and music theorist. Career Born in New York City on August 5, 1928, he earned his B.Mus. in piano from Syracuse University in 1950 and an ...

Michael Praetorius Michael Praetorius (probably 28 September 1571 – 15 February 1621) was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms ba ...

N. Ramanathan Professor N. Ramanathan (born 1946) is a musicologist in India. He taught and guided research in the Department of Indian Music at the University of Madras since 1978, and retired in 2004. Biography He obtained a bachelor's degree in Violin (So ...

Gustave Reese Gustave Reese ( ; 29 November 1899 – 7 September 1977) 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) ...

Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov Andrey Nikolayevich Rimsky-Korsakov (Russian: Андре́й Никола́евич Ри́мский-Ко́рсаков, ''André Nikolájevich Rímskij-Kórsakov'', October 17, 1878 – May 23, 1940) was a musicologist and son of the Russian ...

Charles Rosen Charles Welles Rosen (May 5, 1927December 9, 2012) was an American pianist and writer on music. He is remembered for his career as a concert pianist, for his recordings, and for his many writings, notable among them the book ''The Classical Sty ...

Julian Rushton Julian Gordon Rushton (born 22 May 1941) is an English musicologist, born in Cambridge. He has contributed the entry on Mozart in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' and several other articles in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ...

Stanley Sadie Stanley John Sadie (; 30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was an influential and prolific British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1980), which was publ ...

Camille Saint-Saëns Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano C ...

Adolfo Salazar Adolfo Salazar Ruiz de Palacios (6 March 1890 - 27 September 1958) was a Spanish music historian, music critic, composer, and diplomat of the first half of the twentieth century. He was the preeminent Spanish musicologist of the Silver Age. Fluen ...

Adrienne Simpson Adrienne Marie Chilton (; 26 November 1943 – 4 December 2010) was a New Zealand broadcaster, historian, musicologist and writer. Her works focused on biographies, cricket, music, popular culture and social commentary. She was a professor of gener ...

Elaine Sisman Elaine Rochelle Sisman (born January 20, 1952) is an American musicologist. The Anne Parsons Bender Professor of Music at Columbia University, Sisman specializes in music, rhetoric, and aesthetics of the 18th and 19th centuries, and has written o ...

Eileen Southern Eileen Jackson Southern (February 19, 1920 – October 13, 2002) was an American musicologist, researcher, author, and teacher. Southern's research focused on black American musical styles, musicians, and composers; she also published on ea ...

Philipp Spitta Julius August Philipp Spitta (27 December 1841 – 13 April 1894) was a German music historian and musicologist best known for his 1873 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach. Life He was born in , near Hoya, and his father, also called Phil ...

Hedi Stadlen Hedi Stadlen (6 January 1916 – 21 January 2004), better known in Sri Lanka as Hedi Keuneman, was an Austrian Jewish philosopher, political activist, and musicologist. She was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka. Vienna She was ...

Rita Steblin Rita Katherine Steblin (April 22, 1951 – September 3, 2019)
obituary, ''Figures of Speech'' was a

Paul Steinitz Paul Steinitz OBE (25 August 190 – 21 April 1988) was an English post-war organist, best known as an interpreter of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. He founded the London Bach Society and Steinitz Bach Players, performing among other signif ...

Reinhard Strohm Professor Reinhard Strohm FBA (born 4 August 1942, Munich) is a German musicologist based largely in the United Kingdom, with an interest in 14th to 18th-century music. Strohm studied Musicology, Medieval Latin, and Romance Literatures, at the ...

Oliver Strunk William Oliver Strunk (March 22, 1901 – February 24, 1980) was an American musicologist. Charles Rosen called him one of the most influential American musicologists of the 1930s–1960s.Rosen, Charles. "The Discipline of Philology: Oliver Strunk ...

Carl Stumpf Carl Stumpf (; 21 April 1848 – 25 December 1936) was a German philosopher, psychologist and musicologist. He is noted for founding the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology. He studied with Franz Brentano at the University of Würzburg bef ...

