Ecomusicology

Ecomusicology (from Greek οἶκος, meaning "house"; μουσική, "music"; and -λογία, "study of-") is an academic discipline concerned with the study of music, culture, and nature, and considers musical and sonic issues, both textual and performative, related to ecology and the natural environment. It is in essence a mixture of ecocriticism and musicology (rather than "ecology" and "musicology"), in Charles Seeger's holistic definition.

Background

With the increasing intertwined interest in the environment and the sciences in North America from the 1970s, there has been an increase in interest in the term ecomusicology, which was established as a term in the early 21st century in North American and Scandinavian circles. As a field, ecomusicology was created out of a common area of interest between the fields of ecocriticism and musicology, expressed by a range of scholars and artists such as composers, acoustic ecologists, ethnomusicologists, biomusicologists, and others.

Ecomusicology embraces what is today considered the field of historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and related interdisciplinary fields, which while at the same time may enable specialists within each of these fields to interact with academics in the other fields in their approach, it also provides individuals with flexibility to approach an ecocritical study of music through a variety of disciplines and fields.

See also

• Music
• Ecocriticism
• Musicology
• Sociomusicology
• Ecopoetry

Bibliography

• Allen, Aaron S.: "'Fatto di Fiemme': Stradivari and the Musical Trees of the Paneveggio," Invaluable Trees: Cultures of Nature,1660–1830, ed. L. Auricchio, E. H. Cook, and G. Pacini (2012), 301–315
• Toliver, B. "Eco-ing in the Canyon: Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite and the Transformation of Wilderness,” JAMS, lvii (2004), 325–67
• Troup, M, ed., Guildhall School of Music and Drama Review (1972)
• Feld, S.: "Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression" (Philadelphia, 2/1990)
• Garrard, G. "Ecocriticism" (London and New York, 2004)
• Gray, P.M., and others: “The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music,” Science (5 January 2001), 52–4
• Guy, N.: “Flowing Down Taiwan’s Tasumi River: Towards an Ecomusicology of the Environmental Imagination.” EthM, liii (2009), 218–48
• Pedelty, M.: Ecomusicology: Rock, Folk, and the Environment (Philadelphia, 2012).
• Rehding, A.: “Eco-musicology,” JRMA, cxxvii/2 (2002), 305–20
• Von Glahn, D. "The Sounds of Place: Music and the American Cultural Landscape," (Boston, 2003)
• Sorce Keller, M. “The Windmills of my Mind – Musings about Haydn, Kant, Sonic Ecology, and Hygiene”, in Gisa Jähnichen and Chinthaka Meddegoda (eds.), Music – Dance and Environment. Serdang: Universiti Putra Malaysia Press, 2013, 1–31.

External links

• Ecomusicology.info – Provides information and resources about ecomusicology.
• http://www.ams-esg.org/ – The Ecocriticism Study Group of the American Musicological Society