What is the Place of Science in Musicology Today?
From Pythagoras to the present day, the role of science in the study of music has shifted in many ways. Before the specialization of knowledge and the segregation of disciplines in the 19th century, the study of music could be conducted with various approaches by a single thinker or philosopher. In 1885, Guido Adler formalized a tripartite model comprising on one hand historical musicology and, on the other, comparative musicology, which was itself broken down into ethnomusicology and systematic musicology. This so-called systematic musicology, now also called experimental or computational musicology in certain quarters, drew on the development of related disciplines such as neurocognition and digital technologies. Today, it draws strength from the recent surge of the “digital humanities,” a concept which emerged a few years ago with the aim of applying the know-how of information technology to problems in the humanities and social sciences.