Edward Tarr Edward Hankins Tarr (June 15, 1936 – March 24, 2020), was an American trumpet player and musicologist. He was a pioneer in the revival of Baroque and Romantic era trumpet performance practice. Biography Edward Tarr was born in Norwich, C ...

Richard Taruskin Richard Filler Taruskin (April 2, 1945 – July 1, 2022) 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 ...

* Erik W. Tawaststjerna *

Nicholas Temperley Nicholas Mark Temperley (August 7, 1932 – April 8, 2020) was an American musicologist of English background. He is known for his pioneering work in British music studies. Education and Career Born in Beaconsfield, United Kingdom, Temperley at ...

Jeff Todd Titon Jeff Todd Titon (born 1943) is a professor emeritus of music at Brown University. He holds the B.A. (1965) from Amherst College; and the M.A. (in English, 1970) and the Ph.D. (in American Studies, 1971) from the University of Minnesota. He taught Am ...

Donald Tovey Sir Donald Francis Tovey (17 July 187510 July 1940) was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist. He had been best known for his '' Essays in Musical Analysis'' and his editions of works by Bach ...

* Anahit Tsitsikian *

Alan Tyson Alan Walker Tyson, (27 October 1926 – 10 November 2000) was a Glasgow-born British musicologist who specialized in studies of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. He wrote the (deliberately concise) ''Thematic ca ...

Leo Treitler Leo Treitler (born January 26, 1931) is an American musicologist born in Dortmund, Germany. He is distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Treitler studied at the University of Chicago under Grosvenor Coop ...

Marc Vignal Marc Vignal (born 21 December 1933 in Nogent-sur-Marne) is a noted French musicologist, writer and radio producer for France Musique and program manager at Radio France (1975–99), a journalist for ''Harmony'' (1964–84), ''Le Monde de la musique' ...

* James Webster * John Wilson *

Christoph Wolff Christoph Wolff (born 24 May 1940) 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 sinc ...

Josephine Wright Josephine Rosa Beatrice Wright (born September 5, 1942) is an American musicologist, recognized for her contributions to the study of African-American music and women in music. Since 1981, she has been a professor of music and the Josephine Lincol ...

Neal Zaslaw Neal Zaslaw (born June 28, 1939) is an American musicologist. Life and career Born in New York, Zaslaw graduated from Harvard in 1961 with a BA and obtained his master's from Juilliard in 1963. He played flute in the American Symphony Orchestra ...

Ethnomusicologists

* Eduard Yefimovich Alekseyev *

Mário de Andrade Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. He wrote one of the first and most influential collections of modern Brazilian poetr ...

Jaime de Angulo Jaime de Angulo (1887–1950) was a linguist, novelist, and ethnomusicologist in the western United States. He was born in Paris of Spanish parents. He came to America in 1905 to become a cowboy, and eventually arrived in San Francisco on the eve ...

Simha Arom Simha Arom (born 1930) is a French-Israeli ethnomusicologist who is recognized as a world expert on the music of central Africa, especially that of the Central African Republic. His books include '' African Polyphony and Polyrhythm: Musical Stru ...

* Jesús Bal y Gay *

Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...

Judith Becker Judith O. Becker (born September 3, 1932) is an American academic and educator. She is a scholar of the musical and religious cultures of South and Southeast Asia, the Islamic world and the Americas. Her work combines linguistic, musical, anthropo ...

* Deben Bhattacharya *

John Blacking John Anthony Randoll Blacking (22 October 1928 – 24 January 1990) was a British ethnomusicologist and social anthropologist. Early life and education John Blacking was born in Guildford, Surrey, and was educated at Salisbury Cathedral School ...

Constantin Brăiloiu Constantin Brăiloiu (13 August 1893 in Bucharest – 20 December 1958 in Geneva) was a Romanian composer and internationally known ethnomusicologist. Brăiloiu was born in Bucharest. He studied in Bucharest (1901–1907), Vienna (1907–190 ...

* Mellonee V. Burnim *

Joseph Canteloube Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret (; 21 October 18794 November 1957) was a French composer, musicologist, and author best known for his collections of orchestrated folksongs from the Auvergne region, ''Chants d'Auvergne''. Biography Canteloube ...

