Women in musicology describes the role of women professors, scholars and researchers in

postsecondary education Tertiary education, also referred to as third-level, third-stage or post-secondary education, is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including univers ...

musicology departments at

institutions, including

universities A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...

s and music conservatories. Traditionally, the vast majority of major

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 ...

and music historians have been men. Nevertheless, some women musicologists have reached the top ranks of the profession.

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 ...

(born 1956) is an American musicologist who did her PhD at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. She has been described by the ''

Harvard Gazette Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

'' as "one of the world's most accomplished and admired music historians"."Abbate named University Professor"
''Harvard Gazette'', 20 November 2013. Accessed 10 December 2014

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 Universit ...

(born 1946) is a musicologist associated with the " New Musicology" who incorporates feminist music criticism in her work. McClary holds a PhD from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. One of her best known works is ''Feminine Endings'' (1991), which covers musical constructions of gender and sexuality, gendered aspects of traditional music theory, gendered sexuality in musical narrative, music as a gendered discourse and issues affecting women musicians. In the book, McClary suggests that the

sonata form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...

(used in symphonies and string quartets) may be a sexist or

misogynist Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced f ...

ic procedure that constructs of

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...

and sexual identity. McClary's ''Conventional Wisdom'' (2000) argues that the traditional musicological assumption of the existence of "purely musical" elements, divorced from culture and meaning, the social and the body, is a conceit used to veil the social and political imperatives of the worldview that produces the classical canon most prized by supposedly objective musicologists. American musicologist Marcia Citron has asked " y is music composed by women so marginal to the standard 'classical' repertoire?"Citron, Marcia J. Gender and the Musical Canon. CUP Archive, 1993. Citron "examines the practices and attitudes that have led to the exclusion of women composers from the received '

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

' of performed musical works." She argues that in the 1800s, women composers typically wrote art songs for performance in small recitals rather than symphonies intended for performance with an orchestra in a large hall, with the latter works being seen as the most important genre for composers; since women composers did not write many symphonies, they were deemed to be not notable as composers. Other notable women scholars include: * Eva Badura-Skoda * Ita Beausang *

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 ...

Suzanne Cusick Suzanne G. Cusick (born 1954) is a music historian and musicologist living in and working in New York City, where she is a Professor of Music at the Faculty of Arts and Science at the New York University. Her specialties are the music of seventeen ...

* Tina Frühauf * Ursula Günther *

Maud Cuney Hare Maud Cuney Hare (''née'' Cuney, February 16, 1874–February 13 or 14, 1936) was an American pianist, musicologist, writer, and African-American activist in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. She was born in Galveston, the daughter of ...

* Barbara L. Kelly * Liudmila Kovnatskaya *

Elizabeth Eva Leach Elizabeth Eva Leach is a British musicologist and music theorist who specializes in medieval music, especially that of the fourteenth century. Life and career Leach is a professor of music at St Hugh's College, Oxford (a constituent college o ...

* Kendra Preston Leonard * Carol Oja * Nancy Reich *

Rosetta Reitz Rosetta Reitz (September 28, 1924 – November 1, 2008) was an American feminist and jazz historian who searched for and established a record label producing 18 albums of the music of the early women of jazz and the blues.Martin, Douglas"Rosetta ...

Joan Rimmer Joan Rimmer (11 December 1918 – 29 December 2014) was an English musicologist who specialised in the history of musical instruments (especially the Irish harp) and in historical dance forms. She was also a pioneer in ethnomusicology who presen ...

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 ...

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 ...

Rose Rosengard Subotnik Rose Rosengard Subotnik (née Rosengard; born 1942) is a leading American musicologist, generally credited with introducing the writing of Theodor Adorno to English-speaking musicologists in the late 1970s. Early life Subotnik was born in 1942 to ...

* Judith Tick * Anahit Tsitsikian * Reba Wissner * Eileen Southern *

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 ...

Ethnomusicologists

Ethnomusicologists 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 ...

study the many musics around the world that emphasize their cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dimensions or contexts instead of or in addition to its isolated sound component or any particular repertoire. Ethnomusicology – a term coined by

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 ...

from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

words ἔθνος (''ethnos'', "nation") and μουσική (''mousike'', "music") – is often described as the

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

or ethnography of music. Initially, ethnomusicology was almost exclusively oriented toward non-

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

music, but now includes the study of Western music from anthropological, sociological and intercultural perspectives. Notable ethnomusicologists include: *

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 ...

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 ...

* Joanna Everharda La Rivière Fourie *

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 ...

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 ...

Janet E Tobitt Janet Evelyn Tobitt (24 March 1898, in Reading, UK – 19 February 1984, in New York, USA), also known as Toby, was a British-American author, editor, publisher, music director, collector of folk songs and dances, playwright, teacher, Girl Guid ...

* Ellen Koskoff

References

{{Reflist Women in music Humanities Musicology