* Chalkdust *

Oriana Civile Oriana Civile () (born in Messina, Sicily, 19 November 1980) is an Italian singer, performer, and songwriter. She is a scholar of Sicilian traditional music and an important exponent of reviving the musical repertory of Sicilian oral tradition. H ...

* Judith R. Cohen *

Frances Densmore Frances Theresa Densmore (May 21, 1867 – June 5, 1957) was an American anthropologist and ethnographer born in Red Wing, Minnesota. Densmore is known for her studies of Native American music and culture, and in modern terms, she may ...

* S. A. K. Durga *

Akin Euba Olatunji Akin Euba (28 April 1935 – 14 April 2020), was a Nigerian composer, musicologist, and pianist. Career Born on 28 April 1935 in Lagos, Nigeria, Akin Euba studied composition with Arnold Cooke at the Trinity College of Music, London, o ...

* Walter Graf *

Percy Grainger Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who lived in the United States from 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long an ...

Ida Halpern Ida Halpern ( née Ruhdörfer; July 17, 1910 – February 7, 1987) was a Canadian ethnomusicologist. Halpern was born in Vienna, Austria. She arrived in Canada in order to flee Nazism in her native country, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1 ...

David G. Hebert David G. Hebert (; born 1972) is a musicologist and comparative educationist, employed as Professor of Music at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Bergen, Norway), where he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research grou ...

Mantle Hood Mantle Hood (June 24, 1918 – July 31, 2005) was an American ethnomusicologist. Among other areas, he specialized in studying gamelan music from Indonesia. Hood pioneered, in the 1950s and 1960s, a new approach to the study of music, and the cr ...

Erich von Hornbostel Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (25 February 1877 – 28 November 1935) was an Austrian ethnomusicologist and scholar of music. He is remembered for his pioneering work in the field of ethnomusicology, and for the Sachs–Hornbostel system of music ...

Leoš Janáček Leoš Janáček (, baptised Leo Eugen Janáček; 3 July 1854 – 12 August 1928) was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist, and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic musics, including Eastern European fol ...

* Jean Jenkins *

Arthur Morris Jones Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980), was a missionary and musicologist who worked in Zambia during the early 20th century. He was stationed at St Mark's School in Mapanza, a community in the Southern Province of present-day Zambia (called Rhodesia ...

Maud Karpeles Maud Karpeles (12 November 1885 – 1 October 1976) was a British collector of folksongs and dance teacher. Early life and education Maud Pauline Karpeles was born at Lancaster Gate in Bayswater, London, in 1885. She was the third of five child ...

Margaret J. Kartomi Margaret Joy Kartomi (née Hutchesson) is an Australian ethnomusicologist who is known especially for her contributions to the study of Asian music. She is an emeritus professor of Monash University in Melbourne. She specialises in the music of In ...

Zoltán Kodály Zoltán Kodály (; hu, Kodály Zoltán, ; 16 December 1882 – 6 March 1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály method of music ed ...

* Boris Kotlyarov *

Franjo Kuhač Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (November 20, 1834 – June 18, 1911) was a piano teacher, choral conductor, composer, and comparative musicologist who studied Croatian folk music. Kuhač did a great deal of field work in this area, collecting and publishing ...

Jaap Kunst Jaap Kunst (12 August 1891 in Groningen – 7 December 1960 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch musicologist. He is credited with coining the term "ethnomusicology" as a more accurate name for the field then known as comparative musicology. Kunst studied th ...

Filip Kutev Filip Kutev ( bg, Филип Кутев), often anglicized Philip Koutev (13 June 1903 – 27 November 1982), was a Bulgarian composer, arranger and founder, with his wife Maria Kuteva, in 1951, of Bulgaria's first professional, state supported ense ...

* Robert Lachmann *

* Argeliers León *

William P. Malm William Malm (born March 6, 1928) is an American musicologist known for his studies of Japanese traditional music. As a composer, teacher, and scholar of Japanese music, Malm shaped the study of ethnomusicology in the United States. Malm authored ...

* Portia K. Maultsby *

David P. McAllester David Park McAllester (6 August 1916 – 30 April 2006) was an American ethnomusicologist and Professor of Anthropology and Music at Wesleyan University, where he taught from 1947–1986. He contributed to the development of the field o ...

Alan P. Merriam Alan Parkhurst Merriam (1 November 1923 – 14 March 1980) was an American ethnomusicologist known for his studies of music in Native America and Africa.Bruno Nettl, "Merriam, Alan P." in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (Londo ...

Bruno Nettl Bruno Nettl (14 March 1930 – 15 January 2020) was an ethnomusicologist who was central in defining ethnomusicology as a discipline. His research focused on folk and traditional music, specifically Native American music the music of Iran and ...

* Willard Rhodes * Joel Rubin *

Wilhelm Rust Wilhelm Rust (August 15, 1822 – May 2, 1892) was a German musicologist and composer. He is most noted today for his substantial contributions to the Bach Gesellschaft edition of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Born in Dessau, Rust studied p ...

Charles Seeger Charles Louis Seeger Jr. (December 14, 1886 – February 7, 1979) was an American musicologist, composer, teacher, and folklorist. He was the father of the American folk singers Pete Seeger (1919–2014), Peggy Seeger (b. 1935), and Mike Seeger ( ...

Laura Alexandrine Smith Laura Alexandrine Smith (1861–1902) was an English musician, ethnomusicologist and one of the earliest collectors of sea shanties. Smith’s ''The Music of the Waters'', published in 1888, was possibly the first collection of sea shanties to i ...

Michael Tenzer Michael Tenzer (born 1957) is a composer, performer, and music educator and scholar. Tenzer was born in New York City and studied music at Yale University (BA. 1978) and University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1986). After teaching at Yale from ...

Laxmi Ganesh Tewari Pandit Laxmi Ganesh Tewari (born 8 September 1938) is a Hindustani vocalist from India. He is an exponent of the Gwalior gharana (tradition) of vocal music. After studying with Lalmani Misra at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, he pursued ...

* Anahit Tsitsikian *

Colin Turnbull Colin Macmillan Turnbull (November 23, 1924 – July 28, 1994) was a British-American anthropologist who came to public attention with the popular books '' The Forest People'' (on the Mbuti Pygmies of Zaire) and '' The Mountain People'' (on the ...

* Armas Otto Väisänen * Richard Widdess *

Vinko Žganec Vinko Žganec (January 22, 1890 - December 12, 1976) was a Croatian ethnomusicologist. Žganec was born in Vratišinec in Međimurje. He started to be interested in music early in his childhood and jotted down his first folk song in 1908. In 1916 ...

Systematic musicologists

Theodor W. Adorno Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer. He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

Karlheinz Brandenburg Karlheinz Brandenburg (born 20 June 1954) is a German electrical engineer and mathematician. Together with Ernst Eberlein, Heinz Gerhäuser (former Institutes Director of Fraunhofer IIS), Bernhard Grill, Jürgen Herre and Harald Popp (all Fraunh ...

Albert Bregman Albert Stanley "Al" Bregman (born September 15, 1936) is a Canadian professor and researcher in experimental psychology, cognitive science, and Gestalt psychology, primarily in the perceptual organization of sound. He is known for having defin ...

John Chowning John M. Chowning (; born August 22, 1934 in Salem, New Jersey) is an American composer, musician, discoverer, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University, the founding of CCRMA - Center for Computer Research in Music and Acou ...

Nicolas Collins Nicolas Collins (born March 26, 1954 in New York City) is a composer of mostly electronic music, a sound artist and writer. He received his BA and MA from Wesleyan University, and his PhD from the University of East Anglia. Upon graduating from ...

Ivor Darreg Ivor Darreg (May 5, 1917 – February 12, 1994) was an American composer and leading proponent of microtonal or " xenharmonic" music. He also created a series of experimental musical instruments. Biography Darreg, a contemporary of Harry Part ...

Diana Deutsch Diana Deutsch (born 15 February 1938) is a British-American psychologist from London, England. She's a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and is a prominent researcher on the psychology of music. Deutsch is p ...

Renato Fasano Renato Fasano (Naples, August 21, 1902 – Rome, August 3, 1979) was an Italian conductor and musicologist particularly associated with 18th-century Italian works. Having studied music in his native Naples, Fasano established in 1941 the chamber ...

Gustav Fechner Gustav Theodor Fechner (; ; 19 April 1801 – 18 November 1887) was a German physicist, philosopher, and experimental psychologist. A pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics (techniques for measuring the mind), he inspired ...

Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, ...

Bart Hopkin Bart Hopkin is a builder of experimental musical instruments and a writer and publisher on the subject. Hopkin runs the website windworld.com, which provides resources regarding unusual instruments. Hopkin published the magazine ''Experimental Mus ...

Yuri Landman Yuri Landman (born 1 February 1973) is a Dutch inventor of musical instruments and musician who has made several experimental electric string instruments for a number of artists including Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Liars, Jad Fair of Half Japan ...

Fred Lerdahl Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin) is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and cogn ...

François-Bernard Mâche François-Bernard Mâche (born 4 April 1935, Clermont-Ferrand) is a French composer of contemporary music. Biography Born into a family of musicians, he is a former student of Émile Passani and Olivier Messiaen and has also received a diplom ...

Dario Martinelli Dario Martinelli (born Andria, Italy, March 1, 1974) is an Italian semiotician, musicologist and composer. He is director of the International Semiotics Institute, professor at Kaunas University of Technology, and is also affiliated to the Univ ...

Richard Parncutt Richard Parncutt (born 24 October 1957 in Melbourne) is an Australian-born academic. He has been professor of systematic musicology at Karl Franzens University Graz in Austria since 1998. Education Parncutt studied music and physics at the ...

Harry Partch Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century com ...

Pythagoras Pythagoras of Samos ( grc, Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, Pythagóras ho Sámios, Pythagoras the Samos, Samian, or simply ; in Ionian Greek; ) was an ancient Ionians, Ionian Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher and the eponymou ...

Carl Seashore Carl Emil Seashore, born Sjöstrand (January 28, 1866 – October 16, 1949) was a prominent American psychologist and educator. He was the author of numerous books and articles principally regarding the fields of speech–language pathology, music ...

Klaus Scherer Klaus Rainer Scherer (born 1943) is former Professor of Psychology and director of the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences The Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences (french: Centre Interfacultaire en Sciences Affectives or "CISA") is an interdisci ...

Eero Tarasti Eero Aarne Pekka Tarasti (born 27 September 1948 in Helsinki), is a Finnish musicologist and semiologist, currently serving as Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Helsinki. He received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Hel ...

Ernst Heinrich Weber Ernst Heinrich Weber (24 June 1795 – 26 January 1878) was a German physician who is considered one of the founders of experimental psychology. He was an influential and important figure in the areas of physiology and psychology during his lif ...

Erv Wilson Ervin Wilson (June 11, 1928 – December 8, 2016) was a Mexico, Mexican/United States, American (dual citizen) music theory, music theorist. Early life Ervin Wilson was born in a remote area of northwest Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua, Mexico, wher ...

External links

*
Website
of the

International Musicological Society The International Musicological Society (IMS) is a membership-based organisation for musicology at the international level, with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. It seeks the advancement of musicological research through international coopera ...

Website
of the

American Musicological Society The American Musicological Society (AMS) is a musicological organization which researches, promotes and produces publications on music. Founded in 1934, the AMS was begun by leading American musicologists of the time, and was crucial in legitim ...

Website
of the

Royal Musical Association The Royal Musical Association (RMA) is a British scholarly society and charity. Founded in 1874, the Association claims to be the second oldest musicological society in the world, after that of the Netherlands. Activities include organizing and sp ...

Website
of the

American Institute of Musicology The American Institute of Musicology (AIM) is a musicological organization that researches, promotes and produces publications on early music. Founded in 1944 by Armen Carapetyan, the AIM's chief objective is the publication of modern editions ...

{{Portal bar, Classical music

Musicologists Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...